Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Follow Carnegie
-
Search
-
Global Resources
Global Centers
Languages
Arab governments and citizens are incensed at the policies of the United States toward the Middle East. The anger cuts across age, economic, social and intellectual spectrums, and it has reached alarming levels. Recent visits to the region by Carnegie experts confirm that there is little appreciation for the Bush Administration's position among the people of the Middle East.
Nuclear arms control is often considered not worth the effort now that the Cold War is over. But the nuclear threat is anything but over. Several thousand strategic nuclear weapons remain on hair-trigger alert in U.S. and Russian arsenals; many more are insecurely stored. Moscow and Washington must pursue innovative reduction efforts.
CIA Director George Tenet offered a dramatic redefinition of the proliferation problem in testimony to Congress February 11, 2003. Over the past two years, administration officials have discarded major elements of the global non-proliferation regime, rejected negotiated solutions and engagement and ignored major developments in North Korea and Iran. Now as former critical situations turn into crises, Tenet warns that the non-proliferation regime is in trouble. Here is Tenet's new explanation of why.
While America is focused on fighting terror, it has turned the attention of policy makers and citizens away from Northeast Asia. China is no longer seen as the primary threat to the US. This has given China room to wield a new foreign policy in the region that establishes China's influence. Meanwhile, Russia and China are growing farther apart.
The immediate question left hanging at the end of Colin L. Powell's presentation to the United Nations Security Council was: What next? Given his explanation of the problem with Iraq, immediate war is not the only answer. Is there an alternative that can both command enthusiastic international support and effectively disarm Saddam Hussein? The answer is yes, and it involves a plan for truly coercive inspections. In the following piece, Carnegie President Jessica Mathews lays out an alternative scenario to disarm Saddam Hussein. This analysis is taken from her article, "Is There a Better Way to Go?" which appeared in the Febraury 9, 2003 Washington Post Outlook Section.
Carnegie Endowment President Jessica Mathews appearing on Oprah.
Meeting Emerging Security Challenges
While it is not certain that North Korea would negotiate away their nuclear programs and fully abide by any agreement, such a resolution was and remains a possibility. By refusing to aggressively pursue a negotiated approach, the Bush administration has essentially green-lighted North Korea's nuclear program and may be encouraging the North to take even more drastic steps in the future.
There have been thousands of references to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, but what exactly are the inspectors searching for? What does the United States think Iraq may be hiding? Many expected the United States, the United Kingdom, or other nations to come forth with specific and detailed information after Iraq released its 12,000-page declaration on December 7, 2002. They did not. The following is taken from Iraq: What Next? a new Carnegie report released last week to coincide with UNMOVIC's update to the UN Security Council today.
Far from being exhausted, the inspections process has just begun. Inspections should be pursued without ruling out future use of force. Iraq’s lack of full cooperation is a material breach, but not a casus belli.
On October 16, 2002, the Bush Administration announced that, in meetings earlier this month, North Korea admitted that it has a uranium enrichment program. With this announcement came very few details about this newly-disclosed program. Statements from the administration, alongside reports from the media, have allowed us to piece together some of the missing details. Still, significant information about this program remains unknown. The implications of North Korea's disclosure depend on the details of the program, ranging from its origins and level of development to the regime's willingness to close it down.
Moves by North Korea to restart its nuclear reactor program and by Iran to build advanced nuclear facilities to produce weapons-grade materials, threaten to blow the lid off long-standing nonproliferation efforts. The developments show that the approach being pursued by the current administration for preventing the spread of nuclear arms has failed and needs immediate adjustment.
For the first time in U.S. history, a president will deploy a major weapon system without knowing whether it will work or not. Exempting the missile defense program from required weapons procurement rules, President Bush will rush to deploy interceptor rockets in Alaska without any operational tests and after failing almost half of their preliminary development tests, including the last one. With every missile defense program behind schedule and over budget, all available evidence indicates that the Alaska system cannot work. Whether one is for or against this program, everyone should be troubled by the way the president is proceeding.
The U.S. administration has convinced most journalists and world leaders that it will soon attack Iraq. The rhetoric is escalating and so are military movements. There are now 60,000 U.S. troops on the border of Iraq and 45,000 more could fly in with short notice to marry up with pre-positioned equipment. Leaked plans detail a ferocious, short war to isolate, then topple Saddam Hussein. Arab leaders publicly oppose a war, but news reports indicate their quiet support. President George Bush seems ready to let loose the dogs of war at any moment. Which is precisely why he will not have to.
North Korea’s decision to restart its plutonium production reactors creates an immediate crisis for the United States and its allies in the region. This event threatens to recreate the tense standoff that nearly led to war on the Korean peninsula in 1994. This dangerous decision by North Korea seems a transparent move designed to bring the United States back to the negotiating table and resume a direct dialogue with Washington. Although the Bush administration is unlikely to see this move as an opportunity to engage the North Koreans, the United States should move quickly to negotiate with Pyongyang to secure a total ban on North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities.
The seizure and subsequent release of North Korean scud missiles bound for Yemen on the high seas is a dramatic development, but the export of missiles from North Korea to Yemen should come as no surprise. North Korea has sold Yemen Scud missiles before, and the U.S. imposed sanctions against North Korea for such commerce just this past August. Despite U.S. concerns, however, there is nothing illegal about the sale of such missiles by North Korea. Neither North Korea nor Yemen has signed any international treaties or bilateral agreements to prohibit such trade. In fact, no international treaty banning missiles sales exists and many countries, including the United States, sell both short and long range ballistic missiles. Lastly, it is not clear that selling ballistic missiles to Yemen is a threat to US security or that of states in the region.
Enter your email address in the field below to receive the latest Proliferation News in your inbox!
Acton holds the Jessica T. Mathews Chair and is co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Fiona Cunningham is a nonresident scholar in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and was a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow in 2020-21.
Dalton is the co-director and a senior fellow of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment. An expert on nonproliferation and nuclear energy, his work addresses regional security challenges and the evolution of the global nuclear order.
Rose Gottemoeller is a nonresident senior fellow in Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program. She also serves as the Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Hibbs is a Germany-based nonresident senior fellow in Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program. His areas of expertise are nuclear verification and safeguards, multilateral nuclear trade policy, international nuclear cooperation, and nonproliferation arrangements.
Kassenova is a nonresident fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment.
Ulrich Kühn is a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the head of the arms control and emerging technologies program at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg.
Jamie Kwong is the Stanton pre-doctoral fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Levite was the principal deputy director general for policy at the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission from 2002 to 2007.
Thomas MacDonald is a fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Vipin Narang is a nonresident scholar in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Ankit Panda is the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Perkovich works primarily on nuclear strategy and nonproliferation issues; cyberconflict; and new approaches to international public-private management of strategic technologies.
Ülgen is a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe in Brussels, where his research focuses on Turkish foreign policy, nuclear policy, cyberpolicy, and transatlantic relations.
Tristan Volpe is a nonresident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and assistant professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School.
Fumihiko Yoshida is a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Tong Zhao is a senior fellow in Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program.
You are leaving the website for the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy and entering a website for another of Carnegie's global centers.
你将离开清华—卡内基中心网站，进入卡内基其他全球中心的网站。