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On May 11, on the third anniversary of India's nuclear tests, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage met with top Indian government officials to talk about missile defenses and non-proliferation concerns. His message found a receptive audience. Three years after the nadir in U.S.-India relations, the turnaround in relations is striking.
We think the president has an instinctive sense that U.S. policy toward China should be a good deal tougher than it has been the last 12 years. Surely it's time for him to shape a coherent policy, bring his advisers into line, and not allow staffers to be hung out to dry. This would be the adult thing to do.
Many Bush administration officials came into office believing the claims of advocates that we already have an effective military defense against missiles—all that has been lacking has been the political will to deploy. But these officials had their own mind-bending experience as Pentagon leaders carefully explained that there is no missile defense.
At a May 2 event on Capitol Hill, the Non-Proliferation Project officially released a new report,<a=href"http://www.ceip.org/files/Publications/NPPDemoStudy.asp?from=pubtitle">"Russia's Nuclear and Missile Complex: The Human Factor in Proliferation" </a>by Russian social scientist Valentin Tikhonov. At the event, Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), a leading expert in the House on nonproliferation issues, called the deterioration of Russia's nuclear cities a matter of U.S. national security.
The "One China" policy has been slowly but steadily collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions for more than a decade. And how could it not collapse? America's very arcane, very nuanced policy was created in 1979. The world then was so different from today's that it might as well have been 1879.
Should the Multilateral Development Banks continue to lend to this group of countries or, instead, concentrate attention on poorer countries with little such access? Second, what purposes should this lending serve and under what conditions should it take place?
China warned the U.S. on April 25 that planned arms sales to Taiwan could damage relations, specifically in the area of cooperative nonproliferation efforts. Once considered the primary source of missile and WMD proliferation, in recent years China has scaled back these activites.
Recently, pressures for fiscal decentralization have increased in various parts of the world. When cultural, ethnic, or linguistic diversity characterizes a country's population, the justification for giving different regions more control over their political and economic decisions seems to acquire more legitimacy.
On April 11, the Carnegie Moscow Center hosted the Russian premiere of the movie "Thirteen Days." As part of a distinguished panel that discussed the Cuban Missile Crisis following the screening, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamera highlighted four of the miscalculations made by both sides during the crisis that could have led to nuclear war. </a>
As Kosovo demonstrates (and as Lebanon and Somalia showed more brutally), the most dangerous threats come from the need to occupy areas containing hostile populations; these dangers are even greater when the areas concerned are cities. This is the kind of future warfare on which the U.S. Army should be concentrating its new weapons development, its tactical thinking, and its moral preparation.
President Bush and his new foreign policy team have announced that they plan to undertake a full review of all aspects of American policy toward Russia on matters like economic assistance, NATO expansion and missile defense. There must be a new agenda, we are told, because the old approach of cooperation and engagement pursued by the Clinton administration has been ineffective.
The MTCR is based on a policy, not a treaty. It focuses on ballistic and cruise missiles capable of delivering a 500 kilogram payload to a range of 300 kilometers. Any rockets or unmanned air vehicles with this capability, including space launch vehicles (SLV's), which are "peaceful" versions of long-range missiles, are subject to a strong presumption of export denial.
Proposed cuts to a range of U.S. non-proliferation programs in the budget submitted by the White House on April 9 could seriously undermine U.S. efforts to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
Excerpts from Carnegie Senior Associate Mike McFaul's opinion-editorial piece in the April 11 New York Times. For the full text of the article on the New York Times web site, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/opinion/11MCFA.html">click here</a>.
The challenges of consolidating statehood which lie before the states of Central Asia and the Caucasus in the immediate future,are likely to be shaped by the peculiarities of the relationships of these states to Russia, and what strategic consequence this might have from the US.