WMD Archive

The largest number of world leaders to visit South Korea in the country’s history are in Seoul for the March 26-27 Nuclear Security Summit. The delegations from the 54 countries and four international organizations that are participating include some 45 heads of state, with deputy prime ministers or foreign ministers representing the rest. The main objective of this week’s summit is to prevent nonstate actors, including terrorists and criminals, from acquiring dangerous nuclear materials, as the greatest obstacle to nuclear terrorism is not designing a weapon, concocting a plot or recruiting volunteers willing to suffer martyrdom — it is acquiring […]

Serious threats require serious action, and there is broad nonpartisan agreement that nuclear terrorism remains one of the most daunting threats of the 21st century. That is why national leaders from more than 50 countries will meet this week in Seoul, Korea, at the second Nuclear Security Summit to address nuclear terrorism. The 2010 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington helped catalyze new commitments by states to secure loose nuclear materials, and today more than 80 percent of these commitments have been accomplished. But these measures only go so far, because there is no globally agreed-upon standard for securing nuclear material, […]

The Obama administration’s national security team must walk a very delicate tightrope on Iran policy in the weeks to come. On the one hand, it must convince doubters in Iran, Israel and the U.S. Congress that the administration is prepared to use force if necessary to stop Iran from mastering the technologies needed to construct nuclear weapons. If the different factions within the Islamic Republic are not convinced that President Barack Obama is prepared to pull the proverbial trigger, they have no incentive to return to the negotiating table. And if the U.S. commitment to accept the use of force […]

In the immediate aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War, before the Iraqi insurgency had come to define the conflict, one of the Democratic Party’s loudest criticisms of the Bush administration was that it had utterly bungled the diplomatic angle in the run-up to the war: President George W. Bush had been unable to replicate his father’s success in getting the United Nations to pass a catch-all resolution authorizing “all necessary means” to ensure that Iraq was disarmed. Nor had he been able to get a major regional security organization to endorse military action after efforts at the U.N. Security Council […]

A major Indian trade mission is in Iran seeking to exploit Tehran’s increasing diplomatic and commercial isolation to rectify India’s trade imbalance with Iran. But while Indian companies are understandably eager to take advantage of the resulting commercial opportunities, the Indian government must soothe U.S., Israeli and European concerns that Indian firms will simply undercut international sanctions against Iran by “backfilling” Western companies currently departing the country. India’s behavior highlights a major problem with the Iran sanctions regime: Many countries face a different set of calculations with regard to Iran than the United States, Israel and the European and Persian […]

This weekend’s election in Russia has unsurprisingly returned Vladimir Putin to the country’s presidency. In contrast to the preordained outcome of the Russian voting, the winner of this November’s U.S. presidential election is not yet known. But whoever occupies the White House in 2013 will need to consider the bilateral arms control relationship with Russia in coming years. And although the implementation of the New START agreement is going well, there are sharp differences in Washington and Moscow over where to go next. Moscow’s main concerns focus on U.S. missile defense and U.S. superiority in conventional forces. Both conditions work […]

According to Reuters, an estimated 100,000 North Koreans have taken part in a rally to protest South Korea’s current round of joint military exercises with the United States. This video purportedly shows footage of the rally, although it does not specify when or where the demonstration took place. World News Videos by NewsLook

Philip Yun, the Executive Director of the Ploughshares Fund and an expert on nuclear policy, says North Korea’s decision to halt nuclear activities in exchange for U.S. food aid is a good “first step” between the two countries. World News Videos by NewsLook