CSIS has released a paper on cooperative threat reduction and North Korea (.pdf format) that foreign policy wonks out there will no doubt love.
North Korea??s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missiles
are a clear and present danger to the United States, the countries of Northeast Asia
and the international community. Therefore, their verifiable elimination will be a
key element in building peace in the region and in strengthening the global nonproliferation
regime. The Beijing Six-Party Talks represents the beginning of that
effort, dealing with the immediate threat posed by Pyongyang??s nuclear weapons
program. But the process of eliminating all these programs?nuclear, chemical
and biological and missiles?could stretch out over the next decade, require a
series of agreements and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. It will be a difficult
process that will require using all means to secure North Korean agreement and to
provide reasonable assurance that Pyongyang is living up to its commitments.Cooperative threat reduction (CTR) programs should be an important part
of this effort. In operation since 1991 in Russia and elsewhere, these programs
involve the host country working with others to eliminate the dangers posed by
weapons of mass destruction. Such cooperation can include securing or
eliminating weapons, their components or the facilities used to produce them. It
may also involve redirecting resources formerly devoted to WMD programs,
particularly production facilities and technical personnel, to civilian purposes. In
2002 the G-8 countries pledged to spend $20 billion on such programs. While
CTR has primarily focused on Russia and the former Soviet states, U.S.
legislation passed in 2005 made it possible to spend threat reduction funds in
countries such as North Korea.
Read the rest on your own.
(Hat tip to reader)
2 Comments
As long as these misseles are aimed at China they are not dangerous.
Who pays the salaries of these knuckleheads - the same NORK office that funds the Mansions Special “Volunteers” Corps with the proceeds of int’l drug trafficking and counterfeiting? Ah, no, the Carnegie Foundation.
Anyway, assuming with his Hennessey intake that he’s capable of one, their suggestion has got to be Kim Jong Il’s fantasy wet dream. The ROKs already have been palying this game with the NORKs since the early ’60s. It got transformed into something very like CTR when Kim “I bought won the Nobel” Dae Jung went to Pyongyang with his arms laden with tribute, and its picked up pace under The Great Pretender and the Roh-Nothings. The US and Japan joined the effort for awhile with the ‘94 Accords promise of LWRs. The United Ninnies contributed tons of food. Where are the dividends in real threat reduction from the North - not momentary suspensions of preposterous rhetoric, but weapons dismantled, dividions disbanded, etc. etc.? Why would anyone believe that the NORKS are going to do anything remotely reciprcal other than the sheer pollyanish wish that they will?
Seriously, I will dutifully follow the train of their argument to the end, but I expect the dstination to be the land of academic futility.