Asia & the Pacific

Ayman Khalil asked whether the effort to create a WMD-free zone in the Middle East is dead. Martin's answer is this: The effort will continue, but the opportunity presented by the 2010 Review Conference for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) may be slipping out of reach.

John Park, research fellow with the Belfer Center's Project on Managing the Atom/International Security Program, is interviewed by CNN, NPR, and other media about the regional and global impact of the death of North Korea's Kim Jong-il.

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.

"The second perspective focuses on the globalization and technological importance of the West, arguing that in the process of globalization and development, Iran needs expanding ties with the centers of science and wealth-creation in the West. From this perspective, forming regional coalitions or Iran's involvement in political and security issues of the Middle East, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, in a contradictory way will only go to further complicate Iran's relations with the West and will impede the country's development."

"The most important non-state actor in Pakistan is the army. Normally, a country's army constitutes its ultimate instrument of legitimate force. But the Pakistani army is independent of the civilian government. It considers its interests as separate from those of this government. It has acted more like a mercenary force, reluctant to assume responsibility for defending the country against internal threats. It maintains links with some of the very elements that threaten the country's security."

"Is Pakistan collapsing? How far are the Taliban from Islamabad? Can al-Qaeda grab the country's nuclear weapons? These are the types of questions raised every day by the American media, academia and policy circles. And these are critical issues, given the nature of the evolving crisis in Pakistan. The approximately two dozen suicide bombings in 2009 so far, 66 in 2008, and 61 in 2007, all of which have targeted armed forces personnel, police, politicians, and ordinary people not only in the country's turbulent northwest but also in its major urban centers, indicate the seriousness of the threat. A major ammunition factory area located close to some very sensitive nuclear installations in Wah (Punjab) was targeted by two suicide bombers in August 2008, an act that sent shudders across the country's security establishment...."

"Revolutions either expand to export their ideologies or preserve themselves from the outside world. The 1979 Islamic revolution of Iran is no exception. A careful reading of Iran's actions in the region shows how and why Iran has shifted its policies to meet the latter aim. Since the revolution, Iran's leaders have faced the challenge of balancing their ideological (idealism) and geopolitical (pragmatism) approaches to foreign policy. Gradually, the Iranian leadership has come to focus on the geopolitical factor in the conduct of foreign policy; today, ideology one factor among many other sources of Iran's power, and serves the aim of preserving Iran's national security and interests...."

"EVEN as Russia and Georgia continue their on-again, off-again struggle over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a frenzied tea-leaf reading about the war's global political ramifications has broken out across airwaves and think-tank forums. But as the situation on the ground recedes inevitably to some new form of the pernicious "frozen conflict" that has plagued the region since Georgia's civil wars of the early 1990s, few are paying attention to a less portentous but equally critical international threat: an increase in the longstanding, rampant criminality in the conflict zones that is likely to further destabilize the entire Caucasus region and at worst provide terrorist groups with the nuclear material they have long craved."

"Gilani is leader of a coalition government with a strong mandate but facing difficult problems. It is also committed to policies that could cause turbulence, particularly reinstating judges deposed by President Pervez Musharraf. Gilani's position is further complicated by political circumstances, with the leaders of the dominant parties in the ruling coalition directing policy from outside parliament."

SOME IN the West have recently begun referring to the 2008 Beijing Olympics as the "Genocide Olympics" because of China's continued business ties with Sudan and its reluctance to intervene decisively in the Darfur conflict....