The US wants tough sanctions to maximise pressure on North Korea to come to the table and negotiate an end to its nuclear and missile tests. he US has formally requested a UN Security Council vote on Monday to impose tough new sanctions against North Korea despite resistance from China and Russia.
Washington has presented a draft UN resolution calling for an oil embargo on North Korea, an assets freeze on Kim Jong-Un, a ban on textiles and an end to payments of North Korean guest workers.
Diplomatic sources said Russia and China opposed the measures as a whole, except for the ban of textiles, during a meeting of experts on Friday.
“This evening, the United States informed the UN Security Council that it intends to call a meeting to vote on a draft resolution to establish additional sanctions on North Korea on Monday, September 11,” a statement from the US mission to the UN read.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov earlier said it was too early to talk about a vote at the Security Council on new North Korea sanctions, insisting any pressure should be balanced against restarting talks.
“Along with pressure on the North Korean regime to induce it to abandon provocations in the implementation of its nuclear and missile programs, it is necessary to emphasize and increase the priority of efforts to resume the political process,” Lavrov said.
The US wants tough sanctions to be imposed to maximise pressure on Pyongyang to come to the table and negotiate an end to its nuclear and missile tests.
The proposed raft of sanctions would be the toughest-ever imposed on North Korea and seek to punish Pyongyang for its sixth and largest nuclear test.
Alyn Ware–A stimulating and worthwhile article. It raises questions on how to address the reasons why States rely on nuclear weapons, and therefore be able to move them to reduce this reliance, without giving moral or legal legitimacy to nuclear deterrence.
Including international security in future disarmament conversations is the next step to making disarmament a commonly shared goal, rather than a divisive and politically fueled controversy.
Disarmament divided: resolving disagreements about international security http://thebulletin.org/disarmament-divided-resolving-disagreements-about-international-security11054 5 SEPTEMBER 2017 Jessica Margolis,In the eight weeks since the historic vote to approve a United Nations treaty formally prohibiting nuclear weapons, attention has turned from treaty negotiations to the ban’s future impact. In anticipation of the treaty opening for signature on September 20, both advocates and opponents have been speculating about what comes next. Much of the discussion has focused on ensuring that delegations sign and ratify the treaty, determining how the prohibition will fit into existing nonproliferation regimes, and debating whether nuclear weapon states can or should participate in these next steps. However, little has been said about resolving underlying disagreements regarding international security concerns in the disarmament process.
Moving forward, it will be important to address the way in which international security was dealt with during the treaty debate and written into the treaty text—and not just because it has implications for the treaty’s impact, political messaging, and potential for universality. The international security issue showcases more general divisions about whether disarmament measures should be viewed through a deterrence-based lens. In planning next steps for the treaty, non-nuclear weapon states should establish comprehensive dialogues on the role that deterrence-based security dynamics should play in the disarmament process.
International security in the framework of disarmament. During the negotiations that culminated in the July 7 vote by 122 nations in favor of a ban treaty, it was clear that the role of international security in disarmament initiatives had become increasingly controversial. Indeed, this is a primary reason that the five nuclear weapon states recognized by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty refused to partake in treaty negotiations, and cite regional security concerns as an obstacle to disarmament.
Nuclear weapon states and many of their allies claim that a decision to rely on nuclear deterrence theory—to prevent hostilities between world powers from boiling over into large-scale war—has contributed to international stability. They worry that hasty disarmament of nuclear weapons and disregard for nuclear deterrence will have negative ramifications for the defense policies of alliances, current disarmament agreements, and world peace.
Specifically, the United States, United Kingdom, and France maintain that the ban is incompatible with nuclear deterrence, because it ignores “the realities of the international security environment.” In their view, the treaty doesn’t solve the North Korea problem, implement the Iran deal, or keep contentious world powers from waging war. Because the treaty fails to address regional security, these three nations argue, it could create instability, exacerbate regional tensions, and leave all states feeling more vulnerable and less secure.
Many non-nuclear weapon states are frustrated with the decades-old idea that nuclear weapons provide a stability that enhances security and preserves peace—an idea that has kept the disarmament debate rooted in discussions of security doctrine and balance of forces. They blame it for stalled progress on multilateral disarmament measures, and see it as a distraction from the moral imperative of protecting civilization from any use of nuclear weapons.
This frustration motivated the “humanitarian movement,” which aimed to redirect nuclear weapons rhetoric to focus on their devastating potential to destroy, rather than on their function as deterrents and stabilizers. The movement eventually turned into calls for a prohibition, but it also brought to the forefront disagreements over the role of security concerns in disarmament and how they should be incorporated into the treaty.
A divide among negotiators. The first round of negotiations exposed a division between the states that wanted to engage nuclear weapon states on security concerns while working toward disarmament, and those that questioned the general validity of nuclear deterrence and accused nuclear weapon states of using it as an excuse to expand their arsenals. The vast majority of states wanted to frame the treaty in the context of the destruction that nuclear weapons can inflict, by strongly rooting the preamble in humanitarian and international law. These countries wanted the focus of the treaty to be the devastating potential of these weapons, rather than the theory-based security situations that they’ve created. This is summarized well in a statement from Nigeria: “We remain resolute in our conviction that national security doctrines should not serve to justify the proliferation and the existence of the staggering aggregate of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of [nuclear weapon states].” And in Antigua and Barbados’ statement on behalf of the Caribbean Community, “nuclear weapons have no utility in today’s world. They are not useful deterrents but rather cultivate a state of insecurity and false defensiveness that only increases the chances of proliferation.” These states aimed to not only create a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons, but also to delegitimize nuclear deterrence and the theories it is based on.
