• DETERRENCE: Military aspects of a study of the implications of a communist Chinese nuclear capability
• DPRK: Kim Jong Un focuses on economic reforms, N. Korea official says
• CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION: Catalyzing urban climate resilience: Applying resilience concepts to planning practice in the ACCCRN Program...
• ENERGY SECURITY: Simultaneously mitigating near-term climate change and improving human health and food security
• GOVERNANCE AND CIVIL SOCIETY: Washington, Beijing’s relief over Taiwan election will be temporary

DETERRENCE: Military aspects of a study of the implications of a communist Chinese nuclear capability, B. Jaeger and M. Weiner, RAND (1963) US Freedom of Information Act to Nautilus [PDF, 2.2MB]

This report analyzes how China might use nuclear bombs to disable US aircraft carriers and bases in Korea and Taiwan that support forces blocking Chinese invasion of Taiwan; and US propensity to rely on nuclear forces in response risking nuclear war as shown in studies below.

• Air operations in the Taiwan Crisis of 1958, Jacob Van Staaveren, USAF Historical Division Liaison Office (November 1962) US Freedom of Information Act to Nautilus [PDF, 2.4MB]
• The 1958 Taiwan Straits Crisis, a documented history, Morton Halperin, RAND RM-4900-ISA (1966) [PDF, 8.72MB]
• The new look at the nuclear brink, Peter Hayes, Lyuba Zarsky, Walden Bello, Chapter 3, American Lake, Nuclear Peril in the Pacific, Viking-Penguin (1987) pp. 57-60. [PDF, 6.4MB]

DPRK: Kim Jong Un focuses on economic reforms, N. Korea official says, Kyodo News (17 January 2012)

According to Yang Hyong Sop, North Korea is looking to build a “knowledge-based” economy and Kim Jong-Un has been studying the economic reforms enacted in China and other countries. As an indicator of the DPRK’s economy policy under Kim Jong-Un, North Korea also passed a “corporate law” which established a system for managing corporations in the DPRK which gives them some autonomy while the state regulates sales and maintains the wage system.

• North Korea enacted the first “corporate law”, IFES NK Brief (12 January 2012)
• Pyongyang’s urban future, Calvin Chua, Chosun Exchange (17 January 2012)
• The DPRK interregnum: window of opportunity for the international community, Victor Hsu, The Nautilus Institute (10 January 2012)

CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION: Catalyzing urban climate resilience: Applying resilience concepts to planning practice in the ACCCRN Program (2009-2011), Marcus Moench, Stephen Tyler and Jessica Lage (editors), Institute for Social and Environmental Transition - ISET (2011) [PDF, 21.9 MB]

The Urban Climate Resilience Planning Framework (UCRPF) represents a way of translating the growing body of natural and social scientific knowledge regarding resilience into applied planning practice. By focusing on urban systems, urban agents, urban institutions, and exposure to climate change, the UCRPF helps to identify specifically who might do what to build climate resilience. (军控协会)