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Russia Has Less Than Sixty Days to Save the INF Treaty

IN THIS ISSUE: Russia Has Less Than Sixty Days to Save the INF Treaty, A Cold War Arms Treaty is Unraveling. But the Problem is Much Bigger, U.S. Imposes New Sanctions on Three North Korea Officials, U.S. Navy, Missile Defense Agency Shoot Down an Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile in Space, India Test Fires Nuclear Capable Agni-5 Missile, Open Source North Korea Under the Microscope

Published on December 11, 2018

Russia Has Less Than Sixty Days to Save the INF Treaty

Pranay Vaddi | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

The United States has given Russia a sixty-day deadline to return to compliance before it gets rid of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, in an announcement that caught European and Asian allies off-guard. According to a leaked memo, U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton ordered the Pentagon to “develop and deploy ground-launched missiles at the earliest possible date.” This makes it unlikely that the treaty will survive. If Russia wishes to preserve the INF Treaty, it should propose steps to return to compliance

A Cold War Arms Treaty is Unraveling. But the Problem is Much Bigger

David Sanger and William Broad | New York Times

After the United States delivered an ultimatum to Russia last week that it was preparing to abandon a landmark weapons treaty, drawing a combative response from President Vladimir V. Putin, the specter of a rekindled nuclear arms race was widely seen as a rewind of the Cold War. But that encompasses only one slice of the problem — and perhaps the easiest part to manage. The United States and Russia no longer have a monopoly on the missiles that Ronald Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev agreed in 1987 to ban with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or I.N.F., agreement. Today, China relies on similar missiles for 95 percent of its ground-based fleet, and Iran, India, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Taiwan are among the 10 states with similar, fast-growing arsenals.

U.S. Imposes New Sanctions on Three North Korea Officials, Including Kim Jong Un’s Right-Hand Man

Thomas Maresca | USA Today

The United States imposed new sanctions on three top North Korean officials – including Kim Jong Un’s right-hand man – over the country’s continuing human rights abuses, brutal censorship and the death last year of American prisoner Otto Warmbier. The U.S. Treasury said on Monday that it will freeze any U.S. assets of the three officials and that any transactions with them would be generally prohibited.

U.S. Navy, Missile Defense Agency Shoot Down an Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile in Space

David Larter | Defense News

The U.S. Navy and Missile Defense Agency continued a hot streak Tuesday when they successfully shot down an intermediate-range ballistic missile target in space from its Hawaii-based Aegis Ashore facility. The test marked the second consecutive successful intercept for the SM-3 Block IIA missile in development. The intercept followed an October success, which shook off two hard-luck consecutive failures ― one caused by a sailor error and a second caused by a misfired third-stage rocket motor. Both tests were on course for a successful intercept when the respective mishaps occurred, officials told Defense News.

India Test Fires Nuclear Capable Agni-5 Missile, 2nd Test in Six Months

Economic Times

Indigenously developed surface-to-surface ballistic missile Agni-5 has been successfully test-fired from Dr Abdul Kalam Island off Odisha coast, according to reports. The surface-to-surface missile having a strike range of 5,000 km was launched at 1.30 p.m. from the Integrated Test Range (ITR) in Bhadrak district, said Defence Ministry sources. This is the seventh trial of the indigenously-developed surface-to-surface missile, they further added. 

Who’s Deceiving Whom? Open Source North Korea Under the Microscope

Joshua Pollack | NK News

Along with the features of daily life that few of us could have anticipated a generation ago —smartphones, rent-a-scooters, Greek yogurt in every grocery store — something new has come to the world of think tanks and NGOs: the budding democratization of imagery intelligence. Multiple companies now take photographs from space of effectively anywhere on the earth’s surface. Their levels of resolution vary, but some could be compared to the best available to the superpowers during the late Cold War—or even better. DigitalGlobe now offers images as sharp as 30 cm in resolution, meaning that each pixel measures about one foot by one foot.

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