The Evening CSIS May 20 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.

NK's Miniature Nukes
North Korea has repeated its claim to be able to make nuclear warheads small enough to fit on a missile, as Choe Sang-Hun of the New York Times reports from Seoul.

CNN’s Jethro Mullen also has a solid report on the North Korean claims.

Dive Deeper: CSIS’s Korea Chair, Victor Cha, today published a Korea Chair Snapshot (the Chair’s ongoing series of concise bullets on critical issues): “North Korea Announces Capability to Miniaturize Nuclear Warhead.”

Dr. Cha also wrote about “North Korea’s troubling nuclear progress” in an op-ed for CNN.com last month.

Dr. Cha has written the seminal book about North Korea and Kim Jong Un’s leadership, The Impossible State .

Worth a look : Marc Bowden’s article in the March 2105 issue of Vanity Fair: “Understanding Kim Jong Un, The World’s Most Enigmatic and Unpredictable Dictator.”

Also worth a look, CNN opinion piece “Kim Jong Un: Effective tyrant or panicking?,” by Christian Whiton, former deputy special envoy for human rights in North Korea during the George W. Bush administration.

Smart Women, Smart Power
CSIS’s Smart Women, Smart Power speaker series today hosted Melinda Gates for an extraordinary interview with Fortune Magazine’s Nina Easton (also a CSIS senior associate). Nina’s interview with Ms. Gates covered several key takeaways:

1) Ms. Gates’ early science and engineering passions—she admits she is “a nerd”—drew her to Duke University and from there to Microsoft, at that time a young, exciting, fast-growing innovative technology firm with much opportunity to rise rapidly. Her training and early career experiences taught her the power of using data to solve problems. That skill has been very valuable in devising solutions in global health.

2) Ms. Gates underscored that women and girls need to be front and center in the global health agenda. She pointed out that we’re making strides toward making the world more equitable for women and girls, but we’re not even close yet to success. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation reached a turning point recently when it realized that, beyond the discovery of new technologies, there is also a pressing need to confront the barriers, social and cultural, that impede the delivery to women and young girls of essential commodities and services, generate gender inequities, and limit empowerment ( see her article “Putting Women and Girls at the Center of Development,” in the September 2014 issue of Science). According to Ms. Gates three pieces are necessary for women’s empowerment: a healthy life, the ability to take and make decisions, and economic opportunity.

3) Ms. Gates said that we need to elevate family planning and contraceptives on the US and international agenda. 95% of American Catholic women (herself included) use contraceptives, she said. 200 million women are asking for contraceptives. “I can’t turn my back on them,” Ms. Gates said. “It’s just the right thing to do.”

Dive Deeper: Unfortunately, we had a video malfunction today that prevents us from posting the event for you to watch On Demand. We will have the video posted to our website tomorrow. But in the meantime, audio from the event can be listened to On Demand

The work of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center is funded in large part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Some of our most recent work related to today’s discussion includes a recently produced video on family planning in Senegal and a late-April blog on Senegal family planning event and video interview with Minister of Health Awa Marie Coll Seck.

A new report and event on HIV risk in adolescent girls and young women.

And, strategies for women and girls in US Ebola response.

South China Sea Conflict
China’s land reclamation around reefs in the disputed South China Sea is undermining freedom and stability, and risks provoking tension that could even lead to conflict, Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Jakarta, according to this Reuters report.

In early April, the CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative made worldwide news by providing the New York Times with exclusive CSIS/DigitalGlobe satellite images of China’s land reclamation project on Mischief Reef in the South China Sea. Our CSIS experts also provided theTimes’ with exclusive analysis of the never-seen-before satellite images. The resulting front page article, “Piling Sand in a Disputed Sea, China Literally Gains Ground,” by David E. Sanger and Rick Gladstone, reverberated around the globe as President Obama and China’s President Xi Jinping and senior officials from their respective administrations began to publicly discuss the issues raised by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. Secretary of State John Kerry again raised US concerns with President Xi over China’s South China Sea claims during his visit to China in mid-May.

In early May, CSIS’s AMTI again made worldwide news by providing Reuters never-before-seen satellite images and analysis of Vietnam’s island-building exercises in the Spratly Islands of the South China Sea. The resulting article by Reuters’ David Brunnstrom and Ben Blanchard, “Images show Vietnam South China Sea reclamation, China defends own,” again circulated globally. In mid-May, Vietnam admitted for the first time its construction activities on the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, in response to the evidence and analysis the CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative provided exclusively to Reuters.

