Nuclear Issues

In advance of the Trump-Kim Summit in Hanoi February 27-28, Belfer Center experts offer a reality check on the negotiation over nuclear issues.

The historic summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore this month (June 12) has drawn both skepticism and optimism from experts. A panel of senior American and South Korean diplomats with experience negotiating with North Korea weighed in at an event hosted by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs’ Korea Working Group on Tuesday (June 19).

Belfer Center experts offer insight and analysis of the Trump-Kim summit through statements and interviews.

Belfer Center expert looks at potential progress, fallout from the North, South Korea meeting

The last time that America almost risked a pre-emptive strike on North Korea the gamble offered a spectacular pay-off. Ashton Carter, a leading architect of that plan, recalls that his scheme for bombing the Yongbyon nuclear facility in 1994 assumed that in one or two days the entirety of the regime’s nuclear programme could be levelled and entombed in rubble. Mr Carter, who went on to become defence secretary in the Obama administration, now thinks that an American first strike would only put “a significant dent” in North Korea’s arsenal of nuclear devices and bombmaking sites. “The difference today is that the North Koreans are very good at hiding, burying and moving around their nuclear infrastructure,” says Mr Carter, now at Harvard University.

North Korea is warning of a pre-emptive strike after Sec. of State Rex Tillerson said that the U.S. could pursue military action over North Korea’s growing nuclear program.

Two analysts from the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, Matthew Bunn, co-principal investigator of the Project on Managing the Atom, and Gary Samore, the center’s executive director for research, spoke with the Harvard Gazette about North Korea’s nuclear program and what the latest test means for relations between the government of leader Kim Jong-un and other nations, and how the blast may affect global efforts to limit nuclear weapons.

North Korea’s report that it tested a hydrogen bomb this week set off alarm bells around the world. Though analysts are casting doubt on the nature of the detonation, Pyongyang’s fourth nuclear test is a reminder of the regime's unpredictability. How serious is this action and how should foreign powers respond? Belfer Center experts Graham Allison, Jieun Baek, Matthew Bunn, Nicholas Burns, Olli Heinonen, John Park, Gary Samore, and William Tobey weigh in on the significance and implications of North Korea’s latest nuclear test.

The Project on Managing the Atom offers fellowships for pre-doctoral, post-doctoral, and mid-career researchers for one year, with a possibility for renewal, in the stimulating environment of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. The online application for 2016-2017 fellowships opened December 15, 2015, and the application deadline is January 15, 2016. Recommendation letters are due by February 1, 2016.