<p>The aim of this paper is to analyze the North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il’s personality and its influence on North Korea’s negotiating behavior regarding the nuclear issue. Through the theory of social identity shaping and personality disorder, this study has generated a hypothesis by the operationalization of the theoretical framework. By using these analytical methods the following conclusions have been drawn:</p><p>Kim Jong-Il had experienced a sense of loss and damaged self-esteem in his childhood. He had tried to compensate for these feelings through the film industry (which served as an ideological tool) in order to regain his father’s affection, and he succeeded in becoming recognized for his political ability. However, he overcompensated for these feelings of low self-esteem by removing his potential political enemies. The experiences made him acquire an idiosyncratic character and personality disorder. This study has found that North Korea’s nuclear negotiations with the United States since 1993 have reflected Kim Jong-Il’s personality.</p><p>The model of the study can be used as a basis for further academic studies in the practical exploration of the correlations between a country’s foreign policy and its leader’s personality.</p>

This research was conducted to determine the effectiveness of using commercial satellite data to detect covert nuclear weapons programs. Seven-band Landsat Thematic Mapper data covering the Pahute Mesa (an area within the United States Nevada Nuclear Testing Site), acquired on October 16, 1985, were analyzed to determine if underground nuclear test sites were spectrally distinguishable from the surrounding area. The analysis consisted of four steps: (1) analyzing the raw data, (2) manipulating the raw data through contrast stretching, filter application, matrix algebra, and principal components analyses, (3) identifying parameters that affect classification of underground nuclear tests and (4) selectively limiting parameters. The results of limiting parameters showed that a supervised classification of a signature created with a five-original-pixel seed of one representative, known test site provided an accurate classification of most known test sites. To further eliminate erroneous classification of roads and other areas of similar reflectance, these areas were seeded to create a second signature. This signature, whose spectral responses were different, was then used in a simultaneous classification. This classification further eliminated erroneous classification of non-test site areas, demonstrating that commercial satellite digital data can aid in the detection of covert nuclear weapons programs, in this case, underground nuclear testing. An application of the classification scheme used is proposed to confront a scenario in which a country seeks additional verification of another party's proposed violation of test ban treaties. / Department of Physics and Astronomy

The United States-Japanese missile defense cooperation signals yet another step in Japan's continuing trend of "normalization" and official acknowledgement that Japan has a significant military force. This thesis analyzes the current status of the Japanese missile defense debate and assesses factors shaping the Japanese commitment to joint missile defense with the United States. Three major inter-related trends mark the course of Japanese post- Cold War SDF evolution, relations with the United States and the missile defense debate. These include a willingness to relax legal considerations on the use of military force, the expansion of the roles for the JSDF, and the responsiveness of Japanese decision makers to external factors, notably the requirement to improve relations with the United States and the threat perceived from North Korea. This represents a shift to a more military-based security outlook away from the traditional notion of "comprehensive security." These trends point invariably to the amendment of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. To maximize U.S. interests, Washington must pursue a balanced and limited missile defense in East Asia and actively undertake measures to avoid the perception of a threat to Chinese nuclear deterrence.

This thesis analyzes the current intelligence reform initiatives in light of multiple recommendations from post-9/11 commissions tasked with studying intelligence shortcomings. Using North Korea as a case study, it examines how reform efforts will increase capabilities to better understand Pyongyang's WMD programs and affect U.S. strategy on North Korea. Three reform sets should significantly improve U.S. understanding of North Korea's WMD programs. Collection reforms should allow intelligence agencies to gather more information to gain increased insight into Pyongyang's WMD programs. Analysis reforms will develop alternative methods and create streamlined procedures to avoid failures such as those witnessed in Iraq. Collaboration reforms should enable the Intelligence Community to shed its "stovepipe" mentality, facilitating unity of effort in reducing intelligence gaps on North Korea's dangerous programs. Intelligence reform, while necessary, is insufficient to deal with the North Korean threat. An engagement strategy could help the Intelligence Community better understand North Korea and its WMD programs by bringing Pyongyang into the international fold and lowering its isolationist tendencies. Engagement could increase intelligence collection opportunities and give decisionmakers more relevant information yielding better decisions and improved counterproliferation efforts. Finally, ongoing reforms should better equip policymakers to tackle broader issues such as terrorism and counterproliferation.

Since the end of the Cold War, the emphasis on nuclear deterrence has declined. The rise of China has generated a voluminous literature on power transition theory and whether China and the United States can avoid the “Thucydides Trap.” A lacuna in this literature is the role that nuclear deterrence plays in the strategic dynamic between the United States, Japan, and China. This dissertation fills this lacuna by analyzing the role that nuclear deterrence plays in the military strategies of Japan, China, and the United States. How do China and Japan internalize and understand nuclear deterrence theory in ways that depart from the Cold War paradigm? What effect do dissimilar conceptions of nuclear deterrence theory have on the nuclear and conventional force structure and strategies of each country? To understand the reasons for variation in nuclear strategy in East Asia, I argue that contra systemic theories Japan legitimizes its military capabilities in an extended nuclear deterrence framework based on ideationally driven constitutional theory. Departing from Japan’s strategic mindset during the Cold War, China now occupies the place of the “Other” in Japanese national identity, thus in part explaining its shift to a more pro-active military posture. This is to say that it is not China’s rise that preoccupies Japan, but China’s rise that influences Japanese strategic behavior. Lastly, I argue that China’s assertive foreign policy behavior and nuclear strategy are driven not by structural incentives dictated by the international system, but by ideational and historical imperatives under the rubric of the “China Dream (zhongguo meng)” and “National Rejuvenation (minzu fuxing).” Using analyses of Japanese and Chinese language sources, e.g., official government and defense documents, newspapers, books, and journal articles, this dissertation makes two major contributions. First, departing from the dominant and acultural structural realist and game theoretic approaches to nuclear deterrence theory, it offers an alternative “thin constructivist approach” that considers distinct ideational determinants of each country’s approach to nuclear deterrence theory and their effect on nuclear strategy. Second, it uncovers dissimilar approaches to nuclear escalation that depart from Cold War-derived models.

