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Ploughshares Blog: Nuclear proliferation

Three Paths toward a Nuclear Deal with Iran
It’s easy to miss amid the escalation of sanctions and nuclear bravado, but EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Tehran’s lead negotiator Saeed Jalili will meet on May 15 in Istanbul to follow up on last months talks between the P5+1 and Iran. The last round of multilateral talks ended inconclusively, and it has taken a little over a month to get even a one-on-one meeting on the calendar. While no date has been set for a new round of talks with representatives from all seven countries at the table, the upcoming meeting between Ashton and Jalili provides an opportunity to begin planning for how to make negotiations more productive than previous attempts. Getting on a road more promising than the current intermittent exchanges will require a few key steps: Read more »
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Posted by Reza Marashi on May 13, 2013
Nuclear proliferation, Partners, Reza Marashi, Iran, United States
Ploughshares Fund Engages on North Korea
As tensions have risen in the face of North Korea’s heated rhetoric, the U.S. media has been running non-stop, and often inflammatory, coverage of every new development. Unfortunately, much of the coverage has been neither useful nor informative and cuts against the opinion of many North Korea experts by touting the DPRK as a direct threat to the United States. Most experts aren’t concerned with the prospect of a preemptive military strike from North Korea. We’ve seen this pattern of provocation before. Instead, experts worry that the situation could spiral out of control, spurring a real crisis on the Korean peninsula. Read more »
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Posted by Rebecca Remy on April 17, 2013
North Korea, Brookings Institution, Center for American Progress, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, International relations, Joe Cirincione, Joel Wit, Nuclear proliferation, Philip Yun, Union of Concerned Scientists, Video
Weighing Benefits and Costs of International Sanctions Against Iran
The Iran Project, a group of leading national security experts and former officials, and a grantee of Ploughshares Fund, has published a new report about the costs and benefits of international sanctions against Iran. The report, endorsed by 38 leading national security figures, springs from the observation that “the costs of sanctions themselves are not routinely addressed in the public or policymaking debate.” Read more »
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Posted by Yelena Altman on December 7, 2012
Bill Luers, Jim Walsh, Nuclear proliferation, Thomas Pickering, Iran
The Mouse that Keeps Roaring: The United States, China and Solving the North Korean Challenge
Say what you will about North Korea. It’s “backwards,” impoverished, isolated, led by an enigmatic, secretive leader, or even that it is “the land of no smiles” whose people live a life on the edge of survival. To varying degrees, these negative descriptions are true. It’s hard to escape the stark reality that a nation of some 23 million people with reasonably rich mineral and agricultural resources produces less than one-tenth than the state of Pennsylvania – roughly the same size but with half the population. Read more »
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Posted by Paul Carroll on September 27, 2012
China, Japan, North Korea, Foreign Policy, national security, Nuclear proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Paul Carroll, South Korea, Yale Journal of International Affairs
Costs and Benefits: The Iran Project
A quick scan of daily headlines will prove that there has been no shortage of debate over Iran’s nuclear program. The trouble is, the debate thus far has been “fact-free, partisan, and not very nuanced,” as MIT professor Jim Walsh commented yesterday at the launch of a new report from The Iran Project. Read more »
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Posted by Leah Fae Cochran on September 14, 2012
Israel, Bill Luers, Chuck Hagel, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Jim Walsh, Joe Sestak, Military Strikes, Nuclear proliferation, Thomas Pickering, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Iran
Documents Show Japan Repeatedly Rejected Nuclear Weapons
The following is a guest post by Gregory Kulacki, Senior Analyst & China Project Manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists.  Read more »
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Posted by admin on August 1, 2012
Japan, AP, Asia, Gregory Kulacki, Japan Defense Agency, Non-Proliferation Treaty, Nuclear proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Partners, Union of Concerned Scientists
Pyongyang, we have a problem…
Critics of a recent deal between North Korea and the United States had barely caught their breath before an announcement today by Pyongyang that North Korea plans to launch a satellite atop a long-range rocket in mid-April. It’s hard to argue that this isn’t a setback. But it’s also premature to write the whole thing off. Read more »
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Posted by Paul Carroll on March 16, 2012
Diplomacy, North Korea, International security, Leap Day Agreement, Missile Testing, Nuclear proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Pyongyang
Lessons from Fukushima
Anniversaries have a way of generating reflection and re-assessment, and that is a good thing. But next week’s anniversary of the Fukushima catastrophe risks missing a huge piece of the story – that ALL things nuclear are inherently risky and that our assumptions about how we can control them need to be rethought. Read more »
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Posted by Paul Carroll on March 9, 2012
arms control, disarmament, Japan, fukushima, nuclear energy plants, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Nuclear Power, Nuclear proliferation, Nuclear technology, Nuclear Weapons
Day #9: Paving a Path to Peace
South Asia is one of the world’s nuclear hotspots. Pakistan posesses the one of the world’s fastest growing nuclear arsenals and is politically unstable. India, also armed with nuclear weapons, has been to war with Pakistan three times in the last three decades. And Afghanistan, plagued by war and terrorism, threatens to destabilize the region. Read more »
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Posted by admin on December 21, 2011
Afghanistan, Women's Security Network, 12 Days of Ploughshares, atlantic council, Center for Strategic and International Studies, India, International Crisis Group, Mumbai, Nuclear proliferation, Partners, Pakistan
Day #2: Bipartisan in a Partisan World
In Washington, it seems everything is a partisan issue these days. From government spending to immigration laws, tax policy to war strategy, policymakers are trapped in a partisan gridlock. Ploughshares Fund works to break through that gridlock, mobilizing support for issues on which everyone can agree. Read more »
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Posted by admin on December 9, 2011
12 Days of Ploughshares, Cato Institute, Center for American Progress, International relations, New Security Consensus, Nuclear proliferation, Partners, Red Cross, United States