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Analysis: Preventing Ballistic Surprises

Council on Foreign Relations

July 7, 2006
Prepared by: Eben Kaplan

North Korea's recent missile tests (NYT) elicited harsh words from diplomats and alarmist headlines in newspapers. Japan introduced a Security Council resolution calling for sanctions (LAT), despite Chinese and Russian calls for a milder response. The real concern over North Korea is not its missile stockpile, but its nuclear program. In an interview with Bernard Gwertzman, CFR Fellow Michael Levi explains North Korea's nuclear capability is the "number one danger."

North Korea is not the only rogue regime with nuclear ambitions to make headlines in recent months. The other major offender is Iran, whose nuclear program has been the source of much diplomatic chest-beating but little direct action. Iran is currently deliberating whether to accept a Western package of incentives and begin direct negotiations. The effectiveness of direct talks is discussed in this Online Debate.

These headaches might be avoided if nuclear materials could be kept out of the reach of these countries in the first place. That's the goal of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), described in this new Backgrounder, which was launched by the Bush administration three years ago. As a Washington Qarterly article explains, the PSI was designed to function in a new era (PDF) in which smugglers of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are aided by improved technologies and expanding global trade.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.