|
|
|
 |
| Home > V7N1 Spring 2012 |
|
|
|
V7N1 Spring 2012
|
|
 |
|
A Dirty World
The Seoul Nuclear Security Summit Tackles Global Challenges
The risks posed by nuclear materials present the world with a unique set of security challenges, whether they involve attempted acts of terrorism or the consequences of natural disasters such as the earthquake and tsunami that damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant. The Seoul Nuclear Security Summit on March 26-27 brings together 58 world leaders to discuss the best ways forward.
|
|
|
A Letter from the Editors
Chung-in Moon and David Plott
Dear Reader,
We devote a large proportion of this edition of Global Asia to the complex and wide-ranging security issues that will be front and center at the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit that takes place March 26-27. The hope is, as South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Sung-Hwan Kim writes in our pages, that this summit will build on the achievements of the first Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC, in 2010. In a sign of the seriousness with which the international community is taking this endeavor to improve nuclear security and ultimately create “a world free of nuclear weapons,” 58 world leaders will attend the summit in Seoul.
|
|
|
Cover Stories
|
|
Seoul’s Turn: The Second Nuclear Security Summit
By Sung-Hwan Kim
On March 26-27, 2012, Korea will host the second Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul. Building upon the achievements and agreements from the first summit held in Washington, D.C., in 2010, the Seoul Summit will provide an invaluable opportunity for leaders worldwide to further substantiate this endeavor.
|
Nuclear Security at the Seoul Summit
By Sharon Squassoni
Coming in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident, which starkly reminded the world of the perils posed by nuclear materials, the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit faces a host of challenges. Sharon Squassoni lays out what is at stake, what outcomes can be expected and those that, unfortunately, cannot.
|
Nuclear Safety and Security After 3/11
By Peter Hayes
The Japanese earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011 did more than just devastate much of the country and unleash a local nuclear disaster. Peter Hayes notes that the events at the Fukushima nuclear plant exposed a host of design flaws in current nuclear technology whose solutions are linked to dramatically unsettling security issues.
|
Follow the Knowledge: Tracking ‘Nuclear-Capable’ People and Organizations
By Andre Buys
It is comforting to believe that if a country abandons its nuclear weapons program, as South Africa did in the early 1990s, a threat to nuclear proliferation has ended. But as Andre Buys, who was closely involved in the South African program, argues, there remains the challenge of tracking all of the individuals and organizations that have the nuclear knowledge to pose a continuing threat.
|
Nuclear Power in China: How It Really Works
By Xu Yi-chong
China is one of the few countries in the world firmly committed to rapidly expanding the use of nuclear power. In so doing it has adopted the formal trappings of international standards and regulations. Despite this, Xu Yi-chong argues that the corporate, governmental and regulatory framework in China remains confusing and captive to many entrenched interests that interfere with a clear and safe regulatory environment.
|
Global Non-Proliferation and The Taiwan Dilemma
By Togzhan Kassenova
In the pursuit of nuclear security, Taiwan represents a special case for the international community, because its legal status as an ‘outsider’ prevents it from formally participating in the many global arrangements to prevent proliferation of WMD material and know-how. Togzhan Kassenova explores what Taipei itself has done to strengthen domestic proliferation controls, and what remains to be done.
|
Time for ASEAN to Take Nuclear Security Seriously
By Raymund Jose G. Quilop
With several Southeast Asian nations poised to build nuclear power plants in the near future, the issue of nuclear security must move up on the region’s agenda. In the past, writes Raymund Jose G. Quilop, ASEAN has been chiefly concerned with keeping nuclear weapons out of the region, but the new era of terror networks requires a firm response from the association.
|
Strategic Trade Controls in Asia: Learning by Example
By Stephanie Lieggi & Robert Shaw
As Asian countries face the challenge of strengthening trade controls on nuclear materials, they need to develop human resources and skills to monitor a highly technical field. An innovative program in the United States has helped train Chinese officials, write Stephanie Lieggi and Robert Shaw, and its benefits should be applied to Southeast Asia.
|
South Asia’s Nuclear Security Tightrope
By Debi Prasad Dash
The volatile South Asian region has long suffered from war and instability. In that context, the tensions between two nuclear-armed states, India and Pakistan, pose a special security challenge, writes Debi Prasad Dash. Despite legal safeguards, the danger of terrorists seizing nuclear material is real and frightening.
|
Education for a Safer World: Developing the International Nuclear Security Academy
By Hosik Yoo
The Washington Nuclear Security Summit in 2010 laid the groundwork for the establishment of international training and education centers to improve knowledge on non-proliferation and nuclear security issues. As Hosik Yoo writes, South Korea has stepped forward with an ambitious plan to establish the International Nuclear Security Academy, with construction already getting under way.
|
|
The Debate
|
|
|
Is Reform in Burma Real?
|
A Bumpy but Better Road Lies Ahead
By Philip Bowring
No one can doubt that Burma has moved forward over the past 18 months, and however skeptical one may reasonably be about the motives and goals of those behind the changes, there is still momentum towards reform. |
The Certainty of Uncertainty
By Aung Zaw
Despite moves toward reform, there are many vested interests in Burma that could derail the process — the army, the government bureaucracy, moneyed cronies, and so on. The one thing that is certain is that things remain uncertain. |
|
Feature Essays
|
|
Asian Governance in a Hyperconnected World
By Chiemi Hayashi & David Gleicher
The Geneva-based World Economic Forum conducts an annual survey of risk perceptions over the coming decade with the aim of stimulating discussion on possible ways of mitigating them.
