Word: nuclearism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...diplomats have done their best to trumpet the milquetoast sanctions imposed on Iran Saturday by the U.N. Security Council as raising pressure on the Islamic Republic to end its nuclear defiance. But Tehran may instead be buoyed by last week's events in Beijing, where the failure of six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program highlighted the limits of Washington's diplomatic arsenal...
...Following North Korea's October nuclear test, the U.S. had also managed to convince the U.N. Security Council to impose wrist-slap sanctions on Pyongyang. But despite the unanimous support for the sanctions resolution, such key players as China and South Korea made clear that there were strict limits to the pressure they would apply, and that the only game in town remains the six-party talks aimed at persuading North Korea to abandon nuclear weapons in exchange for political and economic incentives...
...sanctions strategy on its head, insisting that no progress was possible as long as the U.S. Treasury Department kept in place measures that have frozen North Korean funds in a bank in Macau, in retaliation for alleged counterfeiting activities. It even threatened to raise the stakes with further nuclear tests. Clearly, North Korea believes its nuclear test has strengthened its bargaining position, and it sees South Korea and China resisting U.S. calls for harsher action as signaling the limited options available to Washington; essentially, the outcome will be dictated more by what Beijing wants than by what Washington wants. While...
...course, key differences between the showdowns with Iran and with North Korea, but most of them work in Tehran's favor: Despite concerns over its transparency and compliance with all requirements of the international monitoring system, Iran is not currently accused by the U.N. of maintaining a nuclear-weapons program, and it remains within the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty - the Security Council's concern is that Iran's defiance of demands over its uranium enrichment program may be a sign that it is assembling the means to build nuclear weapons. (North Korea, by contrast, walked...
...talks underlined the painful truth that, right now, Pyongyang is holding most of the cards. The two principals leading the talks with Pyongyang, Washington and Beijing, are seemingly hamstrung. China is scrambling to find a new approach to its wayward client after being blindsided by the North's nuclear test on October 9, which was undertaken despite a specific request for restraint from Chinese President Hu Jintao. Fearful that putting pressure on the North's fragile economy could lead to an implosion that would send hundreds of thousands of refugees streaming into China's north east, Beijing has hardly...