A LOOK AHEAD
What’s next on nonproliferation and international security, in Washington and around the globe.
-- August 3: Iran -- the focus of new House sanctions legislation for its contested nuclear energy program -- inaugurates Hassan Rouhani as its next president. U.S. leaders were not invited to attend, but guess who was: Kim Yong-nam, the head of North Korea’s parliament. Those not in Tehran may view it all on the Persian Gulf nation’s Press TV webcast.
-- August 4-6: A senior Japanese diplomat is to visit Beijing for talks regarding North Korea with Wu Dawei, China’s special representative for Korean affairs. Junichi Ihara is expected to discuss the North’s contested atomic arms development program with Wu, who serves as chairman of six-party talks aimed at denuclearizing Pyongyang. The talks have not made progress since 2008.
-- August 6: Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings and Mackenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute will be among those “dissecting” the Defense Department’s recently concluded “Strategic Choices and Management Review,” which Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel this week said could take a bite out of either the size or modernity of the U.S. nuclear-armed bomber fleet, among other military efforts. The discussion takes place at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
-- August 6: On the 68th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and others will speak in Livermore, Calif., on the topic: “Unfinished Business and Our Most Urgent Responsibility: Banning the Bomb at the Livermore Lab and Globally.” The event will be sponsored by nearly three dozen peace organizations, including Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Fremont chapter of Pax Christi.
-- August 6: Wondering how investment in nuclear-armed bombers or ICBMs might play against the Air Force’s other, more conventionally oriented modernization priorities? That might be a good question to pose to Maj. Gen. Steven Kwast, who leads Air Force participation in the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review. The two-star general is slated to appear at a Military Strategy Forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
