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While climate change is a top priority at the G8 Summit, nonproliferation and the ongoing nuclear challenges of North Korea and Iran continue to be urgent tasks. There is a growing sense that effectively addressing global nonproliferation issues requires concerted action by the international community.
Since the United States destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, there have been Americans who have wanted to eliminate all nuclear weapons. Over the decades they have pushed for an emphasis on cooperation over conflict in U.S. foreign policy, a ban on atomic testing, and limits on atomic arsenals, and of course their ultimate goal: complete disarmament.
Nuclear energy cannot make a real difference to global climate change. To do so would require a tripling of capacity — building 25 reactors per year to 2050 — a rate of expansion that can't be met by the current infrastructure. As it is, nuclear energy, hampered by a moribund supply chain, will have to grow rapidly to maintain its current market share as demand for electricity doubles by 2030.
The February IAEA safeguards report on Iran indicates that the answers provided by Iran on all but two issues are "consistent" or "not inconsistent" with its information and on schedule with the agreed-upon work plan. However, the final outstanding issues are those most closely associated with weaponization.
When the U.S. launched a missile to destroy a dead satellite that would have otherwise re-entered the atmosphere and possibly threatened populated areas with a toxic load of hydrazine fuel, it resurrected fears about the so-called weaponization of space. Carnegie Associate Ashley J. Tellis comments in the Wall Street Journal on the ongoing “space weapon” debate and praises the Bush administration for rejecting a joint Russian-Chinese arms treaty aimed at banning such weapons.
What a difference a year can make! Last year, President Putin's speech at the Wehrkunde Security Conference in Munich sent shock waves through the international system. His uncompromising declaration that Russia was back on the world stage and a force to be reckoned with generated an immediate debate in Washington. With Secretary of Defense Robert Gates due to speak the next day, the foreign policy establishment stayed up late arguing how to respond: to slam Putin back, or use a lighter touch. Evidently it was Gates himself who insisted on humor: "One Cold War was quite enough," he said in his famous response—and that has been the U.S. official line toward Russia ever since, through a year of extremely harsh rhetoric from Moscow.
First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev had a difficult task before him during his visit Friday to the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum, where he had been expected to reveal his economic program. One week earlier, outgoing President Vladimir Putin described his own economic plan through 2020. Just one day before Medvedev's trip, Putin indicated that Medvedev did not have a separate plan but would only refine the existing one, which is to say Putin's Plan.
The release last week of the unclassified summary of the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran provoked a wide range of reactions -- relief that it seemed to dispel the option of a military strike, anger that intelligence seems to be politicized once again, and dismay over how this would affect U.S. policy options.
Although nuclear safety has improved significantly, nuclear energy’s inherent vulnerabilities regarding waste disposal, economic competitiveness, and proliferation remain. Moreover, nuclear security concerns have increased since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.