|
A Modest Leap Forward: Why the US-North Korea ‘Leap Day Deal’ Has Potential
By John Delury & Chung-in Moon
The tangled knot that is the North Korean nuclear issue is closer to some kind of resolution due to the surprise deal announced by Pyongyang and Washington on February 29. Or is it?
|
Opportunities and Obstacles: Revelations From a Dialogue With North Korea
By Chung-in Moon
In the absence of normalized relations between the US and North Korea, so-called “Track Two” dialogue plays a key role in the relationship. From March 7 to 9, North Korea’s chief nuclear envoy, Vice Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho, made a rare visit to New York for a conference that illustrated both the opportunities for and obstacles to rapprochement between Pyongyang and Washington.
|
Trade Winds: Big Power Politics and Asia-Pacific Economic Integration
By Takashi Terada
Recent years have seen a proliferation of activity promoting free trade agreements in the Asia-Pacific region. The recent push by the US to give greater weight to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, however, could help to reshape the course of trade liberalization and big power politics in Asia, writes Takashi Terada.
|
21st Century Asian Cities: Unique Transformation, Unprecedented Challenges
By Bharat Dahiya
The sustained economic growth of Asian economies in recent decades has brought into focus the important role played by cities. The first-ever United Nations report on The State of Asian Cities 2010/111 shows that they have led a unique transformation that is characterized by explosive demographic expansion, economic dynamism, local and national development and reduction of overall poverty in the region. |
Time to Tame American Military Interventionism
By S.R. Joey Long & Shiping Tang
As a result of massive military power and geographical advantages that keep the country isolated from the horrors of war on its soil, American citizens have tended to view foreign military interventions as relatively painless and popular. |
Why Pick a Fight With China?
By Walter C. Clemens, Jr
US policymakers note that China in March announced plans to raise its defense budget by 11.2 percent, while Chinese officials maintain that defense spending has declined as a share of GDP in the last three years. People’s Daily says Washington’s ‘return to Asia’ strategy is ‘causing disturbance in China and neighboring countries.’ Beijing denies it is competing militarily with the US or Europe. |
Sizing Up Taiwan’s Election
By Yun-han Chu
The fierce presidential election in January was watched closely by much of the world for signs whether Taiwanese voters would endorse the island’s policy of closer economic integration with mainland China. Yun-han Chu examines the implications of President Ma Ying-jeou’s re-election. |
|
Book Reviews
|
|
Long Reviews
Seeking Harmony in the Middle Way
Reviewed by Gibung Kwon
Everywhere we turn, we see bewilderment over the meaning of universal rights, human dignity and progress. As people witness human suffering caused by natural and man-made calamities, how do we reconcile the values of humanity with the fact that the marginal and the poor still suffer from discrimination and oppression? |
Short Reviews
Nuclear Safety Is Everyone’s Business
Reviewed by Taehwan Kim
The ominous alarm rung by the Fukushima nuclear accident, however disastrous, is unlikely to reverse the longer-term dramatic increase in global demand for civilian nuclear power. Skyrocketing global electricity demand and increased concerns over energy security and greenhouse gas emissions, among other factors, are enough to validate this projection.
Can Korea Defy Its Deadly Past?
Reviewed by Taehwan Kim
“Nonkilling” is not so widely used a term as “nonviolence” in the social sciences, and, in particular, political science. In choosing their title, the editors of this book intend to describe “a Korea in which no Koreans kill other Koreans, no foreigners kill Koreans, and no Koreans are sent abroad to kill foreigners.”
Which Countries Develop and Why
Reviewed by Taehwan Kim
In the second half of the 20th century, the wealth gap between advanced and developing countries began progressively to narrow, and this pattern is likely to continue until the middle of this century, according to Economics Nobel Laureate Michael Spencer. He describes this 100-year-old trend, which began after World War II, as the “Next Convergence,” and contrasts it with the widening wealth gap that marked the 200 years leading up to the 1950s.
In Defense of Dictatorship
Reviewed by John Delury
Although couched in the sometimes clinical language of political science, Tuong Vu’s basic argument in Paths to Development in Asia, is brutal: Asian leaders who destroyed internal opposition from rival elites and the public should get credit for building states with the capacity for rapid economic development.
China Is Doing Things Differently
Reviewed by John Delury
In 2005, US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick coined a new term to define the international community’s expectations of rising China: We want you to become a “responsible stakeholder,” Zoellick said. The term stuck, and now Peking University’s Wang Yizhou, a leading foreign policy thinker in the “liberal” camp, offers a kind of Chinese counter-proposal.
Who Will Fight for Burma’s Future?
Reviewed by John Delury
“Here, in this small but strategic slice of Asia, the decline of the post-Western world is perhaps more evident than anywhere else,” Thant Myint-U writes of Burma. “In this intra-Asian world, relations with China are paramount … Will India ever become the ‘balancer’ of China in the region?”
Pax Confuciana? Don’t Believe It
Reviewed by John Delury
China’s leaders have been trying for years to reassure the world that Beijing is committed to something they call “peaceful rise” — we’ll get rich, and even strong, but never aggressive. A main argument is cultural: in essence, that aggressive behavior is un-Confucian, and as such, un-Chinese. Political scientist Yuan-Kang Wang has put this claim to the test of history.
Peering Into the Future of Energy
Reviewed by John Delury
The long-awaited sequel to his bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning 800-page The Prize, Daniel Yergin’s The Quest continues the exploration of the modern world’s building block — energy. As billions more people, Asians in particular, join the middle class, will fossil fuels run out before a transition to alternative energy? Or will a security threat cause systemic risk to the global energy system? Or will nature itself, in the form of climate change, be the undoing of the quest for energy security?
|
