The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University announced today that it has launched the Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPi). GDPi’s mission is to help develop governance norms for the global digital ecosystem that reinforce democratic values, universal human rights and the rule of law. It will serve as a multi-stakeholder collaboration hub at Stanford for technologists, governments, civil society and the private sector actors. GDPi will identify and incubate global policy and governance innovations that enhance freedom, security and trust in the digital realm. 

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"If the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons were easy to solve, the problem would have been solved long ago. In addressing the threat from North Korea, a very real threat in which the North Korean’s could develop ICBMs that could deliver nuclear weapons to the American mainland, the United States must confront two very difficult challenges," explains Stephen Krasner in the Lawfare. Read the whole article here. 

Japan is an increasingly divided country between elites and the public as it grapples with whether it should acquire nuclear weapons itself and not rely on America’s protection, a Stanford scholar found.

Sayuri Romei, a political scientist and predoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), has a new working paper that describes how Japanese society is grappling with its nuclear future. Romei researches the U.S.-Japan relationship, nuclear security, nationalism and identity in East Asia.

“The shift in the Japanese nuclear debate at the turn of the 21st century did not stem directly from a willingness to deter the new and urgent looming military threats, but was rather the result of a very limited security role that collapsed after the end of the Cold War, and took the shape of a disoriented and shaky Japanese identity,” she wrote.

Japan, a country that suffered two nuclear bombs in WWII, has a well-justified historical “nuclear allergy” that long restrained nuclear weapons ambitions, Romei said. But today, internal questions about Japan’s national sense of identity is causing elites to reconsider the nuclear military option.

She said it’s true that the tone in that debate has been changing in recent years as Japan’s security landscape changes – North Korea and China are building up their nuclear and conventional military programs. On top of this, when the Cold War ended in 1991, the “nuclear umbrella” that the U.S. afforded Japan became “theoretically less justified in an evolving security context,” as Romei describes it. Japan, in turn, sought reassurance from the U.S. that it would not abandon her.

Rethinking Japan's security

Yet the turn of the 21^st century is hardly the first time that Japanese elites have discussed a nuclear option, or that they have felt a sense of mistrust towards their ally, she said. Rather than a break from the past, Japanese elites’ behavior suggests a continuity in their thinking:

“It would therefore be more correct to talk of a renaissance of the nuclear debate, rather than an erosion of the nuclear taboo,” Romei said.

What is new in today’s nuclear statements, however, is the increasing intertwining between rethinking security identity issues, a rising nationalism, and a more challenging regional environment, she said.

Along with the necessity to rethink Japan’s security arrangement, pre-WWII nostalgia and nationalism have been growing in Japan as Prime Minister Shinzō Abe's constitutional reforms are being enacted, Romei said. And so, some top officials are reevaluating Japan's nuclear policy in favor of a more self-sufficient approach that fits their increasingly nationalist mood.

“The line between the rethinking of a Japanese security identity and pushing a nationalist agenda into the current nuclear policy is very thin,” wrote Romei.

No longer do Japanese nationalists wish to be perceived as the “faithful dog” in the U.S-Japan alliance, as they resent the “lack of a healthy postwar nationalism,” she said. Restarting some of the country’s nuclear power plants after the Fukushima Daiichi accident was even described by one leading Japanese politician as the first step toward the country acquiring nuclear weapons of its own, she added.

Though some Japanese scholars argue that Japan has been preparing for the acquisition of nuclear weapons since the end of WWII, Romei said that the link between the two sides of the nuclear coin was never really visible in Japan: indeed, the government has historically succeeded in making a sharp distinction between nuclear power for peaceful vs. military purposes.

‘Still very sensitive’

One well-known trait of Japan’s nuclear history is that Japan has a strong popular peace and anti-nuclear movement with public opinion polls set against acquiring nuclear weapons, Romei said. Peace, security, and nuclear matters are in fact deeply linked in postwar Japanese history.

“The constant and consistent work of peace associations and the massive organized demonstrations against Prime Minister Abe’s security reform plans that took place across Japan during the entire summer in 2015 are a relevant sign that public opinion is still very sensitive to a change of pace,” she wrote.

But public opinion and elite opinion “do not speak the same language and are heading in different directions,” she wrote. Elites – political  and  thought leaders, for example – continue to allude to a nuclear option for Japan to defend itself unilaterally, with or without the American nuclear umbrella.

