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International efforts, such as the Paris Agreement, aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But experts say countries aren’t doing enough to limit dangerous global warming.
Diplomacy and International Institutions
Treaties and Agreements
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Is the United States Ready to Approve the Law of the Sea Treaty?The White House is pressing for Senate ratification of the Law of the Sea treaty. Some worry it will endanger national security and harm U.S. industry.
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Cirincione: North Korean Agreement ‘A Major Breakthrough’Joseph Cirincione, a leading nuclear nonproliferation expert, says the agreement reached in Beijing at the six-nation talks on North Korea’s nuclear program represents “a major breakthrough.” Cirincione, director of the Nonproliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says that even though there are many details yet to be worked out, “I think we are now looking at an 80 percent chance of getting a final deal.”A frequent critic in the past of the Bush administration’s approach to disarmament negotiations, Cirincione also says the Beijing document is “a major accomplishment for the Bush administration.” He also says the agreement might have some carryover effect into the negotiations now going on to curb Iran’s nuclear programs.He was interviewed on September 19, 2005 by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org.The agreement that was announced today in China on the ending of the latest round of six-party talks on North Korea seemed to be a step forward. What’s your analysis? This is a major breakthrough. We’ve turned a critical nuclear corner on the Korean peninsula. There’s a lot of work yet to be done. There are extremely important details of interpretation, implementation, and verification that have to be worked out, but this is a major success for all the parties concerned. And it’s a major accomplishment for the Bush administration.That’s really interesting, because you’ve been one of those people who has been quite critical of the Bush administration’s policies, right? I have. The Bush administration changed its policy on North Korea and that change is what allowed this victory.For those who haven’t been following the intricacies here, what actually happened starting with Bush’s second term and Condoleezza Rice becoming secretary of state? Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recognized that the existing policy towards North Korea was not working. She slowly and incrementally changed that policy, all the while denying there was any change in policy. She therefore kept the confidence of the president while morphing the policy from one of confrontational posturing into actual negotiations with the North Koreans. You saw in the last few months, for the first time, meaningful meetings between U.S. and North Korean officials; first at low-levels, at the United Nations for example, and then in bilateral talks at the six-party negotiations. There was also a change in tone by the administration with much more respectful references to North Korea—that was clearly noted by the North Korean press, which for example pointed out that in one of his press conferences, President Bush talked about “Mr.” Kim Jong-il. You no longer saw references to pygmies and tyrants. And the U.S. negotiators now had the freedom to actually negotiate instead of being, as they were in the first term, locked into simply reading an agreed-upon statement at these meetings. For the first time, you had actual give and take, actual changes in positions during the negotiations. This proved critical over this past weekend and led directly to this agreement.What are the main points of the agreement? First and most importantly, North Korea agreed to give up its nuclear-weapons programs completely. Is that on condition of anything else happening? There’s no condition in the agreement, although the precise sequencing of how this happens is yet to be negotiated, and this will be perhaps the most important issue. It’s who does what, when, and how do we verify it. And what did the United States agree to? The United States, in turn, agreed to respect the sovereignty of the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea], which they have already said in several statements, and to work toward normalizing relations. That could include, for example, a peace treaty that would finally end the Korean War [that ended with the signing of a 1953 armistice treaty] and bring about formal diplomatic recognition between the two countries. There’s a third part, and this is also quite important, which is that the five countries [the United States, China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia] promised substantial aid and energy assistance to North Korea.Was this an agreement that was worked out by the Chinese essentially, or was it a common effort? The Chinese presented this agreement to the other five nations last Friday, and they told them to take it or leave it; that they had to agree with this. There were urgent negotiations over the last few days. There apparently was some modification in some of the key phrases, in particular the two sentences that refer to North Korea’s right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy and the agreement of the other countries that this would include the provision of a light-water [nuclear] reactor to North Korea. That was the last stumbling block—the key issue that prevented agreement. Apparently late Saturday night, or early Sunday morning, that compromise language was struck and we had a deal.The United States had wanted the North Koreans ahead of time to agree to all sorts of things before promising a light-water reactor, right? Yes.And now it says what? That a light-water reactor will be discussed at an appropriate time? There are two things: First, the U.S. position, up until this point, was that the North Koreans had to completely dismantle their program before there would be any discussion of aid and assistance. North Koreans said, “No, we have to sequence these steps. We’ll do something and you’ll have to do something.” The United States had refused to do that up until now. The second problem has been that in this last round it became clear that economic assistance for the North Koreans meant they would get a light-water reactor. The United States said, “No way. That’s not going to happen,” in part because this would start to look a lot like the 1994 Agreed Framework [negotiated by the Clinton administration], which gave North Korea a light-water reactor [in exchange for ending the North’s nuclear program] and which the Bush administration has been heavily critical of. The United States backed off of that position and agreed to discuss the possibility of getting such a reactor. And these apparently were the key compromises. It wasn’t an all or nothing for the North Koreans, and at the end of the road, there’s still a possibility of getting a light-water reactor. [Chief U.S. negotiator] Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill says for the North Koreans this reactor’s a trophy. What does that mean? That they don’t really need it? The North Koreans placed great symbolic value in getting this. Hill has called this a win-win situation and that’s a very important recognition. All successful negotiations have to be win-win. Each of the parties has to be able to leave the table and go back to their country, or their people, with tangible achievements. They’ve got to be able to proclaim victory. That’s what you have here. The North Koreans can claim victory that they’ve won concessions from the United States to recognize their sovereignty, not to attack them, and to allow them the peaceful use of nuclear energy. The U.S. is claiming