In light of significant recent developments on the Korean Peninsula, this week’s brief highlights North Korean cyber-operations. While Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program has drawn the most attention recently, North Korea’s cyber capabilities also represent a significant asymmetric capability that has been relied upon both to disrupt enemies of the Kim family as well as produce sources of funding through cyber-enabled crime.
Washington, D.C., December 8, 2017 – The Clinton administration made plans for war against North Korea during the 1994 nuclear crisis. While U.S. officials believed they could “undoubtedly win,” however, they also understood “war involves many casualties,” according to documents posted today by the George Washington University-based National Security Archive.
As President Trump hopscotches across East Asia hoping to develop a viable strategy on North Korean nukes with the regional powers, newly posted declassified documents from the George H.W. Bush administration offer some valuable context on the challenges of dealing with Pyongyang. Trump’s preferred m.o. may be to blow up every strategy, concept, and approach […]
George H.W. Bush chose diplomacy over military force in dealing with North Korean nuclear crisis in early 1990s, as U.S. balanced relations with allies and China
Possible Turning Point for Nuclear Nonproliferation Efforts
Internal Debates, Media Coverage, Pressure from Allies and Neighbors, and Economic Realities Compel Retreat from Decades-Long Plutonium Delusion
U.S.-ROK Relations during the Carter Years Faltered over Troop Withdrawals, Human Rights, an Assassination, and a Coup.
Washington, D.C., April 12, 2017 – The Ford administration had to use a combination of approaches to keep South Korea’s Park dictatorship from going forward with a suspected nuclear weapons program in the mid-1970s, according to documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University and the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project.
Washington, D.C., March 22, 2017 – President Park Chung-hee reportedly instructed South Korean scientists to build nuclear bombs by 1977, according to a secret report to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. The Ford administration accumulated other evidence that raised worries about proliferation and regional instability.
The SAC [Strategic Air Command] Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959, produced in June 1956 and published today for the first time by the National Security Archive www.nsarchive.org, provides the most comprehensive and detailed list of nuclear targets and target systems that has ever been declassified. As far as can be told, no comparable document has ever been declassified for any period of Cold War history. The SAC study includes chilling details.
Washington, D.C., May 29, 2015 — President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger believed they could compel "the other side" to back down during crises in the Middle East and Vietnam by "push[ing] so many chips into the pot" that Nixon would seem 'crazy' enough to "go much further," according to newly declassified documents published today by the National Security Archive.