“This sudden proliferation of nuclear statements among Japanese elites  in 2002 has been directly linked by Japan watchers to the break out of the second North Korean nuclear crisis and the rapid buildup of China’s military capabilities,” Romei said.

Trusting America?

But those external threats, she said, are actually used as a “pretext to solve a more deep-rooted and long-standing anxiety that stems from Japan’s own unsuccessful quest for a less reactive, and more proactive post-Cold War identity,” Romei noted.

The level of trust that Japanese elites feel towards their American ally is an important leitmotiv in the country’s nuclear debate, she said.

While during the Cold War U.S. credibility was mainly linked to Japan’s limited role as an ally in a bipolar era, after the collapse of this system Japanese elites slowly began their quest for a new identity, thus questioning and changing the meaning of the U.S.-Japan alliance, Roemi said. Furthermore, the first decade of the 21^st century brought about a new nationalist layer that complicates the issue of trust in the ally by adding a populist tone to the domestic nuclear debate.

Romei believes that if the gap in elite-public opinion continues to widen, Japan’s longstanding “nuclear allergy” could be overwhelmed as the government – not necessarily by design – gradually creates the political and cultural conditions that seemingly justify building nuclear weapons, Romei said.

“The turn of the century brought a new strategic environment in which Japan was forced to question its own post-Cold War identity, without eventually succeeding in an actual change,” she wrote.

Romei urges a careful monitoring of Japan’s nuclear debate moving forward – the major political shift in the U.S. caused by the November 2016 presidential elections is a key reason. America’s future political direction will ultimately affect Japan’s sense of identity by easing the questioning of the U.S.-Japan security arrangement.

While the study of the Japanese nuclear debate cannot necessarily offer a prediction of the country’s future nuclear policy choices, it can serve as an important tool to gauge the evolution of Japan’s own perception of its role in the current world order, she said.

Romei is a nuclear security predoctoral fellow at CISAC for 2016-2017 and a doctoral candidate in international relations at Roma Tre University in Rome, Italy. Her dissertation focuses on the relationship between Japan’s nuclear mentality and its identity evolution in the post-WWII era. 

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Sayuri Romei, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-5364, sromei@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

(The following interview with CISAC's Siegfried Hecker appeared in the May 15 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.)

By Elisabeth Eaves

Siegfried Hecker has the rare distinction of being an American who has visited both North Korean and Russian nuclear facilities. An expert on plutonium science and a professor at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, Hecker is also a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Here he answers questions on Pyongyang’s nuclear capabilities, its most recent missile test, and what influence the new president of South Korea might have on the regional balance of power. He explains how North Korea developed its arsenal despite global opposition, and says there is no conceivable way the United States can destroy all North Korean nuclear weapons with military might.

BAS: Is North Korea currently capable of delivering any nuclear weapons any distance? How do you know?

SH: We know they have nuclear weapons that work because they have tested five nuclear devices over a period of 10 years. That test experience most likely enables them to miniaturize nuclear warheads to make them small and light enough to mount on missiles. They have also demonstrated over many years that they can launch relatively short-range missiles reliably. We have to assume they can mate the warheads and the missiles so as to reach targets anywhere in South Korea and Japan.

BAS: What does Pyongyang’s most recent missile test, which took place on Sunday, tell us about their capabilities and intentions?

SH: The missile experts are still analyzing the test as North Korea releases details and photos. However, they already agree that this missile outperformed any previous North Korean missile launch. It is reported to have traveled nearly 800 kilometers (497 miles) for 30 minutes (splashing down in the Sea of Japan south of the Russian border) and reached an altitude in excess of 2000 km (1243 miles). Since it was launched in a lofted trajectory, it may be able to travel at least 4,000 km (2486 miles) if launched on a standard trajectory. 

This would make it a real intermediate-range ballistic missile that puts Guam within range. But the more important objective of this test was to move North Korea closer to having an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). 

BAS: What sequence of events might lead Kim Jong-un to launch a nuclear attack on one of its neighbors like South Korea or Japan? 

SH: I cannot imagine any circumstance that would lead Kim Jong-un to launch an unprovoked nuclear attack on anyone. However, we know so little about him and even less about the military that controls the country’s strategic rocket forces that we can’t rule out a miscalculation or a desperate response to a crisis. It is conceivable that they believe a small nuclear weapon could be used to de-escalate or terminate a conventional confrontation on their terms. 

