Asia & the Pacific

Juliette Kayyem provides an update on the lack of implementation of the Synthetics Trafficking and Opioids Prevention Act (STOP Act),  which became federal law last year.  The STOP Act closes a security loophole that has provided drug traffickers with a way of shipping synthetic controlled substances into the country through the postal system.

From the moment that President Barack Obama told President-elect Donald Trump during the transition about the impending threat of North Korean nuclear-tipped ICBMs, Trump’s basic stance has been: not on my watch. From his tweet of January 2 (“won’t happen!”) to his August statements that the U.S. military is “locked and loaded” to unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea if it threatens America, Trump has sought to draw a red line that makes it clear he will do whatever is necessary to halt North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs—before they can target the continental United States.

In this Project on Managing the Atom Discussion Paper, Philipp C. Bleek chronicles nuclear weapons proliferation choices throughout the nuclear age. Since the late 1930s and early 1940s, some thirty-one countries are known to have at least explored the possibility of establishing a nuclear weapons program. Seventeen of those countries launched weapons programs, and ten acquired deliverable nuclear weapons.

In a "policy memo" to President-elect Donald Trump, Graham Allison and Dimitri K. Simes write: "The two Chinese characters that make up the word “crisis” can be interpreted as meaning both “danger” and “opportunity.” Russia today offers your administration not only a serious challenge but a significant opportunity.

Russia is no longer the Evil Empire the United States confronted over decades of Cold War. Nonetheless, Russia remains a player whose choices affect vital U.S. interests profoundly across the agenda of global issues. First and foremost, Russia remains the only nation that can erase the United States from the map in thirty minutes.

"The Trump camp's insistence that the intelligence is not worthy of a deep dive has put it squarely in opposition to a fact-based inquiry supported by scores of nonpartisan intelligence professionals. The consequences of Trump's posture are dangerous for his governing in the future (and are a bit of an insult to those who risk their lives to get information for his daily briefings, which he doesn't attend)."

This article reviews the motivations, strengths, and weaknesses of the Nuclear SecuritySummits (NSS), both procedurally and substantively.