In contrast, a smaller group of non-nuclear weapon states addressed the potential of the ban to affect strategic stability and the nuclear order. Prominent members of this group were mostly European. During the debate on the preamble, these states promoted working with nuclear weapon states to solve regional security threats and advance disarmament. For example, Switzerland’s stated aim was to create a treaty that contributed to disarmament, but that was also “mindful of security challenges” and would “open the door for practical disarmament steps at a later stage.” The Marshall Islands also seemed sympathetic to the security concerns of nuclear weapon states, asserting “disarmament does not occur in a vacuum or on moral principles alone . . . there are complex security issues which are a political reality in disarmament efforts.” Austria and Sweden made similar statements. These states recognize that regional security disputes are an impediment to disarmament, and were hesitant to entirely discount the structures that have been built around deterrence theory.
Why the divide? Why do non-nuclear weapon states that are universally in favor of a nuclear weapons prohibition disagree on the role of international security in this process? The answer is that some of these states could be more affected by larger strategic conflict than others, so they are trying to address security more pragmatically to protect their interests. Despite a true belief in the merits of the treaty, they give weight to the contention of nuclear weapon states that deterrence has maintained a relatively peaceful status quo between major powers since World War II.
This is obviously a concern for the Netherlands, the only NATO member that took part in the negotiations and the only state that voted against the treaty. However, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and Liechtenstein could also be caught in the cross-hairs of a nuclear conflict between major powers, given their location between NATO and Russia. This is likely why all of them, except Liechtenstein, are members of the Partnership for Peace program, which allows non-NATO states to form bilateral security and defense relationships with the alliance. Though it does not mean they are protected under US extended deterrence, the partnership arrangement has allowed these countries to foster closer coordination with NATO and reap some security benefits. Participation in Partnership for Peace indicates that security concerns and the deterrence posture of NATO are important considerations for these countries; they see value in maintaining these stabilizing ties and the potential to expand them in case of future threats.
Interestingly, the divide on international security correlates to a debate during the negotiations on whether the treaty should include a specific prohibition on the threat of use of nuclear weapons. States in favor of this stipulation argued that an explicit prohibition on the threat of use creates a more comprehensive treaty, reinforces the 1996 International Court of Justice ruling on the threat of use, and delegitimizes deterrence in general. Those states that opposed it, such as Austria, argued that the prohibition was redundant, vague, and potentially damaging to a more general norm set by the UN Charter. Although the final treaty text did include the prohibition, many of the states opposed to it were also those cognizant of international security concerns. They include Austria, Switzerland, and Mexico, which actively spoke against a prohibition on the threat of use; and Ireland, Sweden, and Liechtenstein, which notably left if off their lists of desired prohibitions.
Though it is unclear exactly which states the prohibition is intended to target, it will prevent countries involved in extended deterrence agreements from joining the treaty, and further erode the acceptability and utility of nuclear deterrence. This limits options by NATO states and security-conscious European nations, which is likely why they opposed it. Even states that do not have nuclear weapons stationed on their soil, and are not involved in the sharing of command and control for nuclear weapons stationed elsewhere, will be unable to join the treaty. This closes a potential pathway for NATO members to more easily accede to the treaty, and likely prevents the involvement of states from the Asia-Pacific umbrella or the post-Soviet Collective Security Treaty Organization.
Additionally, this prohibition prevents any states that sign the treaty from joining an extended deterrence arrangement in the future. Naturally, states concerned with the security implications of disarmament may be worried that they could find themselves in the middle of a future dispute between world powers, and may have wanted to maintain the option to join a nuclear umbrella in some form.
Why the divide matters. Many non-nuclear weapon states want to detach any forward motion on disarmament from a framework steeped in international security arrangements. A small, but important, group of non-nuclear weapon states are hesitant to do this. These nations are strategically located, historically involved in disarmament initiatives, and could fund a large portion of the treaty structure. It is not that they are uncommitted to the treaty’s moral underpinnings, but that they are more sympathetic—and some may say more realistic—in acknowledging that there are vital security concerns here that must be addressed.
This division is about more than the language of a preamble, or a prohibition on the threat of use; it is about an increasingly large schism in the international community over the role that security arguments should play in disarmament. For nuclear weapon states, security, balance of forces, military doctrine, deterrence, and disarmament have been intertwined for decades. Treaty supporters are frustrated that multilateral disarmament has become prisoner to this. But the reality is that deterrence will probably continue to be present in international politics until all weapons are dismantled and “general and complete disarmament” is fully achieved.
For this reason, there need to be productive and pragmatic discussions about the degree to which deterrence-based security dynamics should be considered, prior to and during the process of disarmament. These discussions should begin with groups that support the new treaty, as there is still broad disagreement within pro-treaty camps on the validity of nuclear deterrence in maintaining stability.