BAS: How big is the largest nuclear bomb tested by North Korea, and can you give a sense of the level of damage such a bomb would cause? 

SH: The highest yield of the North Korean tests to date is in the range of 15 to 25 kilotons—an explosive power similar to the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing roughly 200,000 immediate fatalities and lingering radiological health effects for many survivors. If such a weapon were to be exploded over Seoul, it is possible that several hundred thousand people or more would perish. 

BAS: If Pyongyang were to attack South Korea or Japan, what would be the immediate and longer-term effects?

SH: The immediate effects would be horrific, the longer-term effects catastrophic. If several bombs exploded over South Korean or Japanese cities, there could be a million or more casualties. Beyond that, the cities would face massive evacuations and long-term building and grounds decontamination efforts. Dangerous radioactive clouds would drift over South Korea, Japan, China, or Russia, depending on the wind flow. An international order would be destroyed. 

BAS: How close is North Korea to being able to attack somewhere as far distant as the United States with a nuclear weapon? What technical leaps does it need to make to achieve that capability?

SH: I believe that North Korea does not yet have the capability to reach the US mainland with a nuclear-tipped missile. It has a very sparse and not very successful long-range rocket test history, although the missile test on Sunday brings it somewhat closer. Its solid-fueled rockets, which are of greatest concern because they can be launched quickly and from hidden locations, have failed regularly. It will need to miniaturize warheads to a much greater extent than it is currently likely capable of doing, and the warheads will have to survive the stresses at launch and the high temperatures and stresses during re-entry. At the current pace, North Korea may be able to make the technological progress required for a nuclear-tipped ICBM in five or so years. 

One corollary question that one must ask, however, is why would North Korea want to strike the US mainland? It is quite clear that it wants to threaten Washington with such a capability, but to launch would be suicidal, and I don’t believe the regime is suicidal. 

BAS: Besides being able to threaten the United States and its allies, what else could the Kim regime be trying to accomplish with its nuclear weapons?

SH: We need to look closely at how the North’s growing nuclear arsenal may change its domestic policies and foreign relations. Domestically, the nuclear arsenal may help justify the regime’s continued call for sacrifice by its citizens. But it may also provide a more solid foundation for the state’s security, allowing it to devote more resources to economic growth. Foreign visitors have reported that living conditions in Pyongyang have improved markedly in the past few years despite international sanctions. Kim Jong-un has officially promoted the dual policy of military and economic growth. 

Looking abroad, the regime’s nuclear arsenal could make it more aggressive in dealings with South Korea and the rest of the region. We have not seen a return to the North’s especially aggressive behavior of the late 1960s. Nevertheless, being one of fewer than 10 states in the world with nuclear weapons may change Pyongyang’s foreign policy toward its neighbors. And we don’t know how possessing a nuclear arsenal will affect the regime’s behavior in a crisis. 

BAS: Is it plausible that a US pre-emptive strike could destroy all North Korean nuclear weapons, fissile material, and nuclear production facilities? Why or why not?

SH: There is no conceivable way the United States could destroy all North Korean nuclear weapons. It is not possible to know where they all are. Even if a few could be located, it would be difficult to destroy them without causing them to detonate and create a mushroom cloud over the Korean peninsula. 

It is even less likely that the United States could locate and demolish all of the North’s nuclear materials. Missile launch sites could be destroyed, nuclear test tunnels could be bombed, production sites could be destroyed, and North Korean missiles could possibly be intercepted after launch. But North Korea is developing road-mobile and submarine-launched missiles, which cannot be located reliably. New test tunnels can be dug. And while we know North Korea has covert production facilities, we don’t know where they are. The US military may not be able to intercept missiles after launch. The bottom line is, military strikes could be used to set back the North Korean nuclear program but not to eliminate it.

Moreover, I believe the US and South Korean governments consider the consequences of any military intervention unacceptably high—in spite of the proclamation that “all options are on the table.” I believe the military option will only really be on the table if North Korea initiates military actions. 

BAS: There is talk that North Korea is about to conduct a sixth nuclear test. What do you make of these reports? Do you have any insight into what to expect?

SH: North Korea has ample technical reason to test again as it moves toward developing a credible nuclear-tipped ICBM. The test site appears to be ready. I believe the only thing that inhibits them from testing is the political fallout they would face—particularly from China and the new South Korean administration.

BAS: You recently estimated that North Korea has 20 to 25 nuclear weapons. How do we know?

