By Michael Combier-Talk Radio News Service
In a Bi-Partisan congressional delegation trip to China, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) talked with the Chinese government on the issue of North Korea and bring it back to the six-party talks. Pelosi stated that it is in no country’s interest to have the Korean peninsula being nuclearized. (0:43)
Former Secretary of Defense William Perry explains the dangerous of nuclear proliferation. Perry says that there is a risk that North Korea will leak fissile materials. In addition, Perry mentions the strategy to follow in order to avoid these leaks. (0:43)
By Celia Canon- Talk Radio News Service
Americans should be more concerned by the proliferation of nuclear weapons from North Korea to other states or non-state actors, rather than focus on a direct N.Korean nuclear attack on the Western World.
Such was the conclusion of former Secretary of Defense William Perry when addressing the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) on U.S nuclear weapons policy today.
“When we are concerned about proliferation, for example from N.Korea to Iran, we are concerned with the possibility that nuclear terrorists might be a bomb… The greater danger is that the bomb or the fissile material leak from one of these countries.” said Perry.
On Monday, N.Korea announced that it had successfully detonated and underground nuclear bomb, and on Tuesday, it launched two short-range ballistic missiles. As a result, the Obama administration may be facing an unexpected turn in the nuclear debate.
The topic is gaining momentum as talks between the U.S and Russia on the renewal of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) are feared to be unsuccessful.
That N.Korea has nuclear capabilities and is testing missiles has fanned the flames on the necessity to reconsider the reduction in the Department of Defense FY2010 budget.
Perry was joined by Brent Scowcroft, former assistant to the President for National Security Affairs who explained that “a great danger in nuclear terrorism lies with the civilian nuclear power and the loose fissile material that comes with that.”
Scowcroft appealed to the security dilemma to provide a link between N.Korea or Iran acquiring a nuclear power and nuclear terrorism.
“If we don’t put a cap on proliferation now, we could easily face 30 or 40 countries with that capability, That is not a better world,” said Scowcroft, adding that “If [Iran and N.Korea] are free to enrich uranium to weapons grade, then you have others who want to do it just for protection or whatever and then you have a tremendous danger of terrorists getting hold of fissile material and then its relatively easy.”
The U.S government had already started to deal with this problem under the Bush junior administration, as Perry explains: “For one thing I support the initiative of the previous administration called the Proliferation Security initiative (PSI) and the recent moves to strengthen this initiative.”
Former President George.W. Bush said that PSI’s aim is “to keep the world’s most destructive weapons away from our shores and out of the hands of our common enemies.”
The initiative is limited to controlling alien ships in one’s waters to search for weapons. Airways are however not part of the PSI.
By Celia Canon- Talk Radio News Service.
Analysts for the Brookings Institution gathered to assess the North Korean threat on America and its allies in reaction to N.Korea’s recent underground nuclear bomb detonation and the launch of two short-range missiles.
The think tank was pressed into discussing the matter following North-Korea’s acceleration in its military activity.
Pyongyang had already caught the international community’s attention in October 2007 by unsuccessfully testing a nuclear weapon.
However the threat posed by the North Asian state has reached new heights after N.Korea announced that it had conducted underground nuclear tests on Monday, followed by two short-range missiles (a ground-to-ship missile and a ground-to-air missile) launched from an east-coast base on Tuesday.
Michael O’Hanlon, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution warned that although “Their options are limited,” threats must be taken seriously, they must be mitigated.
Richard Bush, a Senior Fellow and Director for the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, confirmed that “They have a problem though, and that is that deterrence is not yet credible; their missiles don’t fly far enough and accurately enough, the weapons design is not yet perfect and so they need to test, that’s the only way they can demonstrate to others that they have the capability to inflict harm on the United States and on Japan.”
If the production of the missiles is one leap closer to achieving significant nuclear capabilities, O’Hanlon explained that “The real issue is the size of the weapon and how deliverable it would be by the North Koreans, if they were to choose to deliver it some day.”
Additionally, “[The missile] has to survive the stresses of missile flight, which are no trivial,” said O’Hanlon.
However, according to the analysts, this does not mean that a threat is nonexistent but rather that the U.S should not be concerned by missiles coming from North Korea directly.
O’Hanlon said “I would say the most worrisome question is the sale of nuclear material because if they attack South Korea, their regime will end.”
O’Hanlon concluded that “The only thing they can plausibly get way with is the sale.”
Richard Bush, a Senior Fellow and Director for the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, discusses the North Korean point of view on the U.S being a threat and how Pyong Yang tries to deal with this threat. (0:28)
By Courtney Ann Jackson- Talk Radio News Service
While President Obama is scheduled to travel next week to Egypt, Germany and France, his administration has not found its foreign policy footing, according to analysts at the Heritage Foundation.
