Russian diplomacy has a well-demonstrated tendency to sow doubt in the minds of believers in international law. More disturbing, though, is Russia’s skill for flouting formal treaty obligations and escaping consequences. Since the early 2000s, Russia has issued a series of statements attacking arms control treaties, alleging violations by NATO countries and the United States, […]
Tag: Nuclear Weapons
To Engage or Not to Engage: Diplomacy with North Korea?
Editors’ disclaimer: this debate was crafted during early 2018, before the development of new events between North and South Korea’s possible peace treaty that would formally end the Korean War. The contents discussed in the debate below ought to be evaluated as if such a groundbreaking event has yet to occur. RESOLVED: The United States […]
The North Korean Nuclear Crisis: Where to Go From Here
On September 15th, North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile over the Japanese island of Hokkaido for the second time in the span of three weeks. This provocative launch comes just four days after the U.N. Security Council’s unanimous adoption of new U.S.-drafted sanctions on North Korea. Despite the new sanctions’ unprecedented severity and the […]
Nothing is Fair, Sanctions or War
At the ripe age of 12, most American kids are concerned with making friends at school or convincing their parents to let them see R rated movies. When Joseph Kim was 12, he was solely concerned with survival. Joseph grew up at the height of North Korea’s decades’ long drought in the 1990s. Before even making […]
North Korea’s Nuclear program: time for a new strategy
January 7th, 2016: North Korea announced that it had just conducted its first successful test of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon estimated to have the destructive power of 9 kilotons of TNT. World leaders protested the tests in unison. Brazil said that the situation was cause for “great concern,” Russia condemned the nuclear tests as […]
A Shadowy Web of Unknowns: Unearthing the Underground Economy in Nuclear Materials
100 tons of plutonium, 1,000 tons of highly enriched uranium, and 30,000 nuclear warheads make up the known Russian nuclear arsenal today. However, following the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, large parts of the USSR’s vast arsenal of nuclear-grade weaponry were left scattered and unmonitored, meaning the actual arsenal size may be much […]
The Waning Hermit Kingdom (Part I): A Faltering Kim-Regime
When tensions rose along the Korean Peninsula this past August, it was not military provocation, but South Korean speakers blaring anti-North Korean propaganda that spurred Pyongyang to declare a quasi-state of war. The recent clash between the Koreas involved their first major armed encounter in five years. However, unlike previous military aggression from the Hermit […]