Standing before the Seoul National Cemetery, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol vowed to respond “firmly and strictly” (“단호하고 엄정하게”) to any provocations from North Korea. Yoon described North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles as not only a threat to the Korean Peninsula but also a threat to Northeast Asia and the world.
Whether such strong words and military responses to North Korea’s missile tests will deter or provoke it remains an open question and a test for the Yoon administration, now in its third month. What is certain is that tensions will grow on the Korean Peninsula at a time when the U.S. appears distracted by the brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia as well as countering the supposed existential threat posed by China.
To President Biden’s credit, its officials have sought to delink the goals of denuclearization from addressing North Korea’s Covid-19 crisis. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink noted at an event co-hosted by Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Korea Foundation in Washington that the United States “continue[s] to support efforts to provide humanitarian assistance and COVID-19 vaccines to the DPRK. We see this humanitarian crisis as separate from making progress on denuclearization and we do not and will not link the two.”
The problem is that action speaks louder than words. And unless diplomatic efforts are given adequate space to succeed, they will be drowned out by military shows of force, the latter of which plays into the North Korean government’s narrative that it is under threat and in need of nuclear weapons to survive.
As South Koreans remember those who fought to defend their nation during the Korean War, American and North Koreans would also do well to remember that while shooting missiles may seem like the right thing to do at the moment, they do nothing to address the fundamental security and political conditions on the peninsula. A true way to honor the veterans of that war would be to stop the saber-rattling and negotiate a peace treaty before missile tests become missile attacks.
Jessica J. Lee was formerly senior research fellow on East Asia at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. She is an expert in U.S. foreign policy toward East Asia, legislative affairs, and transpartisan coalition-building.Jessica’s analysis has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The National Interest, USA Today, the Washington Times, The Nation, Arms Control Today, and Quincy Institute’s news platform Responsible Statecraft. She has testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission and co-authored several Quincy Briefs and Reports, including Toward an Inclusive & Balanced Regional Order: A New U.S. Strategy in East Asia, Beyond Deterrence: A Peace Game Exercise for the Korean Peninsula,, The Folly of Pushing South Korea Toward a China Containment Strategy, and Active Denial: A Roadmap to a More Effective, Stabilizing, and Sustainable U.S. Defense Strategy in Asia.Jessica is a non-resident senior associate fellow at the Asia Pacific Leadership Network, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, a member of the National Committee on North Korea, and a 2021-2022 Arms Control Negotiation Academy Fellow with the Negotiation Task Force at Harvard University. She serves on the board of the U.S. nonprofit exchange program between U.S. and East Asian college students called International Student Conferences.Previously, Jessica led the Council of Korean Americans, a national leadership organization for Americans of Korean descent. Prior to CKA, Jessica was a Resident Fellow at the Pacific Forum and a senior manager at The Asia Group, LLC. She began her career on Capitol Hill, where she served as a professional staff member handling the Asia region for the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and as a senior legislative assistant on international security and trade for a member of Congress on the Ways and Means Committee. Jessica holds a B.A. in Political Science from Wellesley College and an A.M. in Regional Studies-East Asia from Harvard University. She has advanced proficiency in Korean.
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies CEO Mark Dubowitz shared a graphic on the X platform this week purporting to place blame on President Biden for Iran’s increasing stockpile of high enriched uranium — material that can be used in nuclear weapons — when in reality it’s Dubowitz, his organization and their allies in the Trump administration that are largely responsible.
“Facts are stubborn things,” Dubowitz said before showing the graphic. “Iran’s nuclear expansion has occurred under the Biden administration’s failed Iran policy of maximum concessions.”
It’s unclear what “maximum concessions” Dubowitz is referring to, but facts are indeed stubborn things and the reality is that this graphic is nowhere near close to providing the full picture of how we got to where we are today with Iran’s nuclear program. In fact, Iran’s nuclear expansion actually began before Biden took office after President Trump withdrew from the Iran deal (or JCPOA, as the nuclear agreement is known) in 2018. While Iran’s program has grown since Biden took office in the absence of any re-agreed upon limits, it would still largely be frozen where it was in 2015 had Trump remained in the deal.
