Nuclear Terrorism and the 2008 Democratic Candidates

Posted by Page on January 13th, 2008

“Terrorism” is:

The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.

“Terrorism” is most easily committed using weaponry, such as:

“Terrorism” is a staple of empty political rhetoric. “Terrorism” is a GOP candidate’s ultimate buzzword; it been redefined as a vague, derogatory term to describe “something that perceived bad guys do”.

“Terrorism” is a real threat that requires actual solutions. Fortunately, the top three Democratic candidates are offering those solutions as part of their rhetoric.

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A warning from the deep

Posted by Page on January 7th, 2008


Sperm whale in the Azores Islands of the North Atlantic.
Photo credit: © Innerspace Visions / Doug Perrine.
Click to enlarge.
Click image to view a video of a mother sperm whale with her newborn calf.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine with the Greenpeace Netherlands action team gave me an absolutely stunning book for Christmas. It’s called Planet Ocean, and it’s a collection of photos taken by Greenpeace photographers on the 16 month “Defending Our Oceans” expedition. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

We are born of the oceans; it is where it all began. When the first slimy life forms slithered out of the seas and began the process of evolution on land 400 million years ago, life below the ocean waves was already well established, stretching back around three billion years.

While we might have progressed from the primeval soup, life on Earth still comes from the oceans. They cover three quarters of our planet, are the engines driving our weather systems, a ready-made food store for billions on land and sea and give sanctuary to a staggering 80 percent of life on Earth.

If you live far inland (as I did most of my life), it’s easy to forget that our planet is mostly ocean. It’s easy to forget about amazing creatures like sperm whales, which can dive up to 2000 meters deep hunting for giant squids (more fun facts here).

It turns out that sperm whales are unknowingly sounding a warning to the planet, and Ocean Alliance biologist Roger Payne has translated their message for us:

The first gift the whales gave Roger Payne was their song, which he in turn spread to the ears of the world.

He’s planning to do the same with their final gift to him, the data locked inside the skin and blubber samples he gathered from 986 sperm whales on a 5 1/2-year, round-the-world journey… sitting inside those biopsy samples is the first overall baseline assessment of pollution in the world’s oceans.

“What we’ve analyzed so far,” Payne said, “is shocking. It’s well beyond any degree of pollutants that I thought would exist.”

What may inspire humans to act is not the plight of the whales themselves, but that their plight could be a harbinger of our own demise:

“If we don’t do something about ocean pollution,” Payne said from the study of his hillside home in South Woodstock, Vt., “I think there’s a very good chance that humanity will lose access to fish from the sea. And because seafood is the principal source of protein for over a billion people, you could easily argue that this is the largest public health crisis in the world.”

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Pay no attention to that country behind the curtain

Posted by Page on January 3rd, 2008

So, welcome to 2008. Seems like everyone is taking stock, looking back at 2007 and gazing into their respective crystal balls to predict what this year might hold.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is no exception. They’ve issued a staff report, “2007 Year in Review: Looking Back on Nuclear´s Future“, which is chock-full of obscure news (like an update on reports of illicit trafficking in nuclear materials) as well as bigger headline-makers, like addressing the complex issue of nuclear fuel and proliferation risks. Of course, the Bush administration cannot hear the word “nuclear” without immediately frothing at the mouth and saying “Iran”, with almost complete disregard for any other critical international nuclear issues.

One of these issues is North Korea, the country that actually made and tested a nuclear bomb in 2006, although it was very small and basically a fizzle, not a bang (it was less than a kiloton).

The Bush administration immediately scrambled and scheduled a press conference. They came up with a few good “we weren’t asleep at the switch, really, we weren’t” statements, condensed by Fox News into “press conferences for dummies” captions.

Fast forward to 2007. North Korea’s nuclear timeline has been a rocky road, but a breakthrough was made in March 2007, when an IAEA delegation arrived in North Korea - by invitation. It had been five years since the IAEA had been in North Korea, so this was indeed a historic event. Talks continued in June, and by July 18, the IAEA had confirmed that all reactors at Yongbyong had been shut down.

Katie Mounts, a Policy Associate at the nonproliferation and national security think tank Council for a Livable World, summed up the diplomatic successes nicely:

President Bush’s “Axis of Evil” may soon be one less. In no small victory for diplomacy and non-proliferation, recent six party talks yielded a nuclear deal with North Korea.

Under the deal, North Korea agrees to disable all activities at its main nuclear complex in Pyongyang and to report on all of its current nuclear programs by the end of this year. NSC spokesperson Gordon Johndroe stated, “These second-phase actions effectively end the DPRK’s production of plutonium – a major step towards the goal of achieving the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” reported the New York Times.

Beyond the more immediate success in North Korea, this agreement is a victory for advocates of diplomacy in the face of nuclear disagreements, most notably the case of Iran. Bush’s newfound commitment to diplomacy through [Ambassador] Christopher Hill has resulted in what provocative language and threats of military action have not in Iran: the first major steps toward transparency and denuclearization.

But the saga is by no means over, and is far from simple. North Korea had until December 31, 2007 to completely declare its nuclear programs, as well as disable its facilities in a timely manner. From Jeff Lewis at Arms Control Wonk:

As expected, North Korea missed the deadline for “providing a complete and correct declaration of its nuclear programs.”

I say “as expected” in part because this is what Chris Hill told Congress in a closed briefing, according to Chris Nelson, and what South Korea’s Foreign Minister has said publicly.

At issue, as we have long worried, is what US officials now call the “Uranium Enrichment Program” or UEP. North Korea, according to diplomatic sources in Seoul, “remains unchanged in its denial of the existence of a UEP” — notwithstanding what Glenn Kessler reported to be evidence of uranium contamination on smelted tubing. (David Albright points to the possibility of contamination from other sources; His background piece on the Nork tubes is the best.)

The State Department also claims that North Korea is “slowing down the process of disablement.”

Needless to say, if history is any indicator, talks with North Korea regarding its nuclear program will certainly be something the next president of the United States will have to deal with. The nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations has a nice summary of each candidate’s position on North Korea’s nuclear program (it’s from October but is still relevant). What is noteworthy is that most of the Republican candidates have only soundbites (Mike Huckabee doesn’t even have a stance), and the Democratic candidates have firm convictions and non-military proposals.

In conclusion, the future is still somewhat murky; for example, verification of North Korea’s plutonium is anything but a simple process. But what John Bolton called “Pyongyang Pussyfooting” is what I call “diplomacy”. It’s obvious what works best, isn’t it? We’ve made a lot of progress in a year. Let’s hope things continue to move in the right direction.

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