Asia & the Pacific

16 Items

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi

Alexandr Demyanchuk, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File

Broadcast Appearance - VOA

FLASHPOINT IRAN: Britain Plans Broader Sanctions But Lack of IRGC Designation Concerns Activists

| July 11, 2023

Michael Lipin interviews Project on Managing the Atom Associate Nicole Grajewski on why Iran may not benefit much from its new membership of Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad  during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, October 20, 2015.

Kremlin.ru

Analysis & Opinions - Moscow Times

Russia Must Abandon Assad to Fight Terrorism

| November 13, 2015

"The key to a solution to both — the quagmire that has unfolded in Syria and the threat posed by Islamic terrorism — is to deprive the terrorist groups of their main propaganda tools and to form a new Syrian government that excludes Assad (and his foreign Shiite allies) but includes representatives from all of the non-fundamentalist groups involved in the civil war."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry chats with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Deshchytsia before the two joined with Russian and EU officials for 4-way talks about Ukraine in Geneva, Switzerland, on April 17, 2014.

State Dept. Photo

Analysis & Opinions - The National Interest

Blowback: Why Getting Tough on Russia over Ukraine Might Backfire

| May 16, 2014

"Washington needs to make a decision about its foreign-policy priorities, if tensions in eastern Ukraine are not reduced. Giving the events in Ukraine priority over all other international developments is a hazardous strategy. Negotiations have gotten us nowhere, and way more assertive steps against Russia are not likely to make Putin give in, since he seems to be determined not to lose his influence over eastern Ukraine and eager to demonstrate Russia's power."

Analysis & Opinions - Asia Times

North Korea Stirs Cuban Crisis Memory

| March 25, 2013

"President Barack Obama and Kim Jong-eun could end up confronting each other 'eyeball to eyeball', each with nuclear weapons on hair trigger, as president John F Kennedy and Nikita Khruschev did over five decades ago during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. However, the younger and less-experienced Kim of the smaller and isolated Kingdom might not behave as rationally as Khruschev."

Various images shown on screens at the General Satellite Control and Command Center show the launch of North Korea's Unha-3 rocket, Dec. 12, 2012, in Pyongyang, North Korea.

AP Photo

Policy Brief - National Bureau of Asian Research

The Leap in North Korea's Ballistic Missile Program: The Iran Factor

| December 2012

John S. Park, Stanton Nuclear Security Junior Faculty Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Project on Managing the Atom Associate, argues that cooperation between North Korea and Iran has been a critical—yet underexamined—enabler of North Korea's recent success. He concludes that the time has come for the United States to view the two previously independent missile programs as two sides of the same coin and recommends strategies for disrupting the procurement channels between Iran and North Korea.

A view of one of the displaced camp in Mogadishu, Somalia, Sep. 14, 2011. A massive aid operation is currently underway to help millions of Somalis affected by the fighting and a famine caused by severe drought.

AP Photo

Analysis & Opinions - The Daily Nation

Africa Must Wake Up to the Reality That Hunger is Now a National Security Issue

| August 14, 2012

"The tools available to India in the 1960s are not sufficient to address the challenges that African agriculture now faces. These include a rapidly-growing population, productivity loss due to ecological disruption, environmental decay, droughts, climate change, and conflict. Biotechnology offers additional tools that can help Africa address some of these challenges. It is another moment that calls for the kind of political courage that led to the adoption of the Green Revolution."

In this 1987 file photo, mujahedeen guerrillas sit atop a captured Soviet T-55 tank. The U.S. military presence in Afghanistan surpassed the Soviet occupation of the country on Nov. 25, 2010.

AP Photo

Analysis & Opinions - Iranian Diplomacy

The U.S. War on Terror after Bin Laden

| May 11, 2011

The United States' wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are unlikely to come to an end, even after the death of Osama Bin Laden. These wars which were initiated and continued based on the sacred and ideological aim of the complete destruction of world terrorism (Al Qaeda) will simultaneously provide the grounds for local and opposing forces to justify their resistance in the form of a sacred ideological war against foreign occupiers. In the case of a bilateral ideological war, with no possible winner, therefore the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have mostly local and regional roots, will not come to end in the near future.

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Quarterly Journal: International Security

Belfer Center Newsletter Spring 2011

| Spring 2011

The Spring 2011 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This issue highlights the Belfer Center’s continuing efforts to build bridges between the United States and Russia to prevent nuclear catastrophe – an effort that began in the 1950s. This issue also features three new books by Center faculty that sharpen global debate on critical issues: God’s Century, by Monica Duffy Toft, The New Harvest by Calestous Juma, and The Future of Power, by Joseph S. Nye.

In a Sep. 28, 2010 photo released by Korean Central News Agency via Korea News Service, delegates clap in unison during the ruling Workers' Party representatives meeting in Pyongyang, North Korea.

AP Photo

Policy Brief - United States Institute of Peace

North Korea's Leadership Succession: The China Factor

| September 28, 2010

On September 28, North Korean state media announced that Kim Jong-il's third son, Kim Jong-eun, was promoted to the rank of four-star general just prior to the opening of the Workers' Party of Korea conference. Kim Jong-eun was later named vice chairman of the Party's Central Military Commission at the conference. These important developments follow the late August meeting between Chinese President Hu Jintao and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Changchun, near the Sino-DPRK border, which appears to have cleared the way for this Party conference. After the meeting, both countries' state media reported the leaders' support for the rising generation of the Party — a clear reference to Kim Jong-eun.