So let’s look at the stubborn facts: Under the terms of the 2015 deal, Iran limited its uranium enrichment purification to 3.6% — or the amount needed for civilian energy purposes — and capped its stockpile of low enriched uranium to no more than 300 kg. In July 2019, or approximately one year after Trump withdrew from the JCPOA, Iran began to increase its stockpile of low enriched uranium above that 300 kg limit and announced that it was enriching to 4.5%, or slightly closer to the 90% needed for nuclear weapons. Dubowitz’s graph does not provide this information.
In other words, “Iran’s nuclear expansion” as Dubowitz put it, began during the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign that Dubowitz and FDD played a major role in crafting. FDD also played an outsizedrole in pushing Trump to withdraw from the JCPOA.
So Dubowitz ignores this fact entirely and instead misleadingly focuses on Iran’s enrichment of uranium to 20% and 60% purity, or near weapons-grade. But here again, what Dubowitz’s graph doesn’t show is that Iran began enriching uranium to 20% before Biden came into office, a move the U.S. intelligence community has attributed to the assassination of a top Iranian nuclear scientist in November, 2020. After that, the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Annual Threat Assessment states, Iran “accelerated the expansion of its nuclear program [and] stated that it is no longer constrained by any JCPOA limits.”
Another stubborn fact that Dubowitz omits is that by November 2020, Iran had increased its stockpile of low enriched uranium by 12 times the limit allowed by the JCPOA and shortened its break out time — or the time that Iran would need to produce the materials for one nuclear weapon — from one year under the JCPOA terms to between three to four months.
There are a myriad other ways in which Iran expanded its nuclear program after Trump withdrew and before Biden took office, including using more advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium and other measures which you can read about here.
The bottom line is that this is another one of Dubowitz’s brazen attempts to absolve himself and his organization from the responsibility for the failures of withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal and the subsequent “maximum pressure” campaign that failed to bring Tehran to its knees and eliminate its nuclear program (and perhaps even foment regime change).
Political outsider Bassirou Diomaye Faye will officially be declared the next president of Senegal Friday after cruising to victory in this week’s elections just 10 days after being released from prison.
Faye won 54% of the vote, allowing him to avoid a second round matchup with former Prime Minister Amadou Ba, the Dakar Court of Appeals announced Wednesday. Ba has conceded defeat and congratulated Faye, as has current President Macky Sall.
Experts say the peaceful transition of power is a welcome indication of stability in Senegal and a positive sign for West Africa as a whole amid a string of coups that have rocked the region’s relations with Western countries.
Senegal’s democracy, analysts say, came under threat last month after Sall made a controversial decision to postpone elections, citing corruption allegations against the Constitutional Council that decides which candidates are eligible to run in the elections, a fact he said would question the integrity of the results.
The decision drew public outrage, as well as concern from the United States, a historically close diplomatic partner with Senegal. The U.S. State Department said last month that it was “deeply concerned” about the postponement in a statement urging Senegal’s government to “move forward with its presidential election in accordance with the Constitution and electoral laws.”
It was the first time an election has been postponed in Senegal’s history, and Sall’s actions were “a jolt and a shock to the system” due to Senegal's long-held position as a stable democracy in West Africa, said Dr. Joseph Siegle, director of research at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.
Senegal has historically promoted democratic norms, free speech, opposition party participation, and security in the region, Siegle said. It’s a stark contrast to surrounding states in the region — military coups have destabilized the governments of neighboring Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Guinea in recent years. Siegle said the recent election reiterates Senegal’s role as an exemplar of democratic leadership in the region.
“Senegal provides a very important counterpoint that this is how you realize change. You do it through legal means, through constitutional means, through transparent means,” Siegle said.
The election was also a significant indication of the strength of Senegal’s democratic institutions, as the judiciary promptly interpreted the constitution and rescheduled the elections in response to the postponement, said Adele Ravidà, senior election systems advisor and country director for Senegal at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. She added that, given that these events were unforeseen, the judiciary’s actions created a precedent that increased its capabilities to respond to incidents of instability.
“This was the strength of the judiciary in Senegal, the fact that even in a situation in which there is no law, that they can find a solution to the situation,” Ravidà said.
Faye’s presidency could bring about further strengthening of Senegal’s democratic institutions. Faye has campaigned on an anti-establishment platform, stating that he plans to reduce corruption in the government and strengthen checks on presidential power.
