As most readers are by now aware, North Korean media announced its leader Kim Jong-il died on December 17, 2011. Questions remain about North Korea after Kim Jong-il.  Center Deputy Director Duyeon Kim has posted some initial thoughts about the Dear Leader’s passing and what to expect from the upcoming leadership transition over at the mothership.  You can read it there or below the jump.

North Korea After Kim Jong-il

By Duyeon Kim

North Korea’s official media today announced the death of its leader Kim Jong-il. While the consequences of his death are difficult to predict at this early stage, immediate chaos and turmoil on the ground appears unlikely. The North has been preparing for this day since Kim Jong-il’s stroke in 2008 and the naming of his son Kim Jong-un as successor last year. The next leader is technically already in place. While details of the next leadership structure are uncertain, though a collective leadership is possible, a relatively stable situation and transition is expected in the near term.

The international community should remain calm, cautious and patient while preparing for unexpected scenarios, but it is important to refrain from aggravating the North at this time. Close consultations among the U.S., South Korea, Japan, China and Russia are important to ensure stability in the region during the leadership transition and prevent possible miscalculations.

One variable to keep an eye on is the handling of the transition by the new and old ruling elite and the possibility of a power struggle, though this scenario appears unlikely immediately. It remains to be seen if and how Kim Jong-un will bring about unity and cohesion among the various factions of the regime, and whether the young Kim will receive the loyalty and support critical for a leader. It is also unclear how the next leadership will manage relations with China.

Provocations have always been an integral part of North Korean tactics unleashed depending on circumstance and timing. If the new leader determines he must display strength to win the support of the North’s military and elite, another round of provocations cannot be ruled out in the future, especially with celebrations in 2012 aimed at opening the doors to becoming a “strong and prosperous nation.”

An immediate uprising by the North Korean populace as witnessed with the Arab Spring appears unlikely. There have been reports of discontent among North Koreans, but they do not have the same types of communications methods as the outside world and they would need someone prominent to lead such an uprising. However, the possibility of a coup d’état at some point remains uncertain.

Nuclear talks will likely be put on hold for the time being, particularly the U.S.-North Korea bilateral that was slated for this week, as the North will be in a period of mourning at least until December 29th. When the North’s founder Kim Il-sung died in 1994, U.S.-North Korea talks were halted for three months.

Still, the U.S. and its allies should remain open to continue engagement with the North as seen in recent weeks.

A change in North Korea’s leadership does not necessarily mean a major change in key policies, particularly the regime’s nuclear policy. Kim Jong-un is likely to implement his father’s policies without major changes in the near term. Since Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programs are perceived to be the crux of the regime’s survival, it seems unlikely they will readily abandon their nuclear stockpiles. This means Kim Jong-il’s death may not change the key sticking points in six-way nuclear talks.

Late last night (about 11:40pm) House Republicans introduced a $915 billion spending bill in a power play that would keep the government in operation beyond the weekend.  The maneuver comes as a response to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s attempt, in conjunction with the White House, to put off movement on nine unfinished 2012 appropriations bills until Congress has agreed upon a separate package to extend a payroll tax break and jobless benefits.  

Senate leaders fear, with good reason, that the House will simply pass its version of key measures and adjourn for the year, leaving the Senate a take-it-or-leave it choice.

The White House has asked Congress to pass a stop-gap spending bill to provide more time to work out a compromise on some controversial provisions included in the spending package, but Republicans have not indicated they would advance such a bill.

Despite some controversial provisions, however, including those on travel to Cuba, the measure is understood to be relatively close to the expected conference agreement.

“We’ve got an agreement between appropriators in the House and the Senate – Democrats and Republicans – on a bipartisan bill to fund our government. We believe that the responsible thing to do is to move this,” said House Speaker John Boehner.

The defense bill advanced by House Republicans would provide $518.1 billion for the Pentagon base budget, an increase of $5.1 billion over fiscal year 2011 (fy11) and a reduction of $20.8 billion below the President’s request.  Senate Appropriations Committee-approved language would provide $513 billion, a number achieved largely through the shifting of funds from the base account to the war account.

In addition, the bill would provide $115.1 billion for ongoing war operations largely in Afghanistan, $2.8 billion below the President’s request and $43 billion below fy11 appropriations.  The Senate Appropriations Committee would fund the wars at $117.5 billion.

A final agreement is expected in the coming days.

The U.S. presidential election is less than a year away and the media is currently filled with news regarding the Republican presidential candidates. The week after Thanksgiving, Project for Excellence in Journalism reported that the 2012 election rece…

On December 12 the Senate and House Armed Services Committees filed the Conference report on the FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.  Congress is expected to send the measure to the President’s desk before the end of the year.  

We’ll have a more comprehensive summary out soon, but our early verdict on the bill’s nuclear weapons policy and missile defense provisions is that Senate and House conferees deserve credit for responsibly bridging the differences between the two versions of the bill.

The original House version of the defense bill (H.R. 1540) included many objectionable limitations on nuclear and missile defense policy matters that would 1) constrain the Pentagon’s ability to implement the New START treaty and 2) undercut the Constitutional authority of the President and senior military leaders to determine U.S. nuclear force structure and engage in discussions with the Russians on missile defense cooperation. The White House threatened to veto the final bill if it included such constraints. You can read our full analysis of the House version of the bill here.

In contrast the Senate bill (S. 1253) contained a number of reporting requirements on nuclear policy issues, but it does not impose policy or funding limitations. You can read our full analysis of the Senate versions of the bill here and here.