By systematically analyzing how general disarmament and the ban treaty will affect international security, non-nuclear weapon states can begin to bridge their differences on deterrence. Ideally, this could result in a common understanding among non-nuclear weapon states of how they intend for the new treaty to be integrated into the broader security landscape.
Consensus will not be quick or easy. Simply determining the proper forum and agenda for such a conversation could be difficult. However, without a full assessment of the implications of disarmament for international security concerns, disagreement among non-nuclear weapon states will continue. Only with a united and comprehensive agreement on this issue can non-nuclear weapon states hope to constructively engage nuclear weapon states with this treaty. And without a pathway that can eventually aspire to involve nuclear weapon states, the impact of the treaty as a multilateral approach to disarmament will be limited. Including international security in future disarmament conversations is the next step to making disarmament a commonly shared goal, rather than a divisive and politically fueled controversy.
Too much mansplaining in climate conversations? http://www.nationalobserver.com/2017/09/07/news/too-much-mansplaining-climate-conversations , By Clothilde GoujardSeptember 7th 2017 #710 of 711 articles from the Special Report: Race Against Climate ChangeIn the catastrophic 2004 Boxing Day Asian tsunami, four times more women died than men. In the worst affected village, Indonesia’s Kuala Cangkoy, 80 per cent of the victims were female, according to Oxfam International. The number was so disproportionate, reported the humanitarian agency, because men were generally fishing or away from home, and many were able to flee while women at home tried to save children.
It’s an imbalance that disturbs the World Meteorological Organization’s Elena Manaenkova, who addressed the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Montreal earlier this week.
“Women couldn’t run because of their long clothes and they didn’t know how to swim,” she toldNational Observer in an interview.
The 56th session of the IPCC, which is tasked with providing sound climate science assessments to governments and policy makers, began in Montreal on Wednesday. At a closed-door workshop on Tuesday night however — held between the IPCC and Environment Canada — Manaenkova emphasized the importance of including more women in the world’s response to climate change.
She and a team of other climate experts are urging organizations and governments to recruit for women scientists to help improve sensitivity to gender issues in climate-related policy. Natural disasters, she explained, are just one example of how a warming world can have different impacts on women and men.
Women have to walk further for water
As temperatures rise and droughts become more frequent, for instance, women in some countries who are traditionally tasked with fetching water face more problems, including sexual violence.
According to the United Nations, women in Africa and Asia walk an average of six kilometres to get water but the distance can be much longer with droughts.
The delegate for Kenya, Patricia Nying’uro, has made note of that situation in her own country.
“If there’s a drought, (women) have to find water and in some areas they have to walk really far,” she said in an interview. “Even though everyone feels (climate change), these women feel it a bit more.”
As a senior meteorologist at the Kenyan Meteorological Department, she said whenever there are new seasonal forecasts for rain, they hold information forums and women are particularly interested.
“You will find that’s it’s mainly women who attend, one because they have the time and two, because they’re the most impacted,” she said.
To her, it’s important that more women participate in the climate change conversation because she feels not enough is being done to look at the impact on women.
“Women would be sensitive in general to things that happen to fellow women and the impacts on them,” she said.
In the catastrophic 2004 Boxing Day Asian tsunami, four times more women died than men.
In the worst affected village, Indonesia’s Kuala Cangkoy, 80 per cent of the victims were female, according to Oxfam International. The number was so disproportionate, reported the humanitarian agency, because men were generally fishing or away from home, and many were able to flee while women at home tried to save children.
It’s an imbalance that disturbs the World Meteorological Organization’s Elena Manaenkova, who addressed the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Montreal earlier this week.
“Women couldn’t run because of their long clothes and they didn’t know how to swim,” she toldNational Observer in an interview.
The 56th session of the IPCC, which is tasked with providing sound climate science assessments to governments and policy makers, began in Montreal on Wednesday. At a closed-door workshop on Tuesday night however — held between the IPCC and Environment Canada — Manaenkova emphasized the importance of including more women in the world’s response to climate change.
She and a team of other climate experts are urging organizations and governments to recruit for women scientists to help improve sensitivity to gender issues in climate-related policy. Natural disasters, she explained, are just one example of how a warming world can have different impacts on women and men.
Women have to walk further for water
As temperatures rise and droughts become more frequent, for instance, women in some countries who are traditionally tasked with fetching water face more problems, including sexual violence. According to the United Nations, women in Africa and Asia walk an average of six kilometres to get water but the distance can be much longer with droughts.
The delegate for Kenya, Patricia Nying’uro, has made note of that situation in her own country.
“If there’s a drought, (women) have to find water and in some areas they have to walk really far,” she said in an interview. “Even though everyone feels (climate change), these women feel it a bit more.”
As a senior meteorologist at the Kenyan Meteorological Department, she said whenever there are new seasonal forecasts for rain, they hold information forums and women are particularly interested.
“You will find that’s it’s mainly women who attend, one because they have the time and two, because they’re the most impacted,” she said.
To her, it’s important that more women participate in the climate change conversation because she feels not enough is being done to look at the impact on women.
“Women would be sensitive in general to things that happen to fellow women and the impacts on them,” she said.
IPCC aims to increase female participation
Manaenkova, the climate expert leading the World Meteorological Organization, shares Nying’uro’s position that more women experts need to participate in the conversation. During the gender workshop on Tuesday night, Manaenkova and other leaders working with IPCC gathered to discuss the situation and see how more women scientists could be included in IPCC’s work.