Ravidà says it is still early to say what the potential of this new government is in fulfilling these claims. Siegle said Faye’s policies may be cause for cautious optimism that democratic norms will be further bolstered.
“That's encouraging, and given the strain to some of these norms we’ve seen in the last couple of years, that’s welcome and would be much valued across Senegal,” he said.
Ravidà added that the election demonstrates the power of civil society in mobilizing to enact change.
“[The Senegalese people] are giving the chance now to this new generation of leaders to show if they can really rule the country well. But the population is mature enough to consider that if they are not doing well, in the next five years they give the opportunity to another party or a different leader.”
President Biden congratulated Faye for his victory in a statement on Wednesday. In a press conference on Monday, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said “the commitment of the Senegalese people to the democratic process is part of the foundation of our deep friendship and strong bilateral ties.”
Faye has iterated his intention to continue to maintain Senegal’s bilateral partnerships with its diplomatic partners. The U.S. currently maintains close military ties with Senegal, Siegle told RS. The countries’ militaries are partners in peacekeeping operations in the region, with the U.S. supplying aid and deploying troops to Senegal to help counter crises in the region.
Faye will be officially declared the next president of Senegal on Friday, in the event that no complaint against the electoral process is filed by Thursday night, an event Ravidà says is not anticipated. The official transfer of power will take place on April 2, the day Sall’s presidential mandate ends.
The Army and Navy ships that have left the U.S. for a massive humanitarian aid project in Gaza are still making their way across the Atlantic, with two still at ports in Florida and Virginia. It will likely take until mid-April for the vessels to reach Gaza and begin building a temporary causeway to facilitate the entry of life-saving aid into the strip.
Looking at real-time satellite imagery tracking military vessels, it looks like the USAV Gen. Frank Besson Jr., an Army support vessel that left Fort Eustis, Virginia, on March 10, has been moored and presumably refueling at a port in the Azores, Portugal, since Friday. It is at the half-way point between the U.S. and its final destination of Cyprus (nearly 5,000 nautical miles total). At an average speed of 10 knots, its journey will take nearly two more weeks, depending on weather conditions, once it gets going again.
The rest of the vessels are behind and, as of Tuesday, halfway across the Atlantic, though they can travel at slightly higher speeds than the Besson. They include the Army support vessels Loux, Matamoros, Monterrey and Wilson Wharf, which are all traveling together and were between Bermuda and the Azores Tuesday morning.
They all left U.S. ports around March 15. They are carrying modules and equipment to build the “trident” causeway — about 800 by 1200 feet — which will be anchored at the beach in Gaza to unload humanitarian aid.
The USNV Roy Benavidez, which, once in place, will help construct the floating pier and serve as a “roll on, roll off” facility two miles off the coast of Gaza, is the fastest of all the military vessels and is now ahead of the smaller Army landing craft on their way to the Azores, even though it left Newport News, Va., on March 21. When complete, aid will be ferried from Cyprus to the floating pier and then to the causeway at Gaza.
Meanwhile, two other Navy vessels that will be assisting with the floating pier, the USNSs Lopez and Bobo, are readying and still docked in Navy ports at Jacksonville and Norfolk respectively. Once on their way these particular vessels will take at least two weeks to reach Cyprus, depending on the weather and refueling at the Azores.
All told these vessels (carrying about 500 U.S. military personnel) won’t be realistically building anything until mid-April, which appears to be in line with a May completion date for the pier and the causeway. Considering that, according to experts, Gazans will be fully in the throes of famine by then, it is still hard to contemplate why the Biden administration has backed the massive JLOTS project instead of ratcheting up pressure on Israel to let in the thousands of trucks of aid that are stopped at borders and checkpoints.
The Pentagon has not returned calls regarding whether the military has hired contractor Fogbow to engage in the logistics on the beach, as the Biden administration insists there will be no boots on the ground. The Times of Israel reported a day ago that Fogbow, which is led by recently retired U.S. Special Forces, Marines and intelligence officers, has already been hired for the job and that the Israel Defense Forces will likely handle security at the aid staging areas. This, too, has yet to be confirmed.
Some are already questioning whether the U.S. military operation will be used to assist a massive refugee camp at the beach once the fighting begins in Rafah. Israel insists the millions of people now sheltering in the city will have to evacuate. The Pentagon has not yet said where the causeway and operations will take place. Stay tuned.