“This trip next week is going to be watched very closely all over Europe, all across the world,” said Nile Gardner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, “Every statement he makes will be scrutinized very carefully to see whether he is seeking to further atone for America’s past, which I think would be disastrous for the President to do so. The fact is that President Obama is increasingly being viewed as a soft touch on the world stage.”
On the President’s last visit to Europe he discussed American arrogance and Gardner believes it was a “huge strategic error in judgment” for him to “condemn his own country on foreign soil.”
On this tour, Obama is expected to give a speech on foreign policy while in Egypt but James Phillips, senior research fellow of Middle Eastern Affairs at the Heritage Foundation, believes the focus should be on a comparison between the people’s future defined by the Islamists and a future defined by freedom.
The consensus of the analysts was that the worst thing Obama could do on his visit is to succumb to the idea of incessantly apologizing for America’s past and issues like what the Bush administration dubbed the “War on Terror” and instead step up to the challenges boldly.
Gardner said he believes the President “needs to toughen his act on the international stage, project strong international leadership, and stand up to both the threat of a nuclear armed Iran as well as a nuclear armed North Korea.” He added that this is the time for strong U.S. leadership.
By Celia Canon- Talk Radio News Service
Celia Canon talks to Bruce Klingner, an analyst for the Heritage Foundation, about North Korea’s recent underground nuclear tests and what can be done to halt Pyong Yang’s recent acceleration in its technological developments and trials. Klingner insists that China will be pivotal is sanctioning and stopping North Korea’s nuclear program.
However, Klingner also warns that this will not be an easy task, but that the government needs to stop praising China for its efforts when it could really do much more to involve itself in the international community’s sanctions. (1:01)
By Celia Canon- Talk Radio News Service
The U.S is not doing enough to counter the terrorist threat that Iran and North Korea raise, according to Republican Congressman Trent Franks (Ariz.).
“The jihadist mindset would like to see a nuclear blast in the U.S.,” Franks said today at the Capitol Hill Club. “They have irrational goals.”
The Department of Defense recently released its Fiscal Year 2010 budget, which amounts to “a proposed defense budget of $663.8 billion,” according to the DoD. Franks fears that the numbers reflect a lack of attention not being paid to countries considered threatening to U.S. national security.
In April, North-Korea launched a ballistic missile-bearing satellite. It is widely believed that the launch was an attempt by the country to test its weapons capabilities.
Franks said,“If North-Korea is willing to sell missile technology, then they might be selling war heads.”
Although Iran has been less aggressive in its rhetoric in the past months, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has had strong words in the past, in particular towards Israel. He is thought to have said that “Israel must be wiped off the map.”
Iran is another country that needs to be watched, Franks said. “The last thing we want is Iran coming up with a nuclear technology that they can surrogate for terrorist groups,” he said. “It is very likely that they (Iranians) will put it in the hands of nuclear terrorists.”
Scott Snyder of the Asia Foundation describes a scenario of how America may be drawn into war against North Korea because of the alliance system. The basis of the system involves America’s duty to protect Japan if they are attacked by an external force. (0:34)
Even through failure progress can be achieved, as the North Koreans succeeded even though their missile, launched in April 2009, failed to break through Earth’s atmosphere. The missile transitioned to the second-stage of a three-stage rocket, which was a great improvement over the 2006 launch, which failed to get pass the first-stage. The rocket traveled some 3,000 km before it failed and landed harmlessly in the ocean.
“It was not as successful as it could have been,” said Dr. Bruce Bechtol, a professor of International Relations at US Marine Corps Command and Staff College, who continued to say that it was “certainly not as successful as the North Koreans wanted it to be, but it was far more successful than the 2006 launch.”
Many theories have been given as to why North Korea decided to launch their Taepodong-2 missile at this time. Some of the most popular explanations include,
include, the testing the Obama administration and its willingness to take a hardline stance against such brash actions or an attempt to legitimize the rule of the sickly Kim Jong-Il. Yet, according to Bechtol, all of these reasons are ancillary to the fact that the North Koreans launched the missile “because it was ready.”
However, North Korea poses a larger threat to an area far removed from Northeast Asia–the Middle East. North Korea has sold a reported $1.5 billion worth of ballistic missiles, according to the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis 2009 report, making them the largest seller of these weapons in the world.
Bechtol identified a troubling trend–the alliance between the Iranians and North Koreans. “There were Iranian engineers, technicians and dignitaries present at this launch, as there were at the launches in 2006, 1998 and 1993,” said Bechtol. Thus, a link between the Iranians and North Koreans is not merely plausible, but probable.
Concluding his statement, Bechtol gave his personal prediction for the future of North Korean missile tests. Bechtol believes that “the North Koreans will conduct another long-range missile test in the future no matter what the geopolitical context is in Northeast Asia.”
