Reports & Papers

Only a small handful of people in the world have sat at the negotiating table with the North Koreans and extensively interacted with them. Yet, this knowledge is fragmented and has not been collected or analyzed in a systematic manner. This report captures the findings from in-depth, one-on-one interviews with former senior negotiators from the United States and South Korea, who gained unique knowledge about North Korean negotiating behavior by dealing directly with their high-level North Korean counterparts. 

These negotiators collectively represent a body of negotiation experience and expertise starting from the early 1990s to late 2019, when North Korea ceased all negotiations with the United States. During that time, the conditions for productive negotiation changed dramatically – indeed, the conditions for the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework negotiations were much more favorable than during the Six-Party Talks of the mid-2000s or the Season of Summits during 2018-2019. For the “Negotiating with North Korea: Key Lessons Learned from Negotiators’ Genesis Period” project, a spotlight was placed on former senior negotiators’ early-stage experience preparing for and engaging in negotiations with the North Koreans. In doing so, tacit knowledge was captured to serve as a resource for future negotiators to inform and accelerate their own genesis period.

This report is based on insights from a two-day workshop hosted by the Belfer Center’s Arctic Initiative in collaboration with the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, the Center for Ocean Governance at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, and the Wilson Center's Polar Institute. Participants developed practical recommendations for facilitating working-level cooperation through the Arctic Council and other institutions.

This report summarizes a workshop co-hosted by the Arctic Initiative and the Science and Technology Directorate of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), focused on the challenges posed by the impacts of rapid climate change in Alaska.

The Korean Missile Crisis of 2017 presented General Brooks with a unique opportunity to rethink deterrence and develop a dynamic playbook to change Kim Jong Un’s calculus. The result he called “micro deterrence signaling.”

Under the guidance of its self-defence nuclear strategy, China will continue to modernise its nuclear force in order to maintain a reliable second-strike retaliatory capability. China’s nuclear weapon modernisation has been responsive to the advances of military capabilities of other countries, particularly the US. As Hu Side emphasised, “The sole purpose for China to maintain a limited nuclear counterattack force is to deter a potential nuclear strike. However, the development of US missile defense and the long-rang strike capability with high accuracy to target mobile missiles is in practice to decrease the effectiveness of Chinese nuclear deterrence. Thus, it surely leads to Chinese attention."

This paper will review the changing world of climate change education and opportunities for adopting innovative pedagogical approaches such as immersive technologies, participatory methods, and art-based learning.

The Biden administration has emphasized the importance of alliances and core values of democracy in its foreign policy approach. Given this emphasis, public diplomacy—activities intended to understand, inform, and influence foreign audiences—should be considered an essential tool in achieving our long-term policy objectives in North Korea. Public diplomacy has the potential to spur domestic change in North Korea—change that could result in improved human rights conditions, leading to behavioral change in the Kim regime, and eventually denuclearization.

This paper aims to articulate the absence of Indigenous people in Arctic climate change news coverage and to enumerate approaches for generating resonant, representative, and ethical stories in the white hot center of climate change.

Since 2010, China has significantly expanded its indigenous enrichment capacity to meet the expected rapid increase of enrichment requirements. Meanwhile, China has expanded its plutonium reprocessing and recycling capabilities for “saving uranium.” The purpose of this report is to provide a better understanding of the development of China’s uranium enrichment and plutonium recycling programs.

The Arctic of today does not resemble the Arctic of fifty years ago, and the Arctic of 2070 will be different still, based on everything we know now. Warmer temperatures on land and in the ocean, retreating sea ice and glaciers, thawing permafrost, rapidly changing ecosystems, range expansion of novel species and stress in native species, changing ocean chemistry, and altered seasons all contribute to significant alteration of a region in an extremely compressed timescale. At the same time, globalization and the increasing international interest in the region add new pressures for access, development and geopolitical positioning in the Arctic. Concerns about the implications and impacts of that intensified engagement generate even more anxiety about the transformation to a brand-new Arctic in the 21st Century.