Nuclear policy
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On 8 February 2007, at the Kellogg Conference Center at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), the Journal of International Affairs and the Middle East Institute hosted a live debate between Scott Sagan and Kenneth Waltz. The two political scientists revisited their classic debate on nuclear weapons, addressing recent developments in Iran and possible global responses. Richard K. Betts moderated the event. Dean Lisa Anderson delivered opening remarks. This article is a transcript of the discussion.

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Journal of International Affairs
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Scott D. Sagan
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After the DPRK's nuclear test on October 9, 2006, denuclearization of the DPRK became an urgent issue that must be achieved as soon as possible to restrain an arms race in Northeast Asia. For denuclearization of the DPRK, issues of verification of dismantlement of the DPRK nuclear weapons programs are the most critical elements if an agreement can be reached between the U.S. and the DPRK. Objectives of the verification and dismantlement of the DPRK nuclear weapons programs are disposition of currently existing nuclear material, nuclear weapons, relevant facilities, nuclear workers and documents, and discontinuation of future clandestine production of those things, i.e., terminating the nuclear production capability of the DPRK. Kang will speak about technical aspects of the DPRK nuclear weapons program, including an idea on the disablement of 5 MWe graphite reactors at Yongbyon and major issues in the verification and dismantlement of the DPRK nuclear weapons programs.

Jungmin Kang is a science fellow at CISAC. Kang brings to the study of nuclear policy issues considerable expertise in technical analyses of nuclear energy issues, based on his studies in South Korea, Japan, and the United States. Kang has co-authored articles on the proliferation-resistance of advanced fuel cycles, spent-fuel storage, plutonium disposition, and South Korea's undeclared uranium enrichment and plutonium experiments. He has contributed many popular articles to South Korea's newspapers and magazines and is frequently interviewed about spent-fuel issues and the negotiations over North Korea's nuclear-weapon program. Kang's recent research focuses on technical analysis of issues related to nuclear weapons and energy of North Korea as well as spent-fuel issues in Northeast Asia. Kang serves on South Korea's Presidential Commission on Sustainable Development where he advises on nuclear energy policy and spent fuel management.

Kang received a PhD in nuclear engineering from Tokyo University, Japan, and MS and BS degrees in nuclear engineering from Seoul National University, South Korea. Kang worked in Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security for two years in 1998-2000.

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Jungmin Kang Speaker
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What role should nuclear weapons play in today's world? How can the United States promote international security while safeguarding its own interests? U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy informs this debate with an analysis of current nuclear weapons policies and strategies, including those for deterring, preventing, or preempting nuclear attack; preventing further proliferation, to nations and terrorists; modifying weapons designs; and revising the U.S. nuclear posture.

Presidents Bush and Clinton made major changes in U.S. policy after the cold war, and George W. Bush's administration made further, more radical changes after 9/11. Leaked portions of 2001's Nuclear Posture Review, for example, described more aggressive possible uses for nuclear weapons. This important volume examines the significance of such changes and suggests a way forward for U.S. policy, emphasizing stronger security of nuclear weapons and materials, international compliance with nonproliferation obligations, attention to the demand side of proliferation, and reduced reliance on nuclear weapons in U.S. foreign policy.

With a foreword by William J. Perry. Contributors: Chaim Braun (CISAC), George Bunn (CISAC), Christopher F. Chyba (formerly CISAC Co-Director), David Holloway (CISAC), Michael May (CISAC, formerly Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), W.K.H. Panofsky (formerly Director of Stanford Linear Accelerator Center), Karthika Sasikumar (University of British Columbia, former CISAC fellow), Roger Speed (formerly with the Livermore Laboratory), and Dean A. Wilkening (Science Program Director, CISAC).

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Brookings Institution Press and CISAC
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David Holloway
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To reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism, we must prevent terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons or materials. This will require, among other things, a sustained effort to keep dangerous nations from going nuclear--in particular North Korea. This article reviews the efforts the United States has undertaken through the years to keep North Korea from building a nuclear arsenal, arguing that the history of proliferation on the Korean Peninsula is marked by five nuclear crises. A sixth could be on the horizon, further compromising American efforts to lessen the likelihood of a nuclear attack on U.S. soil.

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Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
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David Hafemeister is a Science Fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (2005-6). He is also Professor (emeritus) of Physics at California Polytechnic State University. He spent a dozen years in Washington as Professional Staff Member, Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and Governmental Affairs (1990-93 on arms control treaties at the end of the Cold War), Science Advisor to Senator John Glenn (1975-77), Special Assistant to Under Secretary of State Benson and Deputy-Under Secretary Nye (1977-78), Visiting Scientist in the State Department's Office of Nuclear Proliferation Policy (1979), the Office of Strategic Nuclear Policy (1987) and Study Director at the National Academy of Sciences (2000-02). He also held appointments at Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Stanford, Princeton, and the Lawrence-Berkeley, Argonne and Los Alamos national laboratories. He was Chair of the APS Forum on Physics and Society (1985-6) and the APS Panel on Public Affairs (1996-7). He has written/edited ten books and 140 articles and was awarded the APS Szilard award in 1996.

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David Hafemeister Speaker
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For almost 20 years the Energy Department has been investigating and developing Nevada's Yucca Mountain as the site for a deep underground repository to accept spent fuel from all the power reactors and high level waste left over from bomb programs. The future of US nuclear energy is widely thought to be tied to the success of the project. In 2002 Congress gave DOE the green light to take the next step to submit an NRC license application demonstrating compliance with applicable standards. DOE promised such an application in December 2004. It delayed and delayed and now DOE no longer has a date for submitting an NRC application, but it will be no earlier than 2008.