As a major organization assessing climate change to guide scientists and policy makers, the IPCC is trying to be more gender balanced, said Fatima Driouech, who spoke at the evening meeting. She is vice-chair of the IPCC Working Group 1, which deals with the physical science basis of climate change.
“Within IPCC, there’s good will to improve (gender balance) for the future. In this cycle, we feel there’s an improvement compared to the previous one,” Driouech told National Observer.
The Moroccan scientist is one of 10 women of the IPCC’s 34-member bureau, which includes chairs and vice-chairs of the organization and its working groups and task force. She was also a lead author of the IPCC’s previous climate change assessment report.
“It’s important to include (women) in climate research and in science because there’s a need for different viewpoints, different visions and different ideas,” she said.
According to numbers released at the workshop and confirmed by IPCC, there are more female authors of special reports currently in the works than in previous years. The IPCC is nearly 30 years old, and was first established by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization to “provide a scientific basis for governments at all levels to develop climate-related policies.”
Thirty-eight per cent of the 86 authors of the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 per cent — scheduled for publication next year — are women, compared with 21.5 per cent of 1,001 authors who participated in the IPCC’s fifth Assessment Report released in 2014. In a subreport of the fifth Assessment Report, all 33 authors from African countries were men.
In two other reports underway that are due in 2019, just under a third of the authors are women. That’s out of 101 authors for a report on climate change and oceans, the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, and 103 authors for the Special Report on Climate Change and Land.
While there’s some global improvement, Driouech said some countries are still struggling to be more gender-balanced: “There are some regions where there’s a little imbalance to fix for everyone’s good.”
For that reason, at the opening of the IPCC session on Wednesday morning, where representatives of member countries were present, Manaenkova mentioned the need for “active debate on the gender sensitivity of the issues” reflected in the IPCC reports.
Despite growing understanding that gender balance can inform better research and decision-making in climate science, she said organizations like the World Meteorological Organization, as well as the IPCC and other UN bodies, have had to put a lot of effort to convince “skeptics” who didn’t understand why more women need to be included. That persuasion effort is still underway.
Countries must nominate more women scientists
At IPCC, she said, some countries do not nominate enough women scientists to be authors.
“In some cases, (IPCC) has to positively discriminate, they prefer a woman to maybe ten men because she was the only one nominated,” she said.
At her own organization, she said they are thinking about enforcing nominations of women. As it stands, female nominations are encouraged and welcomed, rather than enforced.
Manaenkova believes that because IPCC focuses not just on physical climate change, but also socio-economic impacts and adaptation, it is even more important to have input from women. She said it would even be better to have reports with statistics separated by gender.
“(IPCC) says there’s some women nominated who could be lead authors and their competence is very high, and high enough to be coordinating author,” said Manaenkova. “We need to look for these women, find them, and pull them in.”
The IPCC will be in Montreal until Sunday to discuss their reports on the impacts of global warming, and to develop the outline for their main and sixth publication on the topic, which scheduled for release in 2022.
A Devious Threat to a Nuclear Deal, NYT, By THE EDITORIAL BOARD Nikki Haley laid the Trump administration’s cards on the table this week with a new proposal aimed at sabotaging one of the Obama administration’s most important diplomatic initiatives — the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. President Trump promised during his campaign to kill the deal, despite its clear benefits to American security. Ms. Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, has set forth a scheme that could not only allow Mr. Trump to carry out his threat, but also shift final responsibility to Congress.
Trump renews threat of force against North Korea over nuclear weapons, WP. By Anne Gearan and Emily RauhalaSeptember 7 President Trump renewed a threat Thursday to use military force against North Korea and raised doubts about whether negotiations could succeed in resolving the brewing crisis over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons.
“Military action would certainly be an option. Is it inevitable? Nothing’s inevitable,” Trump said during a news conference. “It would be great if something else could be worked out. We would have to look at all of the details, all of the facts.”
U.S. officials said an offer to negotiate with North Korea remains on the table, but Trump has repeatedly discounted the value of beginning another effort to talk North Korea out of its arsenal.
All previous efforts have failed, and North Korea now possesses both a stockpile of weapons and missiles capable of threatening U.S. shores……
The United States is seeking the toughest-yet U.N. sanctions against North Korea in response to its latest nuclear test, according to a draft resolution circulated Wednesday. The sanctions would stop all oil and natural gas exports and freeze the government’s foreign financial assets.
North Korea greeted the proposal with a threat. “We will respond to the barbaric plotting around sanctions and pressure by the United States with powerful counter measures of our own,” read a statement delivered at an Asian economic summit in Russia on Thursday.
Nuclear stalemate of our century, AA, The presence of 10,000 nuclear weapons makes it impossible to take a deep breath and relax, By Sitki Egeli, 7 Sept 17, ISTANBUL
It has been 72 years since the atomic bombardment of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which resulted in the death and injury of hundreds of thousands.
The discovery in Japan of the terribly destructive power of nuclear weapons apparently did not prove enough of a deterrent to convince humanity of the need to get rid of these dangerous weapons.