This dissertation argues that Pacific literature is haunted by a form of ecological aggression known as nuclear colonialism. The Pacific is the region of the world where Western nations tested most of their nuclear and thermonuclear weapons – an extreme form of colonial occupation that will impact both the land and the people for hundreds of thousands of years. This study analyzes Pacific works published post World War II, from Māori poet Hone Tuwhare’s 1964 collection of poetry to riMajel oral performer Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner’s 2017 videoart, focusing in particular on the francophone works of writers identifying as Kanak, Mā’ohi, and Ni-Vanuatu. Through a series of close-readings of this multilingual and transnational corpus, it argues that nuclear colonialism functions as a leitmotiv informing both the politics and the poetics of this anticolonial corpus, despite the fact that nuclear violence is often denounced in between the lines, through oblique and diffuse references mirroring the ubiquity of radioactivity itself.

In 1990's, the North Korean leaders opened the military nuclear program in order to avoid the collapsing trend which affected many totalitarian regimes at that time. Thanks to the specific geographical position, Inter-Korean dispute became a very important issue of foreign policy of many great powers such as United States of America, People's Republic of China, Japan, or Russian Federation. This nuclear program is generally considered as a tool of threatening in order to maintain the regime and secure the food and energy assistance. In this thesis, the North Korean threatening policy is applied to various concepts dealing with the deterrence theory introduced by many authors.

Thesis (M.A. (International Relations))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, 2016 / The Six Party Talks is a multilateral forum created to facilitate the DPRK’s (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea) denuclearisation, between 2003 and 2007. This paper will look at how the character of the relationship that North Korea had with other states allowed the North to manipulate the Talks in such a way that it managed to continue with its nuclear weapons programme. The content of these Talks makes them unique and shows how power perception (heightened in negotiations that involve a focus on deterrence, state survival and regional stability) dictates outcomes. The intent of the study is to explore how ‘power’ can be manipulated because it has to be mediated by perception. In essence, ‘perception’ creates a space for North Korea to manipulate the ‘reality’ within which all the states involved function. This study aims to show that it can build on currently existing assumptions that relate to negotiation and power, specifically Zartman’s explanation of power as a perceived relation. The paper argues that within the context of denuclearisation, the understanding of power perception needs to be qualified. It explores whether, in the context of the Six Party Talks in particular, ‘power’ can be analysed with a purely realist paradigm. Constructed meanings for resources that seem to exist purely within an objective reality (for realists) can alter the value of these resources. The argument therefore builds onto the realist foundation of Zartman’s approach to the analysis of negotiations, by showing how a state like North Korea can change the value of an objective reality by creating certain meanings for the elements that comprise this reality. It is interested in building on certain assumptions made by realists (including Hans Morgenthau (1993)), as well as certain assumptions concerning a structural approach to the analysis of negotiations (Zartman 2008: 100); in order to provide a more nuanced perspective regarding North Korea’s behaviour during the Six Party Talks, in relation to its interactions towards the other parties in the Talks (specifically the US, China and South Korea), as well as their reactions to the North’s provocations. To create this nuance, it uses constructivist elements to show how North Korea, during the time in which the Six Party Talks took place, manipulated reality to such an extent that it dictated the options that the other states had in relation to the DPRK’s nuclear weapons programme. / MT2017

"Vor dem Gipfeltreffen in Moskau hatten die Präsidenten Russlands und der USA einen Neustart in den bilateralen Beziehungen und ein Zwischenergebnis bei den Verhandlungen über die Reduzierung der strategischen Offensivwaffen versprochen. Was wurde erreicht und was bleibt zu tun?"

Robust and reliable quantitative proliferation resistance assessment tools are critical to a strengthened nonproliferation regime and to the future deployment of nuclear fuel cycle technologies. Efforts to quantify proliferation resistance have thus far met with limited success due to the inherent subjectivity of the problem and interdependencies between attributes that contribute to proliferation resistance. This work focuses on the diversion of nuclear material by a state and defers other threats such as theft or terrorism to future work. A new approach is presented that assesses the problem through four stages of proliferation: the diversion of nuclear material, the transportation of nuclear material from an internationally safeguarded nuclear facility to an undeclared facility, the transformation of material into a weapons-usable metal, and weapon fabrication. A complete and concise set of intrinsic and extrinsic attributes of the nation, facility and material that could impede proliferation are identified. Quantifiable inputs for each of these attributes are defined. For example, the difficulty of handling the diverted material is captured with inputs like mass and bulk, radiation dose, heating rate and others. Aggregating these measurements into an overall value for proliferation resistance can be done in multiple ways based on well-developed decision theory. A preliminary aggregation scheme is provided along with results obtained from analyzing a small spent fuel reprocessing plant to demonstrate quantification of the attributes and inputs. This quantification effort shows that the majority of the inputs presented are relatively straightforward to work with while a few are not. These few difficult inputs will only be useful in special cases where the analyst has access to privileged, detailed or classified information. The stages, attributes and inputs of proliferation presented in this work provide a foundation for proliferation resistance assessments which may use multiple types of aggregation schemes. The overall results of these assessments are useful in comparing nuclear technologies and aiding decisions about development and deployment of that technology.