victory; they’ve gotten North Korea to give up its entire nuclear program. And the Chinese can claim victory because their patient diplomacy has produced this breakthrough. That’s almost a model for how you want negotiations to work out.Does this have any carryover into the Iranian negotiations that are ongoing? The United States has been insisting that Iran have no nuclear program even for peaceful uses, right? Let me answer that first question. This gets complicated. This will have two effects on Iran: First, it will strengthen the hand of those who want to encourage negotiations to continue and not hand this to the United Nations Security Council. You will hear the country saying, “See, negotiations work. Keep talking with Iran.” On the other hand, once the North Korean deal is finalized, it undercuts the Iranian position by putting out yet another successful model of how a country, by giving up its nuclear weapons, gains diplomatically, politically, and economically. North Korea can join Libya as a successful model of a country gaining more by giving up a nuclear program than it ever could have by continuing one.Of course, under this agreement, North Korea would get a light-water reactor. In other words, they would have the right to some peaceful use of their nuclear energy. Yes. And everyone is agreeing in principle that Iran can have power reactors as well.I didn’t know that. The U.S. position used to be that Iran couldn’t even have their Bushehr reactor that Russia is building in the country now. The United States has come off that position and the red line now is drawn over the ability to enrich uranium to make fuel for those reactors, which of course can also be used to enrich uranium to make material for nuclear bombs. We don’t know yet whether the North Koreans are going to claim that they have a right to enrich uranium to fuel their reactor. The clause recognizing their right to peaceful uses has to be clarified. What exactly does that mean? Is it only a reactor? Or will the North Koreans push to get fuel-fabrication facilities as well? That would be a step too far. I don’t think the U.S. could possibly agree to that.What would you guess are the chances this will actually get finalized? I have been optimistic about the possibility of getting a deal with North Korea and I’m encouraged in that optimism. I think we are now looking at an 80 percent chance of getting a final deal.
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The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming
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Most politicians, policy-makers, and analysts hailed the Kyoto Protocol as a vital first step toward slowing greenhouse warming. Council Senior Fellow David Victor was not among them. In this clear and cogent book, Victor explains why the Kyoto Protocol is unlikely to enter into force and how its failure will offer the opportunity to establish a more realistic alternative. Kyoto's fatal flaw, Victor argues, is that it can work only if so-called emissions trading works. The protocol requires industrialized nations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to specific targets. Crucially, the protocol also provides emissions trading, whereby nations can offset rapid cuts in their emissions by buying emissions credits from other countries. But starting this trading system would require creating emission permits worth $2 trillion—the largest single creation of assets by voluntary international treaty in world history. Even if it were politically possible to distribute such astronomical sums, the protocol does not provide for adequate monitoring and enforcement of these new property rights. Nor does it offer an achievable plan for allocating new permits, which would be essential if the system were expanded to include developing countries. The collapse of the Kyoto Protocol—which Victor views as inevitable—will provide the political space to rethink strategy. Better alternatives would focus on policies that control emissions, such as emission taxes. Though economically sensible, however, a pure tax approach is impossible to monitor in practice. Thus, the author proposes a hybrid in which governments set targets for both emission quantities and tax levels. This offers the important advantages of both emission trading and taxes without the debilitating drawbacks of either. A Council on Foreign Relations Book
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Arms Control and the U.S.-Russian Relationship
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Five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and Russia stand at a crossroads on arms control. Many of the arms control regimes established by Republican and Democratic administrations are under serious challenge in both countries, with the potential to damage U.S. security. With these concerns in mind, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom joined together to sponsor an independent Task Force on U.S.-Russian arms control. The Task Force brief was to assess current and evolving political-military circumstances and the arms control regimes, and to recommend a U.S. policy for the next twelve months. In effect, the Task Force was asked how Americans in particular should think about arms control in the wake of the Cold War's end and its importance, how to preserve what was worth preserving, and how to change what might need to be changed. The Task Force’s assessment, while sober and clear-eyed throughout, is not pessimistic. Inherent in every prescription is the conviction that sustained, patient, and realistic American diplomacy—if consistently supported by attention from the highest levels of the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government and of the governments of its allies and friends, and joined with responsible Russian authorities— can produce workable and timely solutions to the most important arms control issues. -
Success or Sellout?
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The U.S.-North Korean Agreed Framework of October 1994 holds the potential for resolving the Nuclear proliferation threat from the North, promoting stability on the Korean Peninsula, and furthering North-South dialogue. Yet it also could exacerbate tensions on the peninsula and introduce new problems into U.S. ties with both South Korea and Japan. The key now lies in Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo; how they manage the pact's implementation will determine—even more than its terms—whether the accords leads to good or ill. This report—the result of an expert bipartisan task force—traces the history of the negotiations, explains what the accord contains, what it requires from the parties, and provides responses to commonly raised questions and criticisms. It also suggests some guidelines for the United States, South Korea, and Japan as they implement the agreement—or protect themselves against its failure. -
Nuclear Proliferation
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The international community stands at a historic crossroads. In less than three months, delegations from around the world will convene in New York City to decide whether to renew the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). With 168 members, the NPT is the most broadly supported agreement of its kind in history. Yet despite this broad support, the outcome of the vote to extend the Treaty is very much in doubt. That outcome matters enormously. Halting the spread of nuclear weapons must be a top priority not just for the United States but for the entire international community. But succeeding in this effort will be even harder in the future than it was in the past. Indeed, the risk of the spread of nuclear weapons—and perhaps even the risk of nuclear use—is probably greater now than it was during the dark days of the Cold War.
