North Korea

Two days ago, during an off-the-record session with a group of foreign policy experts, Vice President Dick Cheney got a question he did not want to answer. “Mr. Vice President,” asked one of them, “I understand that on Wednesday or Thursday, we are going to de-list North Korea from the terrorism blacklist. Could you please set the context for this decision?”

Mr. Cheney froze, according to four participants at the Old Executive Office Building meeting. For more than 30 minutes he had… more

...Steven Clemons, who also writes the blog The Washington Note, said there were signs within the Administration and the State Department that the lifting of the terrorism designation was imminent.

"This is seen as a key confidence-building step by North Korea and China in moving towards North Korea's eventual return to the nuclear non-proliferation club," he wrote.

But he said the office of the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, was a dissenting voice in the Administration's internal discussions... LINK

Verifying North Korea's nuclear programs is going to be more of a political question than a technical one, with key American negotiators having to make a "gut call" on whether the communist state is being truthful, a U.S. nonproliferation expert said Wednesday.

Jeffrey Lewis, director of nuclear strategy and nonproliferation initiative at the New America Foundation, said the central issue will be North Korea's declaration of its suspected uranium enrichment program.

Access to operating records allows a comfortable degree of… more

The Bush administration has maintained a hard-line policy stance on Syria. It has not had high-level diplomatic relations with the country since the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005. The U.S. has alleged that Syria played a role in the assassination.

Neoconservatives appear to be re-igniting a political narrative that fits neatly with the infamous cast of the "axis of evil". While not explicitly mentioned, Syria has often been designated as a junior partner… more

After years meting out regular scoldings to Iran, Syria and North Korea, the United States is set to come face-to-face with its sworn foes in a sudden burst of diplomatic activity.But the Bush administration fiercely denies it has undergone an overnight foreign policy conversion on the road to Damascus, Tehran or Pyongyang.After weeks of accusing Iran of boosting Iraqi militias and the dispatch of two aircraft-carrier groups to the Gulf, top officials will now not rule… more

Rocky US-Russian relations will complicate US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's bid to win Moscow's support to contain Iran and North Korea over their nuclear ambitions, analysts say.

Rice heads to Moscow this week after a visit in Asia aimed at pressing Washington's partners to fully enforce UN sanctions against North Korea over Pyongyang's nuclear test.

The fact that Rice has to travel to Moscow is already a bad sign, said Anatol Lieven, an expert at the New America Foundation, a… more

OSAKA -- Despite Tokyo's pledge to remain nonnuclear and assurances from top U.S. officials that their most important Pacific ally will do just that, North Korea's apparent atomic test is expected to further weaken taboos about talk of a nuclear-armed Japan in both Washington and Tokyo.

Influential academics and researchers, as well as politicians on both sides of the Pacific, have long called for Japan to seriously consider developing a nuclear deterrent...

"Key American Japan-handlers are helping to coax politicians like (former… more

The United States is bogged down in what appears to be an unwinnable war in Iraq; it is facing very unpleasant options in regard to neighboring Iran’s nuclear program; senior NATO officers say that the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating fast; in the former Soviet Union, Georgia and Russia are moving toward military confrontation, with the U.S. seemingly unable to restrain either; in large swaths of Latin America, new nationalist and populist movements are challenging U.S. interests.

And now the totalitarian… more

And then there were nine. Nine nuclear powers, that is, including North Korea. There will be more.

Four points to make:

First, there will be much hand-wringing here in the United States about what the American president -- Bill Clinton, George W. Bush -- did or did not do to stop the North Koreans from ramping up their nuclear program over the past dozen years or so.

Yes, it is true the Clinton administration did not bargain effectively with the North Koreans. And,… more

While much of the world is fixated on the conflict in the Middle East, there is a whole other drama playing out on the Korean peninsula that is just as crucial to global stability. Last week's U.N. Security Council resolution condemning North Korea's nuclear ambitions has not only ratcheted up tensions in the region, it is forcing South Korea to rethink its "sunshine policy" of peaceful engagement with the North. After eight years of rapprochement with the government of Kim… more