Dive Deeper: Today, CSIS released new satellite images of island building and land reclamation in the Cuarteron, Gaven, Hughes, Johnson and Subi reefs. Explore these images with AMTI’s “ Island Tracker.”

In that Number
119,711
Square meters reclaimed (as of March 14, 2015) by Chinese development at the Cuarteron Reef, which is located in the London Reefs, on the western side of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
Source : CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI).

Critical Question
Asked: What do the DEA investigations of Venezuelan government officials mean for Venezuela?

Answered: Carl Meacham, CSIS Americas Program director: A 2009 GAO report on US-Venezuela cooperation on counternarcotic efforts found evidence of the very same problems the investigation hones in on: the involvement of government officials with transnational criminal activity. That relationship is a symbiotic one—and this is key. In exchange for a drugs and money from traffickers, government officials often hand over arms—and the opportunity to operate with impunity. And it’s this symbiosis that makes it so dangerous and unique. Now that it’s in place, the government-crime overlap is like a fungus: deeply entrenched and nearly impossible to root out.

There’s an illustrative contrast, here, to Colombia’s long struggle with transnational crime. Though the Colombian government’s weak government presence led many to question the strength of the state, the government was a clear partner for the United States in the fight against drug trafficking. The same can’t be said for Venezuela. With the government, the military, law enforcement, and drug traffickers alike engaged in a far-reaching (if illicit) cooperative relationship, there is no clear partner for the US government to work with in Venezuela to dismantle this clientelistic system.

Read the full analysis.

One to Watch

Melinda Gates (@melindagates ), who was interviewed by Fortune’s Nina Easton today at the CSIS Smart Women, Smart Power speaker series, is cochair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She is dedicated to helping all people lead healthy, productive lives, which makes her one to watch.

Optics
Women and children often fare the worst during conflict and in refugee situations. This photo essay on Medium features some of the women journalists the Washington-based NGO Internews has worked with in humanitarian crises who have risked their lives or pushed against societal norms to help women’s voices be heard.

Highly Recommended
CNN analyst and New America Foundation VP Peter Bergen today authored an opinion piece for CNN.com: “ Secrets of the bin Laden treasure-trove .”

CSIS Today
This year the Panama Canal celebrates its 100th anniversary, and today CSIS hosted Jorge Quijano, CEO of the Panama Canal Authority, for a briefing and discussion on the canal’s impact. Fun fact: nearly 14,000 vessels transit the canal annually from 144 maritime routes connecting 160 countries and reaching some 1,700 ports around the world.

CSIS Tomorrow
CSIS will host Cédric Schweizer, head of delegation in Yemen, International Committee of the Red Cross, for a conversation on “Yemen’s Crisis.” Click here to RSVP or watch live at 10:00 a.m.

This Town Tomorrow
The House Financial Services Committee will hold a hearing at 10:00 a.m. on “A Dangerous Nexus: Terrorism, Crime and Corruption,” which will include testimony from Douglas Farah, president, IBI Consultants LLC, and senior associate at CSIS.

CSIS on Demand

Yesterday, CSIS hosted Admiral James A. Winnefeld Jr., vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for a conversation on the future of US missile defense. In his remarks that have now gone viral, Winnefeld stated that North Korea is “many years away from developing a [submarine-launched ballistic missile capability]. But if North Korea is eventually able to do so it will present a hard-to-detect danger for Japan and South Korea as well as our service members stationed in the region. This only reinforces the importance of regional ballistic missile defense.” You can read his full remarks here. Photo credit : MC1 Daniel Hinton, VCJCS.

Sounds
For India watchers, Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times gives a thorough assessment of Narendra Modi’s first year in office on his World Weekly podcast.

I Like It Like That
Fascinating piece with interactive infographics and maps by CFR on “The Spread of Central Bank Currency Swaps since the Financial Crisis.”

Smiles
At CSIS we have the privilege of hosting and meeting some of the most extraordinary people in the world. Today, I had the privilege of meeting one of them—Melinda Gates. I had intended to use a clip from our “Smart Women, Smart Power” event today featuring Ms. Gates for “Smiles.” Unfortunately, we had a technical video malfunction so that smile will have to be posted tomorrow.

But that brings us to today and what to smile about. The work Ms. Gates does every day makes me smile. Another person who always makes me smile is Keith Richards. His music always makes me “Happy.” And this clip is from 1988 with Keith’s “other” band The X-pensive Winos performing in LA. The band features Ivan Neville on bass guitar. I used to hang out a bit with Ivan in New Orleans in the late 1980s, but that’s another story. I’m just so happy I met Melinda Gates today. And this great clip is dedicated to all the people she helps make happy around the world every day. I’d suggest you play it LOUD.

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