Word: nuclearism
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What's the world's most worrisome nuclear-proliferation hotspot? Answer: the diplomatic table in Beijing where six-party talks are periodically convened to discuss North Korean nuclear disarmament. Every time the international negotiators gather-or even threaten to gather-Pyongyang seems to take another step toward unrestrained nuclear breakout...
...summer of 2003, when the talks were first planned, Pyongyang merely insisted on its right to hold what it coyly called a "war deterrent." Five rounds of dialogue later, there has been real progress-not in the negotiations, but in North Korea's nuclear program. After defiantly admitting that the nation already possessed nukes and later stating it would not get rid of them "under any circumstances," the North last October shocked the world with its first nuclear test. You might think that the diplomatic sophisticates in charge of the negotiations would have detected a discouraging pattern by now. Apparently...
...Perhaps most astonishing of all, even Washington is now straining for another chance to coax Pyongyang into voluntary nuclear self-disarmament. Over the past year, the Bush Administration, once the only actor in the cast committed to pressing North Korea into nonproliferation compliance, has performed a dizzying climb-down. Gone are U.S. demands for the complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement of the North's nuclear programs. American diplomats no longer even talk of North Korea's highly enriched-uranium program, whose public exposure by State Department officials in 2002 triggered the ongoing proliferation drama. Since North Korean officials now insist they...
...this sounds fine, but it's also a little like campaigning for delicious, low-fat cake. Who's going to disagree? Greens love anything clean and renewable and have even, for the most part, come around to the virtues of nuclear power, providing strict safety standards can be maintained and someone can figure out what to do with the waste. The energy industry loves nukes and clean coal, and if they have to make a little room at the table for windmills and solar panels, well, that can't hurt too much. Plus, Bush also called for doubling the size...
...power of Abe - widely described as a nationalist before his election last September - had liberal critics fearing a return of the dark days of prewar military rule. That's hardly been the case: Abe has so far proved admirably pragmatic in international affairs, and even the threat of a nuclear North Korea has done little to stir Japan from its accustomed postwar pacifism. To the Japanese soldiers in Letters, war is hell, the same as it is everywhere else. Still, Japan is clearly taking steps to become a normal country with a normal military, and the unfinished legacy...