On the contrary, the extraordinary destructive power of nuclear weapons must have increased in attractiveness in the sight of many countries and their administrators so much that the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and the People’s Republic of China followed in the footsteps of the United States in developing nuclear weapons.
Over the following decades, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea joined the caravan of countries that possessed atomic bombs.
Fewer nuclear warheads
Nuclear weapons are perhaps the most fatal threat that could end all human life on this planet…….
Risk of cyber-attacks and populism
As a matter of fact, nuclear weapons may not always be used knowingly and willingly. It is not a remote possibility that nuclear weapons are accidentally or unintentionally activated through outside interventions and cyber-attacks, which we have been gifted with thanks to rapidly advancing information technology.
Equally worrisome is the glut of populist political leaders influencing world politics today. They are mostly ineffective and bereft of the notion of empathy. It has always been assumed that whenever it came to nuclear weapons, countries that possessed them would display moderation and act maturely and with the acknowledgment of how tremendously different nuclear weapons are from conventional ones.
However, the irresponsible and dangerous rhetoric employed in the recent battle of words with North Korea by the leader of the oldest and supposedly mature nuclear power of the world, the U.S., has cast a shadow on this assumption. Among the nuclear countries using irresponsible rhetoric, one should mention Russia — alongside the U.S. and North Korea — which sees no harm in threatening its neighbors with using its nuclear weapons……
we are faced with a paradigmatic transformation, in which all of the arguments employed so far to legitimize nuclear weapons and portray them as necessary have capitulated one by one.
For example, the argument propagated by nuclear powers that nuclear weapons make conflicts too dangerous and risky and thereby actually better serve peace and international stability is losing its persuasive power and coherence to a great extent under the new circumstances developing.
New treaty adopted by 122 UN members
Quite unsurprisingly, we see that the international perception about nuclear weapons is rapidly changing and that this change is bringing with itself a number of processes and initiatives.
For instance, a new international treaty adopted in July at the United Nations by 122 members completely bans and outlaws the development, testing, deployment, and use of nuclear weapons.
The treaty will be presented to the member states for their approval in September and enter into force once signed by 50 states, and it will be a heavy yet ineffective blow to nuclear weapons’ legitimacy and legal status.
Unsurprisingly, countries with nuclear weapons and their allies, who agreed to house nuclear weapons on their soil, sat out the UN vote.
With their conspicuous absence, they implicitly declared that they would not recognize this initiative and demand, already supported and approved by 122 countries.
What we can deduce from this is that the countries that own nuclear weapons as well as those who have secured themselves a place under the “protective umbrella” of nuclear powers favor the continuation of the current situation with nuclear weapons, in which these weapons remain an essential, legal, and institutional element of international relations.
And in favoring this present state, they are ready to face up to all the risks and dangers posed by nuclear weapons.
’70s legal framework
The current institutional and legal framework for nuclear weapons is regulated mainly by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signed in 1970.
In sum, the NPT divided countries into two groups: those eligible to possess nuclear weapons, and those who were not.
The five states that had the right to have nuclear weapons and enjoyed the privileges were those that had already acquired nuclear weapons at the time when the treaty was being deliberated.
These five countries were also the very five that eventually became the five permanent members of the UN Security Council with veto power.
By putting the NPT into effect, what the international community actually did was to accept the nuclear status quo in the world as it was as of the late 1960s, with all its problems and injustices, and freeze it. And this was all done in the name of preventing a bigger number of countries from laying their hands on nuclear weapons.
And in return for that, it made certain promises to the states which relinquished their right to acquire nuclear weapons.
Among the things promised was, for example, that nuclear weapons would be reduced in number and be eventually done away with completely, that nuclear weapons would never be used against the countries who relinquished their right to nuclear weapons, and also that there would be no obstacles to accessing and using nuclear technology for commercial and scientific ends.
Nuclear states undermine deal’s legitimacy
Unfortunately, in the almost half-century that has since passed, there have been many examples of negligence regarding these assurances and commitments, and even cases in which the complete opposite of whatever was envisaged by the NPT was done.
States with nuclear weapons themselves have in a way cast a shadow over the legitimacy and legality of the NPT and their own nuclear weapons by failing to properly comply with the requirements of a deal that provided their own nuclear arsenals with legitimacy and legality in the first place.
Bridgwater Mercury 6th Sept 2017, BRITAIN’S electricity supply could be hit if the Government leaves Euratom
without new measures being put in place, a leading industry body has
warned. There could also be a “significant potential impact” on the new
£18 billion Hinkley Point nuclear power plant, according to the Nuclear
Industry Association (NIA). Chief executive Tom Greatrex said the “clock is
ticking” for ministers to determine the UK’s future relationship with
Euratom, which oversees nuclear safety in Europe.
The Government has faced cross-party criticism over its decision to withdraw from Euratom as part of
Brexit. This week a Lords committee will grill industry experts on how
Brexit will affect the UK energy supply, with questions over continued
access to the EU’s internal energy market and Britain’s ability to
influence future policy.
Much of the maintenance work on Britain’s existing
fleet of nuclear reactors takes place when parts are shipped to Europe. Mr
Greatrex also said the NIA had made specific representations to ministers
about the potential impact on Hinkley Point, which is now being built by
state-controlled French energy firm EDF. “I think the first nuclear
concrete is due to be late 2019, so you can see that the timings could make
this potentially difficult,” he said. “So EDF have to be able to plan
around the implications of leaving Euratom, if that’s what they’re going to
be doing, and that’s why having clarity about what those arrangements are
and what transition period there might be and what succession arrangements
they are intending to put in place becomes quite important in their
planning processes pretty soon.
