My Blog Posts

• Where we mine academic/industry writing on nukes so you don't have to, #11
  01/03/2012 10:06:00 AM EST
  By Andrew Carpenter and Ulrika Grufman (For more information on this feature, see here.) And this week’s in the weeds conceptual/theoretical articles on nuclear weapons and related issues include… North Korea's nuclear weapons programme and the maintenance of the Songun system
  Habib, B. 2011. North Korea's nuclear weapons programme and the maintenance of the Songun system, The Pacific Review, 24:1, March 2011. pp.43-64.

  “Indeed, it is the North Korean regime’s long-term vulnerabilities – weak economy, agricultural inefficiency, energy shortages, rigid political system and ideological fragility – that make the argument against the regime’s willingness to denuclearise so persuasive.” (p.59)

  Habib makes the case that North Korea is unlikely to ever abandon its nuclear weapons. Instead he argues that they are likely to continue modernizing their existing arsenal. The author outlines two main arguments for his conclusion. The first is that the North Korean nuclear weapons programme has been ongoing for decades and Pyongyang has never shown any great willingness to disarm. Secondly, the country’s status as a nuclear power gives them leverage in international negotiations which they would not otherwise have. Habib argues that this is not only needed to help the country’s broken economy, but this status is used by the regime as a nationalistic rallying symbol.
• GOP Presidential Candidates on Foreign Policy
  12/14/2011 11:56:25 AM EST
  The U.S. presidential election is less than a year away and the media is currently filled with news regarding the Republican presidential candidates. The week after Thanksgiving, Project for Excellence in Journalism reported that the 2012 election received 23% of all media coverage, and that number will only rise as we get closer to D-day. In light of this, the Center has put together a foreign policy profile on our webpage for each Republican candidate in the race. You can check it out here.
• Where we mine academic/industry writing on nukes so you don't have to, #9
  11/30/2011 10:13:35 AM EST
  By Andrew Carpenter and Ulrika Grufman (For more information on this feature, see here.) And this week’s in the weeds conceptual articles on nuclear weapons and related issues include… Fatwas for fission: Assessing the terrorist threat to Pakistan’s nuclear assets
  Blair, C. P., Fatwas for fission: Assessing the terrorist threat to Pakistan’s nuclear assets, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.  67:6, 2011, pp. 19-33.

  “Based on unclassified information, neither the optimists nor the pessimists positions are defensible in fact, both positions only review assumed terrorist capabilities and putative vulnerabilities of Pakistan’s nuclear assets.” (2011)

  Charles Blair examines the threat that terrorist groups pose to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.  He finds that optimists who think that the warheads are very safe, and pessimists, who think that the warheads are in imminent danger of falling into terrorist’s hands are both wrong.  Blair finds the two sides get it wrong in determining the vulnerability of nuclear weapons and in their interpretations of terrorist’s perception of the value of nuclear weapons.   Pessimists do not consider that the most capable groups in Pakistan, the Pakistani Taliban, have not demonstrated a desire to acquire nuclear weapons.  Optimists do not consider the high value of nuclear weapons.  
• Securing insecurity
  11/21/2011 02:30:32 PM EST
  A joint report on Pakistan by the Atlantic Magazine and the National Journal highlights some important issues in U.S.-Pakistani relations with regards to nuclear weapons. It also offers insight into the geopolitical situation that plagues the region as a whole, such as the conflict in Afghanistan, the rivalry between India and Pakistan, and Iran’s regional and nuclear ambitions. The main aim of the U.S. should be to ensure the security of nuclear weapons and vulnerable nuclear weapons material in the region even though this entails looking at a broader range of issues than the threat posed by terrorism. In the report, Graham Allison, an expert on nuclear weapons from the Belfer Center at Harvard, argues that there are three big threats with regards to Pakistan and nuclear weapons:
  

    1. A terrorist theft of nuclear weapons (a nuclear 9/11 or Mumbai).
  

  2. The transfer of nuclear weapons to a state like Iran.
     
  3. The takeover of a nuclear weapon by a military group during a period of state instability.

• Where we mine academic/industry writing on nukes so you don't have to, # 7
  11/08/2011 09:42:58 AM EST
  By Andrew Carpenter and Ulrika Grufman (For more information on this feature, see here.) And this week’s in the weeds conceptual/theoretical articles on nuclear weapons and related issues include… National missile defense and (dis)satisfaction
  Quackenbush, S.L. & Drury, A. C., 2011. National missile defense and (dis)satisfaction. Journal of Peace Research. 48:4, July 2011. pp.469-480.

  “Our empirical analysis finds no support at all for the extant, informal arguments that the development and deployment of missile defense by the United States actually creates dissatisfaction in other states.” (p.479)

  This article by Stephen L Quackenbush and A Cooper Drury tries to address the question of whether the development of a U.S. missile defence affects deterrence stability. They take this question a step further by arguing that you first have to establish whether dissatisfaction with a national missile defence causes instability. Secondly, you need to investigate whether the development of a U.S. missile defence has caused dissatisfaction in other states. By using a game-theoretic model of deterrence they conclude that if the development of a national missile defence system causes dissatisfaction in other states, then this can make deterrence more difficult. This is because the dissatisfied states have more reason to challenge the status-quo. However, when examining whether the U.S.’ development of a missile system has caused dissatisfaction in other states, they found that this was not the case. They thus conclude that the development of an American missile defence does not affect deterrence.