The Conference Committee report largely follows in the footsteps of the Senate bill.  It requires a number of reports and includes several Sense of Congress provisions, but it eliminates or significantly scales back the objectionable House provisions without compromising Congress’ important oversight responsibilities over U.S. nuclear policy.  

You can read the longer analysis here.

This article was cross posted from the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation homepage.

By now most readers are likely aware of the dustup surrounding Glenn Kessler’s November 30 Fact Checker story on the Ploughshares Fund’s estimate that the U.S. plans to spend $700 billion on nuclear weapons and related programs over the next decade. Kessler concluded that there are a number of problems with the $700 billion figure.  Ploughshares issued a defense of its methodology that can be read here.

The question of how much the U.S. spends on nuclear weapons has become especially salient in light of the Supercommittee’s recent failure to approve a plan to shrink the budget deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over the next decade, triggering an automatic sequester that if implemented could result in reductions of $500 billion to planned defense spending between fiscal year 2013 and 2022. These cuts would come on top of the more than $450 billion in reductions to the increases in spending the Pentagon is already planning on over the next decade. Even these lesser cuts will force the military to scale back to a degree.

As I noted when I first waded into this debate about a month ago, there are two key takeaways.

First, it’s difficult for Congress to exercise effective oversight and make tough budget choices without reliable financial data, and exactly how much the U.S. spends on nuclear weapons remains a mystery, particularly at the Pentagon. Rep. Turner, following on the heels of the administration, wants you to believe that the Departments of Defense and Energy will “only” spend $214 billion on nuclear weapons over the next decade. But a number of reputable sources, including the Congressional Budget Office, believe that this estimate does not capture all of the costs – to say nothing about spending on related programs such as defense environmental cleanup, nuclear threat reduction, and missile defense. If the Ploughshares estimate is too large, then the administration’s estimate of $214 in planned spending on nuclear weapons is almost certainly too low.

The nuclear weapons budget is one of the many areas within the Pentagon where more reliable financial accounting is needed. Fortunately, a growing number of Republican and Democratic members of Congress are insisting that the Department of Defense be more transparent and accountable about how its spends its dollars, as it is one of only two Cabinet-level agencies that is unable to audit its books. As Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-VA) has noted, “How in the world can we determine how much money the Pentagon needs if we don’t know how much they are spending and where it is going?” On December 1 the Senate approved a bipartisan amendment to the Senate version of the Fiscal Year 2012 defense authorization bill requiring the Pentagon be prepared for an audit by September 2014.

It’s long past time Congress and the public had a full accounting of the whole range of costs to operate, support, sustain, and refurbish the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

(UPDATE 12/14: In his recent excellent post on this issue, Jeffrey Lewis argues that the debate about the total size of the U.S. nuclear weapons budget “from a policy perspective, is ultimately irrelevant: the coming cuts will occur to specific program elements, not the general-interest ballpark estimate. The $200 billion estimate isn’t all the spending on nuclear weapons, and certainly not their cost, but it is where the budget-cutters will turn first.” I think there’s a lot of truth to this, as I suggest below, but it doesn’t change the need for an accurate cost accounting.)

The second, and more important, point is that whether you agree with Ploughshares or Turner, the fact is that the U.S. will spend hundreds of billions of dollars on nuclear weapons over the next decade and beyond. Is such spending affordable given today’s budgetary constraints? Does it make strategic sense for the U.S. to build an excessive number of new nuclear weapons delivery systems and new warhead production facilities that could saddle the U.S. with a bloated nuclear arsenal for the next half century? The answers are clearly “No.”

In recent months, numerous high-ranking military leaders and Pentagon civilians have questioned the affordability of current nuclear weapons spending plans and are looking for ways to maintain a credible and survivable nuclear deterrent at reduced cost. For example, Gen. James Cartwright, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in July, “The challenge here is that we have to recapitalize all three legs [of the nuclear triad], and we don’t have the money to do it.”

STRATCOM Commander Gen. Kehler echoed similar sentiments at a November 2 House hearing on nuclear weapons policy. Commenting on current plans to build twelve new ballistic missile submarines at a price tag of $110 billion, Gen. Kehler stated “affordability has to be an issue here. What we don’t have to make a decision on today is what the ultimate number of submarines is that we might have to deploy depending on the world situation that we find as we go to the out-years.”

The Pentagon is no doubt grappling with the reality that every dollar that is spent on nuclear weapons is a dollar that can’t be spent on higher priority programs that address 21st century threats. To avoid excessive cuts to essential programs, we must closely scrutinize the nuclear weapons budget.

Not only does scaling back spending on nuclear weapons make financial sense, but it makes strategic sense as well.

As I’ll detail in greater depth in an article to be published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists this week, the threat of sequestration provides a long overdue opportunity to reexamine the outdated assumptions that require the United States to maintain approximately 5,000 nuclear weapons nearly 20 years after the end of the Cold War. Such an arsenal is powerless to address current security priorities such as terrorism, cyber security, and the upgrading of conventional air and naval power projection capabilities.

If the ongoing Pentagon-led review of deterrence requirements does what it should and reconfigures these requirements to reflect the fact that nuclear weapons today play a much smaller role in national security strategy than ever, the need to maintain as many weapons and purchase as many replacements for aging systems disappears. And by maintaining fewer weapons and purchasing fewer replacement systems, the U.S. could save billions while still retaining an enormously potent deterrent.