Gloria Duffy to Discuss START Treaty, Koreas on Ronn Owens 12/2

Commonwealth Club President and CEO Dr. Gloria C. Duffy will appear on Ronn Owens' popular KGO Newstalk Radio program tomorrow at 10 a.m. Pacific time. She will be discussing the volatile situation on the Korean peninsula and the up-in-the-air prospects for ratification of a new nuclear arms control treaty with Russia.

San Francisco Bay Area audiences can listen on the radio at AM 810; out-of-area audiences can hear it live streaming from KGO's web site.

Dr. Gloria Duffy to Discuss Global Nuclear Summit Today

Commonwealth Club President and CEO Dr. Gloria Duffy will be on several news programs this afternoon and evening sharing her expert opinion on the nuclear summit that concluded today.

Duffy is a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense and special coordinator for cooperative threat reduction. She negotiated agreements with former Soviet republics to dismantle their weapons of mass destruction. She was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service in 1995.

You can hear or watch her on:

• KCBS radio news (74 AM) at 4:30 p.m. (all times Pacific)
• KGO TV News (Channel 7) at 6:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m.
• KTVU TV News (Channel 2) 5:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m., and 10:00 p.m.

Nuclear Arms Treaty Gives Boost to Nuclear Reduction Efforts

The news last week of the agreement on a nuclear arms reduction treaty between the U.S. and Russia might have been overshadowed by continuing heat from the health-care reform effort, but it deserves to have its moment in the sun.


There continue to be bipartisan efforts in the United States to push for further -- and even total -- nuclear disarmament.

By way of background, in the video above of a Commonwealth Club event a couple years ago, former Secretary of State George P. Shultz and former Secretary of Defense William Perry make the case for working toward a nuclear-free world.

Here are some reports on the new treaty and its possible impact on the world stage:

Politics Daily: U.S.-Russian Nuclear Treaty not on Public's Radar
The Korea Times: U.S.-Russia Nuclear Deal Could Curb Proliferation by North Korea, Iran
Reuters: Q&A: Why is a U.S.-Russia Nuclear Deal Important?
Washington Post (might require free registration): U.S. Hopes Nuclear Arms Pact to Be Ratified This Year
The Guardian: The Case for Western Missile Defense

Below is a Commonwealth Club video, in which Rep. Ellen Tauscher Talks Nuclear Non-Proliferation:

Tauscher to Bring California Experience to Administration

On Thursday, May 28 East Bay Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher delivered her final farewell to some 200 Commonwealth Club members and guests at Lafayette’s Veterans Memorial Hall. Though she covered a lot of ground in a wide-ranging discussion of policy and her past, she opened her remarks with anecdotes about her daughter, Katherine, and her tremendous love for California.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Tauscher, who served California’s 10th district for past 12 years, will be leaving her post to become senior adviser on arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament issues to President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. In this position, Tauscher will take on national and global security relations, and international peacekeeping policy direction. In the conversation with Commonwealth Club CEO and President Dr. Gloria Duffy, herself a former nuclear arms negotiator for the Clinton administration, Tauscher told audience members she is committed to upholding The Constitution, and trusting her conscious as well as her constituents.

“The United States needs a new visibility,” said Tauscher, “to show that we can indeed lead the world in issues of security and arms negation.”

Though unable to discuss details of nuclear policy due to her pending Senate confirmation process, as the conversation turned to issues of nuclear nonproliferation, Tauscher shared her expertise and voiced her pledge to moving U.S. policy toward total nuclear disarmament.
She addressed a wide range of topics -- from U.S. national security policies to where Tauscher’s daughter was going to college, (Bucknell, to play Division I Volleyball). When asked about her future with the Obama administration, Tauscher described how she believes America “can have national security and civil rights at the same time.” When questioned about the state of our economy Tauscher emphasized, “The U.S. needs to get ‘back to basics’ and is in need of a complete overhaul, like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.”

