Asia & the Pacific

5 Items

An F-35A Lightning II flies above the Mojave Desert

USAF/Public Domain

Analysis & Opinions - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

To Enhance National Security, the Biden Administration Will Have to Trim an Exorbitant Defense Wish List

| Mar. 13, 2024

David Kearn argues that even in the absence of restrictive resource and budgetary constraints, a focus on identifying and achieving concrete objectives that will position the United States and its allies to effectively deter aggression in critical regional flashpoints should be the priority given the stressed nature of the defense industrial base and the nuclear enterprise.

Analysis & Opinions - The National Interest

The Sanctions Delusion

| Dec. 08, 2014

"The United States is overestimating its leverage with sanctions in negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran—a gamble bound to fail. A second deadline has slipped without a comprehensive agreement between the P5+1 and Iran, and hawkish rhetoric in the U.S. underscores a growing pessimism for successful negotiations by the next deadline in June 2015. Calls to strengthen sanctions highlight waning Congressional support for the talks, and buttress a narrow and unrealistic narrative that economic deprivation will force concessions. Any new sanctions, especially those proposed under the draconian Nuclear Iran Prevention Act, threaten to derail negotiations while providing cannon fodder for Iran’s hardliners..."

Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei, Nov. 9, 2012. China's astronauts remain banned from the International Space Station.

Wikimedia Commons

Analysis & Opinions - ISN Blog

Can Trust-Building Be Risk Free?

| November 29, 2013

"if both the top-down and bottom-up methods of trust building are never going to be risk free, is there a more plausible third option? For example, what if Washington and Beijing forget about trust-building and instead opt for a relationship based on mutual deterrence? Unfortunately, the risks of this option — arms racing, a return to a Cold War-like MAD doctrine, and forever teetering on the brink of conventional conflict — might not just upend US-China relations, they might sabotage regional and global security as well."

Analysis & Opinions - The Washington Post

Saving the World at Plutonium Mountain

| August 16, 2013

Last October, at the foot of a rocky hillside near here, at a spot known as Degelen Mountain, several dozen Kazakh, Russian and American nuclear scientists and engineers gathered for a ceremony. The modest ribbon-cutting marked the conclusion of one of the largest and most complex nuclear security operations since the Cold War — to secure plutonium (enough to build a dozen or more nuclear weapons) that Soviet authorities had buried at the testing site years before and forgotten, leaving it vulnerable to terrorists and rogue states. The effort spanned 17 years, cost $150 million and involved a complex mix of intelligence, science, engineering, politics and sleuthing. This op-ed is based on documents and interviews with Kazakh, Russian and U.S. participants, and reveals the scope of the operation for the first time.

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."