Avatar photoChina and the POE DPRK Report

As we had anticipated last week, last Friday the United Nations Security Council published its 2012 Panel of Experts Report pursuant to UNSCR Resolution 1874. Here it is. A year ago, the Chinese member of the POE would not sign the final report for 2011, effectively blocking publication of the report. The document was then nearly immediately leaked. This …

Avatar photoThe Team with the Football

Two vignettes and an organizational chart: I. In August 1991, I was part of a group of maybe fifteen Americans who visited with Gennady Yanayev in the Kremlin. Yanayev was a big deal at the time — the Vice President of the Soviet Union. Our visit to his well-appointed suite of offices was part of …

Avatar photoYesin on China’s Nukes

Phil Karber has placed another story, this time directly associating himself with the discredited claim that China has 3,000 nuclear weapons.  Karber found an essay by General Viktor Yesin (in Russian), a former commander of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces, and placed it in the Falun Gong-run Epoch Times. Yesin’s essay is full of errors, …

Avatar photoHaggling over Peripherals

Negotiations between the United States and Pakistan over the cost of hauling freight from Karachi port to Afghanistan and the wording of a statement of regret or apology over Pakistani deaths at a border clash last November have become demeaning to everyone involved. Patching up these contentious issues will have lasting benefit only if a …