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| N. Korea's nuclear test raises tension, shows progress toward viable weapon - Washington Post Posted: 12 Feb 2013 08:25 AM PST SEOUL — With its detonation Tuesday of a "smaller and light" nuclear device, North Korea moved closer to its top technological goal: building an atomic weapon small enough to mount on a long-range missile. Such a capability, if North Korea achieves it, would turn the secretive police state from a regional menace into a global one and raise the stakes for neighboring and Western countries, including the United States, that have so far been unable to influence Pyongyang's behavior. Security analysts cautioned there is no immediate way to verify the North's claim that it has successfully manufactured a smaller — or miniaturized — warhead, and they added that the North sometimes exaggerates its claims. Still, the country's latest nuclear test marks the clearest sign yet of its intentions and could be followed by subsequent blasts — tests that are necessary if the North wants full confidence that its nuclear devices work reliably, analysts say. The North hinted at such a path Tuesday, with its Foreign Ministry saying in a statement that it was prepared to take unspecified "second and third stronger steps in succession" if the United States maintained its "hostile approach" toward the North. Tuesday's test was conducted in the face of strong opposition from the United States and its allies. It also drew sharp condemnation from China, North Korea's strongest patron. President Obama said the North's weapons program represented a "threat to U.S. national security and to international peace and security." The North detonated its device in a sealed tunnel carved horizontally into a remote North Korean mountain, setting off a brief seismic wave. The explosion appeared to be slightly more powerful than nuclear tests carried out by Pyongyang in 2006 and 2009. This was the first test carried out under Kim Jong Eun, the young, third-generation leader who appears to favor the us-against-everybody militancy honed by his father and grandfather, with the United States characterized as the archenemy foil. "These provocations do not make North Korea more secure," said Obama, who on Tuesday evening is expected to call for nuclear arms reductions in his State of the Union speech. "Far from achieving its stated goal of becoming a strong and prosperous nation, North Korea has instead increasingly isolated and impoverished its people through its ill-advised pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery." If North Korea is taken at its word, it now has a device — weighing less than 1,000 kilograms, or 2,200 pounds — that is "missile-deliverable," said Jeffrey Lewis, an East Asia nonproliferation expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. "This does make them more of a threat," Lewis said. Still, said Siegfried Hecker, a scientist who has visited the North's nuclear facilities several times, "such a weapon can only be used in a suicide attempt," because any attack by North Korea would draw such a strong counter-attack. "My opinion is, no, it's not a game-changer," Hecker said. "In the end, what it does, it makes the North Korean deterrent more credible." |
| Obama to announce 34000 troops to be home from Afghanistan in 1 year - Los Angeles Times Posted: 12 Feb 2013 09:24 AM PST President Barack Obama will announce in his State of the Union address that 34,000 U.S. troops will be home from Afghanistan within a year, a senior administration official said Tuesday. That's about half the U.S. forces currently serving there, and marks the next phase in the administration's plans to formally finish the war by the end of 2014. The U.S. now has 66,000 troops in Afghanistan, down from a peak of about 100,000 as recently as 2010. The U.S. is still finalizing plans for the size and scope of its military presence after the war ends. The White House has said it would be open to leaving no troops in Afghanistan, though it's likely that a small presence will remain, in keeping with the Pentagon's preferences. Obama won't announce troop numbers beyond 2014 in Tuesday's speech and has not yet made that decision, said the official, who requested anonymity in order to discuss the troop drawdown ahead of the president. Obama discussed the next phases of the drawdown with Afghan President Hamid Karzai during a day-long meeting in Washington last month, the first meeting between the two leaders since Obama's re-election. The two leaders agreed to accelerate their timetable for putting Afghan forces in the lead combat role nationwide, moving that transition up from the summer to the spring. Obama will announce the troop drawdown and the future of the U.S. role in Afghanistan during a joint session of Congress that is otherwise expected to be dominated by the economy and other domestic issues. Foreign policy has intruded in recent days, however, and the White House quickly condemned North Korea early Tuesday for its nuclear launch hours before Obama's address. The president is expected to make further remarks on this in his primetime speech. Some private security analysts, as well as some Pentagon officials, worry that pulling out of Afghanistan too quickly will leave the battle-scarred country vulnerable to collapse. In a worst-case scenario, that could allow the Taliban to regain power and revert to the role they played in the years before 9/11 as protectors of al-Qaida terrorists bent on striking the U.S. Many Americans, however, are weary of the war, according to public opinion polls, and are skeptical of any claim that Afghanistan is worth more U.S. blood. Registered voters are roughly split between those who say the U.S. should remove all troops and those who favor leaving some troops in place for counterterrorism efforts, according to a recent Fox News poll. The Obama administration gave the first clear signal in early January that it might leave no troops in the country after December 2014. Administration officials have said they are considering a range of options for a residual U.S. troop presence of as few as 3,000 and as many as 15,000, with the number linked to a specific set of military-related missions like hunting down terrorists. |
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