Suchergebnisse

Wade L. Huntley, Ph.D., is senior lecturer in the National Security Affairs department at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and an independent consultant on international security issues. He has worked extensively engaging governmental officials and non-governmental experts on a range of contemporary international policy challenges. His publications include four edited volumes and over fifty peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and scholarly essays on topics of nuclear weapons proliferation, global security studies, security and arms control in space, US foreign policies, East and South Asian regional security, and international relations theory.

Delineating the impact of North Korea's nuclear program on overall military spending among the other principal states of Northeast Asia is challenging. This article presents a foundation to address that challenge. After summarizing key elements of North Korea's nuclear program, the article introduces frameworks to examine the security consequences of the program for the Northeast Asian region and assess North Korea's motivations to pursue nuclear capabilities. The reviews indicate how these frameworks can be used to deduce hypotheses of more specific linkages of North Korea's activities to other states' military spending decisions, some strategically motivated and others more influenced by symbolism and domestic politics. The article concludes with observations on contemporary developments derived from the analysis. (Asian Perspect/GIGA)

Since the collapse of the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework in 2002, the Bush administration has failed to restrain North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions, principally because of the constraints of highly idealized convictions. Resolution of the Korean nuclear crisis now depends on U.S. initiative beyond the boundaries of these predispositions and beyond the terms of the nuclear crisis itself.

This essay critically assesses the Bush Administration's strategic and nuclear weapons policy initiatives in historical context. The assessment first delineates the genuinely original elements of the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review. The analysis then considers the potential impact of tactical nuclear weapons planning on prospects for deterring WMD attacks by both 'rogue' states and non-state (terrorist) groups, and explores how this planning risks creating 'commitment traps' increasing pressures to follow through on nuclear threats. The essay concludes that Bush Administration strategic policy initiatives are less explicable by 'realist' criteria than by a more 'idealist' strategy premising a militantly active US global role.