Digests and Blog

Trump’s “Decertification” Decision Sets Washington Up to Violate the Nuclear DealAs expected, President Donald Trump announced Oct. 13 he would not issue a certification to Congress required by U.S. law that is tied to the nuclear deal with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).While withholding certification does not, by itself, violate the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal and Trump said the United States is staying in the agreement for now, his proposed policy toward the deal sets the United States on a course to violate the accord, further isolate Washington from…

This post originally appeared in War on the Rocks. If you thought “repeal and replace,” or perhaps, “repeal and not replace,” was only a strategy for the botched Obamacare repeal effort, you’d be wrong. It seems to also describe the game plan of President Donald Trump and Republican hawks in Congress when it comes to the agreements and norms that underlie the global nonproliferation regime. The Trump administration and Congress face critical decisions over the next several months that could have bigly consequences for the international nuclear order. These include whether to continue…

  While Russia completing the destruction of its once 40,000-metric-ton chemical weapons arsenal last week is cause for celebration, its continued denial of the Assad regime’s use of deadly chemical weapons in Syria is most certainly not. Russia, which destroyed all of its chemical weapons due to its obligation as a state-party to the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), nevertheless still shields the deliberate and inexcusable violation of the CWC by another state-party, Syria. Syria joined the CWC after international outrage erupted following a brutal chemical attack in a Damascus…

 Before taking action to undermine or violate the nuclear deal with Iran, President Donald Trump and the U.S. Congress would be wise to heed the words of Washington’s European partners in the deal, namely that the agreement is working and renegotiation is futile.Ambassador David O’Sullivan of the European Union, Ambassador Peter Wittig of Germany, Ambassador Gerard Araud of France, and Ambassador Kim Darroch of the United Kingdom, joined forces to deliver these messages at the Atlantic Council Sept. 25, just three weeks ahead of the Oct. 15 deadline for Trump to issue or withhold a…

This op-ed originally appeared in Fortune. The nuclear danger posed by North Korea is not new. For more than a decade, the Kim regime has possessed nuclear weapons and has been steadily pursuing the capability to develop compact warheads and longer-range missile systems. But since the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, a bad situation has become far worse. North Korea has accelerated its missile testing and Trump has vowed a military attack against North Korea if it threatens the U.S. or its allies. The risk of conflict through miscalculation by either side is now as severe as the…

 The Trump Administration and its supporters outside of the U.S. government are laboring mightily to convince the international community that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is a bad deal for the United States. Unfortunately for them, Iranian compliance keeps getting in the way.We can see this in the way in which senior U.S. government officials speak to issues of Iranian compliance. During press availability on the margins of the UN General Assembly, Secretary of State Tillerson was careful to note that Iran is in “technical” compliance with the JCPOA, but argued that this is…

EU Affirms Iran Deal Compliance, Rejects Renegotiation EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini stated unequivocally after a ministerial meeting between the P5+1 (China, France Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) and Iran that all parties agreed that the nuclear deal is being fully implemented and there are no violations.She said that the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is delivering on its purpose, and there is “no need to renegotiate parts of the agreement.” Mogherini said that issues outside the scope of the deal should be “…

At the 10th Article XIV Conference aimed at moving the CTBT towards entry into force, the United States and several other “Annex II” states that need to ratify the treaty for it to enter into force remained silent. China and Egypt were the only Annex II states to speak during the conference. At the 9th conference, the United States had voiced support for the treaty. The United States is one of eight countries that must ratify the treaty before it can enter into force. The others are China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan. Of the eight, India, North Korea, and Pakistan…

This op-ed originally appeared on InkStickMedia.com As President Donald Trump threatened North Korea last month with “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” over 50,000 gathered in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, to recall that the world has in fact seen such horrific acts. Among them were survivors of the “fire and fury” that consumed the two cities 72 years earlier. The survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, called hibakusha in Japanese, were small children at the time, octogenarians today. They are a living challenge to Trump’s bombastic remarks; many have…

North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test, which some experts assessed to be a test of a hydrogen bomb, on September 3. At a magnitude of 6.1, according to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, the test was North Korea’s most powerful to date. “Unless there is a more serious, more coordinated, and sustained diplomatic strategy to reduce tensions and to halt further nuclear tests and long-range ballistic missile tests in exchange for measures that ease North Korea’s fear of military attack, Pyongyang’s nuclear strike capabilities will increase, with a longer range and less…