Word: nuclearization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Just over four months into Barack Obama's presidency, North Korea has become his first foreign policy crisis. To force itself to the top of Obama's agenda, the North has resorted to just about every nasty tactic short of war - testing both a long-range rocket and a nuclear bomb, arresting two American journalists and sentencing them to harsh prison terms. With such provocations, North Korea seems intent on establishing that it is more dangerous than ever. Kim Jong Un is at least part of the reason...
...intelligence sources in Washington and East Asia, plenty. The North Koreans have chosen what could have been a period of weakness - with an ailing leader trying to arrange the eventual transfer of power to an untested son - to state that it does not intend to give up its nuclear weapons program. "It's pretty clear they have made the strategic choice to be a nuclear power, period, and will no longer hold out the weapons program as a thing to be bargained away in talks with the U.S. and its neighbors," says Bruce Klingner, a former deputy chief...
...thus far predicted that mass unrest will be crushed, as in the 1968 Prague Spring or the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and it is dangerous to take the side likely to lose; especially since President Obama wants to move quickly to negotiations with the regime over Iran's nuclear program...
...ways. The U.S. President was appropriately cautious after the elections - criticizing the use of violence against the protesters, but not the results of the vote. It seems clear that his Administration will continue to seek negotiations that will, among other things, attempt to increase the transparency of Iran's nuclear program. If the Iranians are smart, they will respond quickly. If they continue to dally, Iran's electoral embarrassment will make it easier for Obama to rally other countries behind a tougher sanctions-and-deterrence plan that will further isolate Iran. But that may be exactly what the current regime...
...narrative that would justify a bloody crackdown, a massive use of military force that would terrify the opposition into submission. Clearly the limited violence unleashed by the Ahmadinejad camp thus far has failed to intimidate Mousavi and his supporters. But while it would almost certainly empty the streets, the "nuclear option" of a Tiananmen Square-style crackdown would be a potentially fatal injury to the regime's sources of legitimacy: its limited but lively democracy and the backing of Shi'ite clergy. Discord among the mullahs is growing, with some senior clerics, like the esteemed house-arrested dissident Ayatullah Hossein...