Regarding the 10th District, Tauscher expressed her admiration for what she called the “California lifestyle” and how she believes the state can be a leader in both alternative energies and transportation innovation for the rest of the country. Advocating for high-speed rail and enhanced carbon-free methods of transportation such as bicycles, Tauscher said that Californians “have more opportunity and more reason to get it right than anyone else.”

Tauscher, who is currently the chair of the Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee, has served as the representative of California’s 10th Congressional District since 1997. She has strengthened and expanded nonproliferation programs by creating the White House Office of the Coordinator on Nuclear Non-proliferation and a commission to study our nation’s role in the nuclear arms debate. Before running for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1996, Tauscher was an active fundraiser for the Democratic Party. She chaired Dianne Feinstein's successful 1992 and 1994 Senate campaigns. Previously, Tauscher worked as an investment banker and became a member of the New York Stock Exchange. The Newark, New Jersey, native earned her B.S. from Seton Hall University in 1974. She lives in Alamo, California.

– Written by The Commonwealth Club's Media and Public Relations Department

North Korea's Nuclear Test may be Obama's First Challenge

North Korea's detonation of a nuclear bomb in the mountains near the Chinese border may be the initial foreign test Vice President Joe Biden infamously foresaw earlier this year. Last March, New York Times Chief Washington Correspondent told the Commonwealth Club that an administration's first crisis may not portend disaster. Sanger noted the Bush Administration's successful responses to the China EP-3 controversy when an American fighter jet collided with a Chinese jet over Hainan Island, and the handling of the post-9/11 up until the invasion of Iraq.

Sanger believed that an international incident including North Korea would likely be early in President Obama's first term and an unfortunate leftover from the previous administration's foreign policy regarding the communist nation.

"North Korea, to my mind, was probably the single biggest failure of diplomacy of the Bush Administration -- not that they didn't try in the second term -- but if you look at the moments when the North Koreans got their nuclear fuel, it was January, February and March of 2003, just as we were heading to Kuwait and up into Iraq," said Sanger, "That was the moment they picked, in full view of our satellites. I suspect North Korea could end up, just because it wants the attention, to be one of the early crisis."

The size of the nuclear bomb is unclear, although seismic readings suggest a blast one-quarter the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. To exacerbate international outrage over the test, it was reported that the North Koreans launched three short-range missiles, and some reports suggest the regime of Kim Jong Il is showing strength in the face of his waning health and uncertainty over who will succeed him.

Some experts are suggesting that the response to a nuclear test by North Korea seems to have hit the Obama Administration flat-footed.“As much as they understood this was going to be an issue, they weren’t ready for a nuclear test in May,” an expert on North Korea told the New York Times. “They’re in a situation now where they have to contain and manage a crisis.”

How the president handles the situation will likely give the Iranians -- who are also believed to be actively pursuing the development of nuclear weapons -- an indication of how the administration will play its cards, yet each scenario has it differences. While Iran is believed to be seeking nuclear protection from a strike by either Israel or the U.S., some believe that North Korea has always used the procurement of nuclear weapons, in simplistic terms, to draw the attention of the Western world. Wendy Sherman, a policymaker in the Clinton administration, said succinctly, “The North Korean leadership cares about internal matters, not external matters. They care about external matters only insofar as it helps ensure the survival of the regime.”

For some important background on North Korea's nuclear ambitions, watch this May 25, 2007, video from the Commonwealth Club speech by Gordon C. Chang, author of "Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World."

Ted Turner on Nuclear Disarmament

In the above video excerpt, media mogul Ted Turner explains that his professional focus has changed from being a media entrepreneur to taking on the big issues, such as nuclear disarmament.

It was part of a wide-ranging (and often humorous) discussion he had with the San Francisco Chronicle's Phil Bronstein at The Commonwealth Club November 18, 2008.

Please forgive the low-quality video; we'll post a full video when our video partners at ForaTV make it available.