North Korea sends message, ‘Don’t ignore us!’

Mandate author, John Feffer discusses the challenges the Obama administration will face when dealing with North Korea in an article for McClatchy online.

Just as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was arriving in Asia this week, Pyongyang was threatening to test a long-range missile. That’s its way of saying, “Don’t ignore us!” North Korea’s nuclear program is not in the top tier of foreign policy issues facing the Obama administration. The new team in Washington believes it has to deal with other priorities – the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the global economic meltdown, climate change and Middle East peace – before it can address the North Korean conundrum.

But North Korea isn’t waiting patiently for its turn in line. Its economy is in lousy shape. It has difficulty feeding its population. Its leader Kim Jong Il is reportedly recovering from a stroke, and no one knows who will be the next head of state. Firing a long-range missile is one way that North Korea can prove that it’s still alive and wants a deal now.

Read the entire article here.

Chu Confirmation Update: Answering for Past Statements

Mandate author, Bob Alvarez was quoted in a Washington Post blog on Chu’s confirmation today:

In the course of the hearing, the main mission of the Energy Department – making, maintaining and dismantling nuclear weapons, and cleaning up from six decades of nuclear weapon production – got intermittent mention.

Robert Alvarez, who served as a policy advisor to the energy secretary in the Clinton administration, said that the Energy Department is spending about 11 times more money on nuclear weapons than on energy conservation.

Eliminate Nuclear Weapons

We now have the opportunity to change course and eliminate nuclear weapons. Even the prime architects of U.S. nuclear Cold War strategy: George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn-who in large measure helped foster these monstrous arsenals, now advocate for “setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.”

To start us on the path to a nuclear free world the administration should:

• Cut the large U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles of intact warheads by 90 percent over the next five years
• Reinstate the anti-Ballistic Missile Defense Treaty
• Establish an office in the White House National Security Council to coordinate the development and implementation of an Administration plan for nuclear abolition and general disarmament
• Expand the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program
• Ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

Authors: Marcus Raskin and Bob Alvarez