SH: My estimate that it has sufficient plutonium and highly enriched uranium for 20 to 25 nuclear weapons is highly uncertain because we know so little about its uranium enrichment capacity. All estimates are to a large extent based on the observations my Stanford colleagues and I made during my last visit to Yongbyon in November 2010. To my knowledge, no outsiders have been in their nuclear complex since. So the only direct evidence we have is from that 30-minute tour and discussions with their experts at the centrifuge facility. The rest of the estimate is based on indirect evidence—that is, satellite imagery, and what North Korea chooses to publicize, combined with modeling of their capabilities and acquisitions. 

BAS: North Korea carried out its first nuclear test in 2006. How was it able to go from that widely condemned first test to today’s arsenal despite global opposition? 

SH: How they developed a threatening nuclear arsenal despite global opposition is a sad reflection on unwise US policies and the international community’s approach to preventing nuclear proliferation. Controlling the supply side of proliferation has been the predominant international mechanism for halting nuclear weapons development, but it failed terribly in the North Korean case. The international export system is leaky enough that a determined government can develop indigenous bomb-building capabilities over time. In North Korea, this process was exacerbated by the fact that once they built the Bomb, sanctions and isolation allowed them to build a whole arsenal instead of forcing them to give it up.

Insufficient attention has been paid to the demand side—that is, to why states want nuclear weapons and what can be done to influence the decision to acquire them. In the North Korean case, the Clinton administration greatly slowed North Korea’s drive to the Bomb with diplomacy. The Bush administration rejected diplomacy, but was unprepared for the consequences. It stood by while North Korea built a nuclear weapon. Subsequent attempts at diplomacy amounted to too little, too late. (This should serve as a lesson on the Iran nuclear agreement: if you kill a deal, you better be prepared for the consequences). The Obama administration was greeted with a North Korean nuclear test in 2009 and was never able or willing to pursue diplomacy effectively. It relied on two tactics, imposing sanctions and pressuring China, while North Korea continued to build its arsenal. Washington and Beijing never got on the same page on how to deal with Pyongyang. 

BAS: South Korea just elected a new president who takes a more conciliatory approach to North Korea than his predecessor. How might this affect the North’s nuclear activities?

SH: In the end, the Korean peninsula nuclear crisis has to be resolved to the satisfaction of the Korean people. South Korean President Moon Jae-in favors diplomatic engagement with North Korea. I believe that at this point, it is imperative for Seoul and Washington to craft a unified strategy on North Korea and speak with one voice. That voice should reflect the new South Korean president’s views on finding a diplomatic resolution. I hope that the Trump administration will support President Moon, and that Pyongyang won’t pre-empt diplomacy with a nuclear or long-range missile test. 

BAS: If you were advising president Trump, what would you tell him to do in the next month regarding North Korea? In the next six months? The next year?

SH: In the next few weeks, after consultation with President Moon, President Trump should send an envoy to Pyongyang to tackle the most immediate danger—that is, to avoid a nuclear detonation on the Korean peninsula. There is a danger that overconfidence or miscalculation by Kim Jong-un, or an unpredictable reaction to a crisis, could result in a nuclear detonation. I also have serious concerns about a nuclear-weapon accident in North Korea, particularly if Pyongyang feels threatened and begins to deploy its nuclear arsenal. Moreover, in the case of upheaval or chaos in the North, who will control the weapons, and what will become of them? 

The next six months should be followed up with additional bilateral US-North Korea dialogue, with Washington separately keeping Seoul and Beijing informed. Washington should stress the seriousness of the situation, but also listen to the North’s concerns. 

These dialogues may then lay the foundation within the next year for a resumption of multilateral negotiations to halt, roll back, and eventually eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons. Talks could also lay the groundwork for normalizing relations between the North and its neighbors and the United States.

Follow CISAC at @StanfordCISAC and www.facebook.com/StanfordCISAC.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Siegfried Hecker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6468, shecker@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

(Amy Zegart, co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, wrote the following essay for The Atlantic.)

Today The Washington Post dropped the bombshell that President Trump had revealed classified information about the Islamic State to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak when the three of them met at the White House last week. You know a story is big when it gets as many concurrent visitors as the story about the infamous Access Hollywood video. There was no hiding near bushes in the dark this time to walk back the damage. Deputy National-Security Advisor Dina Powell declared the story “false,” and the administration also called out the big guns, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster dutifully rushing into the breach to discuss the breach, using oh-so-carefully worded statements about how the president did not reveal “sources or methods” or any “military operations” that were not already known publicly.