What's holding it up? What is the history of the project? What are its technical and managerial and legal problems? What has been the effect of Nevada's opposition? How will recent project changes and the administration's new nuclear policy (GNEP) affect Yucca Mountain? What are the prospects for project licensing and completion? Is Yucca Mountain the only option for dealing with the country's spent fuel?

Dr. Victor Gilinsky is a Washington, D.C.-based consultant on energy. He has been active on proliferation issues for many years, going back to his early work at RAND in Santa Monica, California. He joined RAND soon after receiving a PhD in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1961. In 1971 he moved to the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, D.C., where he was assistant director for policy and program review. From 1973 to 1975, he was head of the RAND Physical Sciences Department. From 1975 to 1984, he served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), having been appointed by President Gerald Ford and reappointed by President Jimmy Carter. During his NRC tenure, Dr Gilinsky was heavily involved in nuclear-export issues. In 1982 he received Caltech's Distinguished Alumnus Award.

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Victor Gilinsky Former NRC Commissioner Speaker
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A net assessment of the benefits/losses of arms control treaties in terms of military significance was required in response to the START Resolution of Ratification. The response by the Executive Branch belabored smaller issues, avoided accomplishments and didn't carry out the net assessment.

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Science and Global Security
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Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Lecturer in International Policy at the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy
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Daniel C. Sneider is a lecturer in international policy at Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy and a lecturer in East Asian Studies at Stanford. His own research is focused on current U.S. foreign and national security policy in Asia and on the foreign policy of Japan and Korea.  Since 2017, he has been based partly in Tokyo as a Visiting Researcher at the Canon Institute for Global Studies, where he is working on a diplomatic history of the creation and management of the U.S. security alliances with Japan and South Korea during the Cold War. Sneider contributes regularly to the leading Japanese publication Toyo Keizai as well as to the Nelson Report on Asia policy issues.

Sneider is the former Associate Director for Research at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford. At Shorenstein APARC, Sneider directed the center’s Divided Memories and Reconciliation project, a comparative study of the formation of wartime historical memory in East Asia. He is the co-author of a book on wartime memory and elite opinion, Divergent Memories, from Stanford University Press. He is the co-editor, with Dr. Gi-Wook Shin, of Divided Memories: History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia, from Routledge and of Confronting Memories of World War II: European and Asian Legacies, from University of Washington Press.

Sneider was named a National Asia Research Fellow by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the National Bureau of Asian Research in 2010. He is the co-editor of Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia, Shorenstein APARC, distributed by Brookings Institution Press, 2007; of First Drafts of Korea: The U.S. Media and Perceptions of the Last Cold War Frontier, 2009; as well as of Does South Asia Exist?: Prospects for Regional Integration, 2010. Sneider’s path-breaking study “The New Asianism: Japanese Foreign Policy under the Democratic Party of Japan” appeared in the July 2011 issue of Asia Policy. He has also contributed to other volumes, including “Strategic Abandonment: Alliance Relations in Northeast Asia in the Post-Iraq Era” in Towards Sustainable Economic and Security Relations in East Asia: U.S. and ROK Policy Options, Korea Economic Institute, 2008; “The History and Meaning of Denuclearization,” in William H. Overholt, editor, North Korea: Peace? Nuclear War?, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, 2019; and “Evolution or new Doctrine? Japanese security policy in the era of collective self-defense,” in James D.J. Brown and Jeff Kingston, eds, Japan’s Foreign Relations in Asia, Routledge, December 2017.

Sneider’s writings have appeared in many publications, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Slate, Foreign Policy, the New Republic, National Review, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Oriental Economist, Newsweek, Time, the International Herald Tribune, the Financial Times, and Yale Global. He is frequently cited in such publications.

Prior to coming to Stanford, Sneider was a long-time foreign correspondent. His twice-weekly column for the San Jose Mercury News looking at international issues and national security from a West Coast perspective was syndicated nationally on the Knight Ridder Tribune wire service. Previously, Sneider served as national/foreign editor of the Mercury News. From 1990 to 1994, he was the Moscow bureau chief of the Christian Science Monitor, covering the end of Soviet Communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union. From 1985 to 1990, he was Tokyo correspondent for the Monitor, covering Japan and Korea. Prior to that he was a correspondent in India, covering South and Southeast Asia. He also wrote widely on defense issues, including as a contributor and correspondent for Defense News, the national defense weekly.

Sneider has a BA in East Asian history from Columbia University and an MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

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The nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) provides that a state-party intending to withdraw from the treaty must give the UN Security Council three months' notice of its intention and provide the Security Council with its reasons for withdrawal. This provision was intended to give the Security Council an opportunity to deal with any withdrawal that might produce a threat to international peace and security.

More than two years ago, North Korea renewed its 1993 notice of withdrawal from the NPT, a notice that had been suspended a decade earlier during negotiations with the United States. That announcement left the Security Council with only a single day before North Korea would become the first country to withdraw from the NPT.

The Security Council did nothing. Indeed, it has continued to ignore North Korea's action even as Pyongyang has repeatedly stated its intention to produce nuclear weapons, sending a dangerous message to other states considering withdrawal. The once-every-five-years NPT review conference that will meet in New York this month provides a valuable opportunity to address the North Korea case and prod the Security Council to address similar cases that may emerge.

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Arms Control Today
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Do the nations that belong to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) have a right to withdraw from it at any time they wish and for any reason? This is a key question when considering international legal constraints on nuclear proliferation, and one that will confront the States Parties when they meet in New York on May 2. This article argues that the NPT and the United Nations Charter provide limits on the right of withdrawal from the treaty by authorising the UN Security Council to take action against NPT withdrawals that could lead to threats to international peace and security.

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Disarmament Diplomacy
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