Atlantic Council

Jan Lodal, immediate past president of the Atlantic Council, has published with Ivo Daalder a piece in the November/December Foreign Affairs entitled, "The Logic of Zero:  Toward a World Without Nuclear Weapons."

Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa deemed it "extremely regretable" that the United States removed North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.  While U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said "Every element of verification that we sought is included in this package," Japan has been urging that removal be conditional on the DPRK providing "more information on the fate of Japanese civilians kidnapped by the North in the 1970s and 1980s to train the regime's spies."  As noted by BBC, Nakagawa says those "abductions amount to terrorist acts."

U.S. officials tell Reuters that a deal has been struck to remove North Korea from the State Department's state sponsors of terrorism list in exchange for assurances on verifing DPRK nuclear activities.  "We've agreed to a series of verification measures [on North Korea's nuclear programme], and flowing from that we can now remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terror."

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has announced plans to build a "guaranteed nuclear deterrrent system" along with "a system of aerospace defense" by 2020, BBC reports.  He stated, "We plan to start serial production of warships, primarily nuclear-powered submarines carrying cruise missiles and multifunctional submarines." 

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice responded to this news by telling Reuters, "The balance of power in terms of nuclear deterrence is not going to be affected by those measures" and said the U.S. deterrent is "capable" and "robust."

President Dmitri Medvedev announced Friday that Russia would upgrade its nuclear weapons systems by 2020. In a report carried by the Russian news agency Itar-Tass, Medvedev called on military chiefs to submit plans by December for new "warships, primarily nuclear-powered submarines carrying cruise missiles and multifunctional submarines." In addition Medvedev called for "a system of aerospace defence"  and said that, "we must guarantee nuclear deterrence under various political and military conditions by 2020."

The announcement comes just weeks after Russia accused the U.S. of starting a new arms race by planning to build a missile defense shield in former Warsaw Pact countries, reports the BBC. Moscow has repeatedly warned the U.S. that if it went ahead with their missile shield, Russia would be "forced to react."

Several news agencies report that North Korea began reassembling its Yongbyon nuclear weapons facility on Monday.  Observers view this largely as a "symbolic gesture," given that the facility is largely dismantled, but "the United States is taking the developments seriously."

Reuters cites Japan's Kyodo, which in turn relies on "sources in Beijing close to six-party nuclear talks." Fox News cites unnamed "U.S. officials" who believe the DPRK is deliberately violating their recent agreement to protest U.S. delays in removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.  "They've been threatening this move for some time," one U.S. official told Fox, adding that until now the threats were seen as merely a way for North Korean officials "to express their anger."

Ambassador Christopher R. Hill, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, spoke at the Atlantic Council on the status of the Six-Party Talks to negotiate North Korean denuclearization as part of the Global Leadership Speaker Series.

Two months ago I suggested that, amid the Bush administration's focus on Iraq's present dangers and Iran's future perils, Pakistan was most likely to produce a so- called black-swan event.