So just how bad is the damage? On a scale of 1 to 10—and I’m just ball parking here—it’s about a billion. The story, which has since been confirmed by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Reuters, Buzzfeed, and CNN, notes that the president could have jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State. Not America’s source. Somebody else’s. Presumably from an allied intelligence service who now knows that the American president cannot be trusted with sensitive information.

The type of information Trump cavalierly shared fell under a classification known as “code word,” according to the Post. There are three basic levels of classified information. Confidential information is defined as anything that could reasonably be expected to “cause damage” to American national security if shared without authorization. Secret information is one step up, considered to have the potential to cause “serious damage” if revealed. Top Secret information is a higher classification level still, comprising anything that could reasonably be expected to cause “exceptionally grave damage” to U.S. national security if revealed.

Code word is beyond Top Secret. It limits access to classified information to a much narrower pool of people to provide an extra layer of security. Many secrets are super-secrets—Harry Truman, as vice president, didn’t know about the Manhattan project. He learned of it only after Franklin Delano Roosevelt died and Truman was sworn in as president. Code word classification is so far off the scale, even fake spies rarely refer to it in the movies. Technically, the president can "declassify" anything he wants, so he did not violate any laws. But as Lawfare notes, if the president tweeted out the nuclear codes, he also wouldn't violate the law—but he would rightly be considered unfit for office.

Did Trump reveal intelligence crown jewels or just boast about the fact that he liked diamonds? According to the Post he revealed information about a purported ISIS plot involving laptops. It’s likely, however, that Tillerson, McMaster, the Postand the Times are ALL correct: The president did not reveal sources or methods or military operations. But that doesn’t matter much if he gave away information that will enable the Russians to identify the source or the methods. It looks like he did, since according to the Post’s account he talked about the content of a specific plot, the potential harm, and the location of the city in the Islamic State’s territory where the allied state’s intelligence service detected it. It was almost everything except the GPS coordinates. The denials by Tillerson and McMaster are a classic case of intelligence super-parsing—saying things that are technically and narrowly true but may not be accurate at all. No spin can hide the fact that the breach was deadly serious and reckless in the extreme.

Then there’s the impact on America’s unnamed ally, whom the Post reported was already nervous about sharing such sensitive intelligence with the United States. It is difficult to penetrate the Islamic State, and there is a major risk that this breach will close down a vital source. It’s an even bigger deal in the big picture, potentially jeopardizing intelligence cooperation with other U.S. allies around the world. Trump already raised intelligence eyebrows when he turned his Mar-a-Lago dining area into an impromptu Situation Room after the North Koreans decided to launch a ballistic missile. The president and his aides used the lights on cell phones to illuminate field reports, in full view of resort dinner guests snapping photos. If you’re known as someone who cannot keep a secret, the world’s secret-keepers are not going to tell you much.

“Can you believe the world we live in today?” President Trump said, according to one official in the two Sergeis meeting. “Isn’t it crazy?”

Yes, Mr. President. It’s crazy.

Fellows will arrive at Stanford in July to begin the three-week academic training program taught by Stanford faculty, policymakers and thought-leaders in the technology sector.

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Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law is proud to announce the 2017 class of Draper Hills Summer Fellows, which is composed of 28 leaders – selected from among hundreds of applications – advancing democratic development in some of the most challenging corners of the world.

In Bahrain, Burma, Rwanda and Sudan our fellows are working on peace-building initiatives to create more tolerant and inclusive societies. Judges and lawyers are holding government and criminals accountable and reforming the rule of law in Argentina, Guatemala and the Philippines. Gender rights activists are creating new tools and programs to protect the safety and freedom of women and girls in India, Kuwait and Papua New Guinea.

In Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, Serbia and Ukraine, our fellows are serving inside the government as members of Parliament and senior civil servants to advance reform and new policy agendas. Business leaders in Jordan and India launched initiatives to support more inclusive economic growth and social development.

CDDRL is excited to launch another powerful network of leaders determined to advance change in their communities. They will emerge with new tools, frameworks and connections to enhance their work and deepen their impact on democratic reform.

The 2017 class will mark the 13th cohort of the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program and the fellows will join the Omidyar Network Leadership Forum, an alumni community of over 300 alumni in 75 countries worldwide.