Years · 2013

April 2013

19 posts

Article

MJ, the 123, and the SLA

[Title rendered into English, by reader request: Chung Mong-joon (“MJ”), the U.S.-South Korean nuclear cooperation agreement (“123 agreement”), and the State-Level Approach (SLA) for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. -Ed.] On the occasion of Chung Mong-joon’s appearance at the…

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FYRP: Nuclear Budget Special

Yes, it’s another edition of For Your Reading Pleasure! Center for Public Integrity | R. Jeffrey Smith reports that the Obama administration is shifting funds from nonproliferation to the nuclear weapons complex. More from John Fleck. More from Kingston Reif.…

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For Your (North Korea) Reading Pleasure

Back in 2011, Jeffrey published the first of what should have been many “roundup” posts: posts that would offer an overview of the “arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation universe.” Sadly, Read Behind never became a regular feature, and the experiment…

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Crowdsourcing lessons from Tomnod

From Tomnod’s website: Examples of possible military buildings, crowds, landmarks and military vehicles in Damascus detected by Tomnod’s CrowdRank and derived from volunteer imagery insight. * * * DigitalGlobe announced today that it is acquiring Tomnod, a five-guy operation known…

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North Korean Targeting

Greetings from the old #nukefest2013. For my regular column at Foreign Policy last week, I pondered the meaning of Kim Jong Un’s Map of Death.  In that post, I made some simple estimates of the four targets: If one has…

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Mad Men

There’s a Mad Man Theory of Deterrence. Does it apply to arms control, too? Here’s the keeper Mad Man quote, found in Richard M. Nixon’s The Real War (1980): International relations are a lot like poker – stud poker with…

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South Korea’s Nuclear Defense

In a few weeks, South Korea’s newly-elected President, Park Geun-hye, will arrive in the United States on her first state visit. Between now and then, Washington and Seoul will be working on a diplomatic response to accompany their resolve not to…

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Helping Iran Make TRR Fuel

In January I discussed the prospects for including a serious nuclear cooperation component in a future comprehensive deal to resolve the Iran crisis, permitting Russia to provide Iran with PWR fuel-fabrication infrastructure to complete the front end of its civil…

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No More 721 Reports

The FY 2013 Intelligence Authorization Act repeals the requirement for “721 Reports” — officially known as the biannual Unclassified Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions. This is a terrible decision.…