“You can’t have a situation where they don’t know until January 2019, without there being a quite significant
potential impact on that project and on other new build projects as well.”
Ministers have previously said they could pay EDF billions of pounds in
compensation over Hinkley Point, including over a so-called “political shut
down”.
Kim’s Nukes Aren’t a Bargaining Chip. They’re an Insurance Policy Climb into the North Korean dictator’s mind, and you can see that his aim isn’t to destroy Los Angeles but to save his regime. Bloomberg Michael Schuman, 7 Sept 17,
North Korea looks pretty scary at the moment, firing off missile after missile, threatening to target Guam, and, on Sept. 3, testing what the regime claims was its first hydrogen bomb. And the country’s dictator, Kim Jong Un—so ruthless he may have had members of his own family murdered—might be just crazy enough to push the button to initiate a catastrophic war.
Or maybe not. Look deeper, and you’ll find a North Korea that isn’t as much of an immediate danger to the U.S. as the headlines and rhetoric suggest. That’s because Pyongyang isn’t very likely to use its nukes and missiles against the U.S.—or anyone else.
Don’t get me wrong: North Korea still presents a huge security risk to East Asia and the world. Kim’s neighbors include three of the world’s 11 largest economies and two of America’s closest allies, Japan and South Korea. No U.S. president would want to see Pyongyang lob a missile into Tokyo or Seoul, let alone Hawaii.
But climb into the mind of Kim—as terrifying as that may sound—and we can conclude that his aim isn’t to destroy Los Angeles but to save his own skin. This is a regime that was never expected to still be around in 2017. When the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union unraveled more than a quarter century ago, North Korea was supposed to vanish with them. The regime has since outlasted economic and political isolation, stiff international sanctions, and famines so severe that they may have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. But through it all, the Pyongyang government has persisted. That speaks to the cunning of the Kim family, which has lorded over the country since its founding by the current Kim’s granddaddy in 1948. They’re survivors.
And that’s what Kim is striving to do today: survive. He’s not out to conquer the world or even expand his influence in his own neighborhood. Kim and the Pyongyang elite must recognize that the odds are against them and their backs are to the wall. …….
Here’s where the nukes come into play. Pyongyang believes they’re the best, and possibly only, deterrent against evaporation, absorption, or annihilation. That’s why the regime has never been truly willing to trade its nuclear program for other benefits—something Washington has tried to do since the 1990s. The nukes aren’t a bargaining chip. They’re an insurance policy.
Yet the very same weakness that drives Kim’s mania for nuclear weapons is why he can never use them, at least not as an aggressor. As President Trump has already warned, any such attack would be met by “fire and fury.” That comment was irresponsible, but the point is true nevertheless. Kim likely isn’t delusional enough to think his country could survive an all-out war with the U.S. and its allies. Proactively launching a nuclear-topped ballistic missile against the U.S. would mean his own destruction. That’s why it won’t happen. The U.S. Defense Department in its 2015 report said that even though the country remains a continuing threat, “North Korea is unlikely to attack on a scale that would risk regime survival.”
If we see Pyongyang’s motivations in this light, the policy course the Trump administration is taking is all wrong. Threats of fire and fury will only make Kim more paranoid and more certain that he needs nukes to defend himself or deter an aggressive Washington—……
At this stage, with Kim already in possession of nukes and maybe the ability to deliver them, the only viable option for Washington is to accept this reality and deal with Pyongyang as it does with any of the world’s other nuclear powers. This may sound terribly distasteful, and the course presents its own risks—mainly, that North Korea’s neighbors, especially Japan and South Korea, will feel the need for nuclear weapons of their own, leading to a regionwide, potentially destabilizing arms race. Washington would also have to work hard to ensure Pyongyang doesn’t spread its know-how to other rogue states or terrorist organizations that might be less wary of using it—such as Islamic State.
Consortium News Israel and the neocons still seek an excuse to bomb Iran, now citing false claims about its supposed noncompliance with the nuclear deal. The new water carrier is U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar describes.By Paul R. Pillar
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the agreement that limits Iran’s nuclear program, is for Donald Trump one more of the Obama administration’s achievements to be trashed. It goes alongside the Affordable Care Act, the Paris climate change agreement, and other measures (most recently the “dreamers” program involving children of illegal immigrants) as targets for trashing because fulfilling campaign rhetoric is given higher priority in the current administration than whether a program is achieving its purpose, whether there are any realistic alternatives available, or what the effects of the trashing will be on the well-being of Americans and the interests and credibility of the United States.
Nikki Haley, whose foreign policy experience has consisted of these past few months as the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, has assumed the role of chief public trasher of the JCPOA for the administration. Evidently no demands on the time of the U.S. ambassador in New York, from the issue of North Korea (which has real, not imagined, nuclear weapons) to the war in Syria were too important to keep her from giving a speech at the American Enterprise Institute that represented the administration’s most concerted and contrived public effort so far to lay groundwork for withdrawing from the JCPOA.
