The Evening CSIS August 24 2015

Good Evening,

Welcome to The Evening CSIS—my daily guide to key insights CSIS brings to the events of the day plus HIGHLY RECOMMENDED content from around the world. To subscribe, please click here and if you want to view this in your browser, click here.

Take It To The Limit

Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich) this afternoon became the latest undecided Democrat to support President Obama on the Iran nuclear deal--her decision puts Republicans opposed to the deal close to losing their ability to be able to block the Iran deal as the Washington Post’s Karoun Demirjian reports.

And, as the New York Times’s David Sanger and Michael Gordon point out in an important news analysis piece “ Future Risks of an Iran Nuclear Deal .”

“Mr. Obama has been pressing the case that the sharp limits on how much nuclear fuel Iran can hold, how many centrifuges it can spin and what kind of technology it can acquire would make it extraordinarily difficult for Iran to race for the bomb over the next 15 years.

His problem is that most of the significant constraints on Tehran’s program lapse after 15 years — and, after that, Iran is free to produce uranium on an industrial scale.”

Dive Deeper: CSIS’s Anthony Cordesman authored a new commentary today The Iran Nuclear Agreement: The Need for a Full U.S. Implementation Plan which argues that the US focus on whether the Congress can get 60 votes against the agreement, and then 67 votes to override a veto, presents the potential danger that the US does not prepare properly for what happens if they can't block the agreement and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) actually goes into force.

And, CSIS’s Sharon Squassoni and Chris Coughlin authored a commentary late last week, Congress and the Iran Agreement: The Basics & The Myths .

De-Escalation

North and South Korea reached agreement to end a standoff involving an exchange of artillery fire that had pushed the divided peninsula into a state of heightened military tension CNN reports.

For regional coverage a good source is South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reporting “ Inter-Korean talks aimed at preventing future provocations: FM Yun .”

Dive Deeper: CSIS’s Korea Chair authored a new “Korea Platform” today Korean Agreement Appears to Defuse Mini-Crisis .

Black Monday

US stocks dropped precipitously today, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping to an 18-month closing low in a tumultuous trading session theWall Street Journal reports.

Dive Deeper: CSIS’s Richard McCormack, former executive vice chairman of Bank of America authored a commentary last March Financial, Trade, and Currency Instabilities: Rising Concerns which is an important read given todays and recent market events in the US and in Asia.

In that Number
588

Today's points decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the worst since August 2011.
Source: CNN

Critical Question
Asked: After recent tensions in the Korean peninsula appear to be resolved, what comes next?

Answered: Victor Cha, CSIS Korea Chair:

  • The focus now will be on implementation of the agreement, which begins with working-level talks in early September to conduct a set of family reunions around the Chuseok holidays later that month.
  • An important takeaway from the resolution of this mini-crisis is how much the North’s desire to stop the loudspeaker broadcasts impacted its stance in the talks. The regime is hypersensitive to criticism about Kim Jong-un’s legitimacy.
  • Going forward, the agreement opens the possibility for progress in President Park Geun-hye’s trustpolitik efforts to engage North Korea, but it also provides a potential opportunity for Pyongyang to split the allies as it holds to a confrontational policy with Washington.

    Read the full analysis.

One to Watch

Scott Kennedy (@KennedyCSIS) is deputy director of the Freeman Chair in China Studies and director of the Project on Chinese Business and Political Economy at CSIS. Dr. Kennedy is a leading authority on China’s economic policy and its global economic relations. His recent article in Foreign Policy, “ Let China Join the Global Monetary Elite ,” is an important read.

Optics
Syria suffered a great cultural loss to add to its human tragedy yesterday after ISIS destroyed an ancient temple in Palmyra. The BBC offered a look back at the 2,000 year-old oasis through images captured by tourists prior to its sacking.

Highly Recommended
My favorite new website is the Cipher Brief, a new platform for national and global security developed for the business audience. And I highly recommend “ CIPHER BRIEF EXCLUSIVE: CIA’s Fallen Agent Memorial ,” by Jeanine Hayden.

This Town Tomorrow
The Wilson Center will be hosting a webinar on “Peace, Conflict, and the Scale of the Climate Risk Landscape.” To learn more about climate risk and its impact on international security and economic vitality, be sure to register here.

CSIS on Demand
As North and South Korea continue to work out their differences, is Korean unification really an option? Watch this event to see Korean and American officials explore the policies at hand.

Sounds
Marketplace Radio’s “ The Fallout from Black Monday .”

I Like It Like That
Eye-catching things in CSIS's orbit

Aspen Institute CEO Walter Isaacson, someone who really knows about New Orleans’s recovery, says “by far the best piece I’ve read about New Orleans post Katrina” is the Washington Post’s Manuel Roig-Franzia’s article “ 10 Years After Katrina: A ‘Resilience Lab .’”

Smiles
I saw a terrific movie over the weekend, “Ricki and The Flash.” It stars the incomparable Meryl Streep who plays an aging, down-on-her-luck musician who abandoned her husband and children to pursue a rock and roll fantasy that never quite materialized. In a bittersweet plot, Streep attempts to make amends with her estranged family when her adult daughter faces a life crisis (Streep’s fictional daughter “Julie” is played by her real life daughter Maime Gummer.)

The film is directed by Jonathan Demme best known for winning an Academy Award in 1991 for the chilling “Silence of the Lambs.” But Demme is also well known for directing one of the greatest concert films ever made, 1984’s “Stop Making Sense” featuring The Talking Heads.

In “Ricki and The Flash” Demme combines his talent for drama and live music—all of the musical performances by with Streep who plays lead singer “Ricki” and her band “The Flash” were captured live on film.

So, how do Jonathan Demme and Meryl Streep pull it off? It turns out that Streep is a wonderful singer and learned to play guitar for the movie. And, Demme put together a super-group to back Streep featuring Rick Springfield on guitar and the incomparable Bernie Worrell on keyboards.

Worrell, who helped define the funk sound as a band member of Parliament-Funkadelic in the 1970s went on to became part of the punk-funk movement of the 1980s. Punk-funk combined two niche musical genres to form a popular sound accessible to millions.

One of the key moments in the punk-funk breakthrough to the pop mainstream occurred with the Demme film “Stop Making Sense,” when Worrell joined the Manhattan-based Talking Heads and added something infectious to The Heads’ gritty, Bowery-born, new-wave groove.

You can see (and more importantly hear) it clearly in this clip of “Burning Down the House,” a hit song now played all over the world on popular radio, at dance venues and major sporting events—for over three decades! Worrell is the musician upper screen left in the white shirt with cutoff sleeves on keyboards that this clip begins on when the spotlight comes up.

Worrell’s music was a smile then. And you can also smile while seeing and hearing him now in theaters with his new band “Ricki and The Flash.” I loved it.

Feedback
I always welcome and benefit from your feedback. Please drop me a line at aschwartz@csis.org.