Nuclear Policy News – September 17, 2018

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Top News

North Korea’s Trump-Era Strategy: Keep Making A-Bombs, but Quietly
New York Times

A virtual visit to a nuclear test site
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist

What’s in a name? Korean ‘peace’ and breaking the deadlock
War on the Rocks

East Asia

The New Nuclear Normal in North Korea?
The Diplomat9/17/2018
North Korean military parades are a grand affair and, in recent years, were of great interest to analysts who studied the short, medium, and intercontinental ballistic missiles on show to gauge its advances in nuclear capability.

Pompeo accuses Russia of actively working to undermine North Korea sanctions
Reuters9/14/2018
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Russia on Friday of actively working to undermine international sanctions on North Korea and said the enforcement of the steps was essential to convince Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.

North Korea’s Trump-Era Strategy: Keep Making A-Bombs, but Quietly
New York Times9/16/2018
For seven years, Kim Jong-un has pursued an in-your-face strategy for building his nuclear arsenal: detonating blasts underground and firing missiles into the sky, all to send the message that his country’s nuclear buildup is irreversible.

Opinion and Analysis

What’s in a name? Korean ‘peace’ and breaking the deadlock
War on the RocksDuyeon Kim
9/14/2018
Everyone wants peace on the Korean Peninsula. But what does “peace” mean and how is it achieved? This is where it gets tricky and political, dividing the hawks and the doves. It might be even more difficult for the United States and North Korea to agree on what peace means, including the meaning and implications of all of the interim steps, like a declaration ending the Korean War. The meaning of “peace” might be just as hard, if not harder, to agree on as the much-contested definition of “denuclearization.”

Jeffrey Lewis: North Korea’s Nuclear Disappearing Act
National InterestJeffery Lewis
9/10/2018
There were no major surprises in North Korea’s September 9 military parade. Although North Korea has not yet broadcast the parade, images taken by journalists in Pyongyang show that the parade line-up was identical to the lineup seen in a satellite image taken on August 22. Contrary to some earlier prognostications, the parade on Sunday was smaller than the one in February, smaller than past parades, and did not include any nuclear-armed systems.

Special Interest

A virtual visit to a nuclear test site
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist9/14/2018
It can be difficult to grasp how nuclear weapons shape world events without confronting the cold, hard facts. There are an estimated 15,000 nuclear warheads on Earth, and the nine nuclear states that have them ran some 2,000 nuclear tests to produce them. Sky-high numbers like that get you part of the way.

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