Haley has warmed to this cause both because of her own previous parochial interests, including those associated with financial contributions she has received, and because it is a convenient vehicle for playing to Trump’s urges. Haley evidently feels no obligation to perform as one of the “adults” in the administration to whom the country looks to contain those urges.
The speech at AEI was Trumpian in some of the tactics it employed. The performance should cement the ambitious Haley’s place on Trump’s short list of candidates to become Secretary of State once Rex Tillerson’s unhappy and probably short tenure in the job ends. The speech also used more twisted versions of familiar rhetorical twists that have been heard before from diehard opponents of the JCPOA…….https://consortiumnews.com/2017/09/06/nikki-haley-falsely-accuses-iran/
Failure to honour terms of the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty has helped create ground for Kim Jong-un’s recklessness, Guardian, Simon Tisdall, 5 Sept 17, North Korea’s defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons capabilities, dramatised by last weekend’s powerful underground test and a recent long-range ballistic missile launch over Japan, has been almost universally condemned as posing a grave, unilateral threat to international peace and security.
The growing North Korean menace also reflects the chronic failure of multilateral counter-proliferation efforts and, in particular, the longstanding refusal of acknowledged nuclear-armed states such as the US and Britain to honour a legal commitment to reduce and eventually eliminate their arsenals.
In other words, the past and present leaders of the US, Russia, China, France and the UK, whose governments signed but have not fulfilled the terms of the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), have to some degree brought the North Korea crisis on themselves. Kim Jong-un’s recklessness and bad faith is a product of their own.
The NPT, signed by 191 countries, is probably the most successful arms control treaty ever. When conceived in 1968, at the height of the cold war, the mass proliferation of nuclear weapons was considered a real possibility. Since its inception and prior to North Korea, only India, Pakistan and Israel are known to have joined the nuclear “club” in almost half a century.
To work fully, the NPT relies on keeping a crucial bargain: non-nuclear-armed states agree never to acquire the weapons, while nuclear-armed states agree to share the benefits of peaceful nuclear technology and pursue nuclear disarmament with the ultimate aim of eliminating them. This, in effect, was the guarantee offered to vulnerable, insecure outlier states such as North Korea. The guarantee was a dud, however, and the bargain has never been truly honoured.
Rather than reducing their nuclear arsenals, the US, Russia and China have modernised and expanded them. Britain has eliminated some of its capability, but it is nevertheless renewing and updating Trident. France clings fiercely to its “force de frappe”. Altogether, the main nuclear-weapon states have an estimated 22,000 nuclear bombs. A report by the non-governmental British-American Security Information Council in May said nuclear security was getting worse.
“The need for nuclear disarmament through multilateral diplomacy is greater now than it has been at any stage since the end of the cold war. Trust and confidence in the existing nuclear non-proliferation regime is fraying, tensions are high, goals are misaligned and dialogue is irregular,” the report said.
“Internationally, relationships between the nuclear-weapon states have deteriorated, in particular between the US and Russia, and to some extent, China … All nuclear-armed states are modernising their nuclear forces, at a worldwide cost of $1tn per decade … Attention tends to be focused on specific cases of proliferation concern, such as North Korea and Iran, at the expense of the bigger picture.”
Multilateral forums for advancing nuclear disarmament are in crisis. The next NPT review conference is not due until 2020. Like its 2015 predecessor, it is not expected to achieve much. The UN-backed conference on disarmament, which helped produce conventions banning biological and chemical weapons and initiated the 1996 comprehensive test ban treaty, is politically polarised and struggling to agree key measures such as a fissile material cut-off treaty.
There has been one big breakthrough this year, the under-reported adoption by 122 countries at the UN in July of a new treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, which envisages an outright ban on the use of all nukes. It has, however, been potentially fatally undermined by a boycott by the nuclear powers. The US, Britain and France declared, cynically as critics saw it, that they preferred to stick with the never-ending NPT route to disarmament. “This initiative clearly disregards the realities of the international security environment,” they said in a joint statement.
The ineffectiveness of current arms control and counter-proliferation efforts has helped to create an environment in which North Korea, allegedly using smuggled, Russian-designed ballistic missile engines, is rapidly advancing its nuclear ambitions with apparent impunity, at great risk to international stability.
Multilateral arms control failures also mean the Korean “solution” Trump talks about with increasing frequency – the use of preventive military action, notwithstanding its illegality under international law – could, if applied, spell the end of deterrence and the beginning of an unchecked global nuclear arms race.
Mattis reportedly threatened Sweden with retaliation over signing a nuclear-weapons ban, Business Insider CHRISTOPHER WOODY, SEP 6, 2017 US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis reportedly warned Sweden of severe consequences if the country followed through on signing a UN treaty banning nuclear weapons.
The Scandinavian country is one of 122 states backing the treaty, and Stockholm also recently signed a statement of intent to increase military cooperation with the US.
But a letter from Mattis reportedly warned Sweden’s defence minister, Peter Hultqvist, that signing on to the treaty could affect US-Sweden military cooperation as well as US military support in the event of war.
Mattis’ letter also suggested signing the treaty could have an impact on the country’s ties to NATO, of which it is a Gold Card program member, meaning it has some privileges within the defence alliance even though it is not a full member.
Sweden’s Gold Card program status faces renewal in October, and Mattis warned his Swedish counterpart that signing the treaty would foreclose the option of joining NATO, according to Defence News…….
The US, which adheres to a policy of nuclear deterrence, has criticised the nuclear-weapons ban, but Mattis’ letter is seen as an unusual step in bilateral relations, particularly between the US and Sweden.
A Pentagon spokesman told Defence News that while the US “values its defence relationship with Sweden,” it has discouraged countries from signing on to the ban, which has measures that “could potentially affect our ability to cooperate with parties to the treaty on issues of mutual interest.”…..
North Korea nuclear crisis: Putin warns of planetary catastrophe As Kim Jong-un reportedly prepares further missile launch, Russian president says further sanctions would be ‘useless’, Guardian, Justin McCurry in Tokyo and Tom Phillips in Beijing, 6 Sept 17, The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has warned that the escalating North Korean crisis could cause a “planetary catastrophe” and huge loss of life, and described US proposals for further sanctions on Pyongyang as “useless”.
“Ramping up military hysteria in such conditions is senseless; it’s a dead end,” he told reporters in China. “It could lead to a global, planetary catastrophe and a huge loss of human life. There is no other way to solve the North Korean nuclear issue, save that of peaceful dialogue.”
On Sunday, North Korea carried out its sixth and by far its most powerful nuclear test to date. The underground blast triggered a magnitude-6.3 earthquake and was more powerful than the bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the second world war.
Putin was attending the Brics summit, bringing together the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Speaking on Tuesday, the final day of the summit in Xiamen, China, he said Russia condemned North Korea’s provocations but said further sanctions would be useless and ineffective, describing the measures as a “road to nowhere”.
Foreign interventions in Iraq and Libya had convinced the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, that he needed nuclear weapons to survive, Putin said.
“We all remember what happened with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. His children were killed, I think his grandson was shot, the whole country was destroyed and Saddam Hussein was hanged … We all know how this happened and people in North Korea remember well what happened in Iraq.
Han Tae Song, ambassador of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to the UN in Geneva, on Tuesday addressed the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament two days after his country detonated its sixth nuclear test explosion.
‘I am proud of saying that just two days ago on the 3rd of September, DPRK successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test for intercontinental ballistic rocket under its plan for building a strategic nuclear force,’ Han told the Geneva forum.
‘The recent self-defence measures by my country, DPRK, are a ‘gift package’ addressed to none other than the US,’ Han said. ‘The US will receive more ‘gift packages’ from my country as long as its relies on reckless provocations and futile attempts to put pressure on the DPRK,’ he added without elaborating.
Military measures being taken by North Korea were ‘an exercise of restraint and justified self-defence right’ to counter ‘the ever-growing and decade-long US nuclear threat and hostile policy aimed at isolating my country’.
US disarmament ambassador Robert Wood said North Korea had defied the international community once again with its test.
‘It can no longer be business as usual with this regime.’
The White House said on Monday President Donald Trump had agreed ‘in principle’ to scrap a warhead weight limit on South Korea’s missiles in the wake of the North’s latest test.
The United States accused North Korea’s trading partners of aiding its nuclear ambitions and said Pyongyang was ‘begging for war’. Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said on Tuesday that a US aim for the United Nations Security Council to vote on Monday on new sanctions on North Korea over its latest nuclear test is ‘a little premature’.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japanese Prime Minister spoke by telephone on Tuesday and agreed that sanctions against Pyongyang should be stepped up.
‘She agreed with Prime Minister Abe that North Korea’s latest nuclear test threatened the security of the entire world and that this massive violation of the UN Security Council’s resolution must result in a resolute reaction from the international community as well as tougher sanctions,’ spokesman Steffen Seibert said.
North Korea’s Nuclear Arsenal Threatens China’s Path to Power, NYT, By JANE PERLEZ, SEPT. 5, 2017 “………China has made little secret of its long-term goal to replace the United States as the major power in Asia and assume what it considers its rightful position at the center of the fastest-growing, most dynamic region in the world.
Allies seek to deploy aircraft carrier, strategic bomber in response to N.K. nuke test, Yonhap News, 2017-09- SEOUL, Sept. 4 — South Korea and the United States will seek to deploy a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, strategic bombers and other powerful assets to the Korean Peninsula as a response to North Korea’s latest nuclear test, Seoul’s defense ministry said Monday.
In its report to the National Assembly’s defense committee, the ministry also said that its military will stage a unilateral live-fire drill, which involves Taurus air-to-surface guided missiles mounted on its F-15K fighter jets, this month. The missile with a range of 500 kilometers is capable of launching precision strikes on the North’s key nuclear and missile facilities.
“We will push for the option of deploying strategic assets such as the U.S. carrier strike group and strategic bombers after consultation with the U.S.,” the ministry said.
The show-of-force measures were unveiled a day after Pyongyang conducted what it claims to be a test of a hydrogen bomb mountable onto an intercontinental ballistic missile, sharply raising military tensions.
At the parliamentary session, Defense Minister Song Young-moo said that during his recent talks with U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, he demanded that the U.S. deploy its strategic assets to Korea on a “regular” basis. He made the demand, citing local politicians’ calls for the redeployment of U.S. tactical nukes.
