Scott Snyder for the Council on Foreign Relations: Since Kim Jong-un came to power in 2012, he has used nuclear weapons development — a legacy of his father’s rule — as a pillar of the regime’s national strategy.
In addition to expanding its nuclear strike capabilities by conducting nuclear and missile tests, North Korea also has built a light-water nuclear reactor and uranium enrichment facility and restarted its five-megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, enabling the country to slowly build its nuclear fuel stockpile. Recent estimates suggest that North Korea’s nuclear weapons stockpile comprises 10 to 16 nuclear weapons, and could grow rapidly by 2020 to a low-end estimate of 20 weapons and a high-end estimate of 125 weapons …
North Korea’s nuclear development enhances its capacity to credibly threaten its neighbors and the United States with a nuclear strike, as well as to survive one. Although nuclear use would likely result in massive retaliation and the end of the regime, it complicates allied planning for conventional war, expands North Korea’s capability to threaten both South Korea and Japan, and raises potential doubts about the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence commitments.
The sad state of Alabama transit
Jacob Anbinder for the Century Foundation: Transit advocates tend to hold bus rapid transit (BRT) in high regard. When designed well, it can move far more people than a traditional bus, since the buses run in dedicated lanes, at the fraction of the cost of a rail line. And Birmingham, Alabama’s largest urban area, certainly needs better transit — a recent report from the Accessibility Observatory at the University of Minnesota ranked Birmingham last among the 46 cities studied in every measure of job accessibility by transit.
For BRT to make sense, however, it must operate frequently enough that users can rely on it without hesitation. But a $20 million federal TIGER grant to fund such a system is no guarantee that Birmingham will adhere to this rule. For starters, the Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority has only 14 vehicles in reserve for use at peak service, according to information from the National Transit Database — and not all of these are necessarily buses. While the grant announcement says the TIGER money will partly pay for additional buses, a spokesman for the tranit authority told me that the City of Birmingham, which is the official grant recipient, has yet to decide how much money it will share with the agency for those purposes.
Even if the transit agency were able to acquire new buses, it is not clear whether it has enough money to operate them. Currently, the Birmingham transit agency relies mostly on contributions from local governments, plus a beer tax (in a state that doesn’t drink much) and funding from the local racing commission, which recently has been in dire straits. Alabama, meanwhile, is one of five state governments that provide no money for public transportation. A segregation-era amendment to the Alabama constitution, passed at a time when less than 5 percent of eligible African-American voters in Jefferson County were registered, forbids any state gas-tax revenue from being spent on transit. Today, African Americans comprise 38 percent of all commuters in Jefferson County but 89 percent of all transit commuters, and are more than eight times likelier to use transit to get to work than their white counterparts. But the amendment still stands.
Little surprise, then, that two generations later, transit service in Birmingham is meager.
French political star is no friend to conservatives
Dalibor Rohac for AEIdeas: It bears repeating that the party of Marine Le Pen is not an ally of conservatives or of advocates of free enterprise — in spite of her recent efforts to make FN more palatable to the general public.
The FN has recently formed, for example, a student association at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po), one of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in the country.
If you harbor any illusions about the FN’s agenda, consult any of its program documents, such as Ms. Le Pen’s “Project for France and for the French” from 2012, in which the party proposed a renegotiation of European Union treaties, to make a “break with the dogmatic and totally failed European construction.”
Unsurprisingly, the control over immigration ought to be returned into the hands of the nation-states, Ms. Le Pen argues. But the FN advocated a reintroduction of the Franc, alongside capital controls to limit “speculation,” and the nationalization of banks. …
The FN’s website calls for the “strategic planning of re-industrialization,” under the auspices of the prime minister, using the insights of leading academics, representatives of business, and of the government, which is “to take place in parallel with the introduction of reasonable border protection against unfair international competition (targeted tariffs and quotas).” Other policy ideas include the regulation of banking fees, unspecific policies aiming to “establish an equilibrium between independent business and large supply chains,” and a ban on financial derivatives.
If that is not enough, consider Ms. Le Pen’s cozy links with the Kremlin. She famously called Vladimir Putin “a patriot.” “He is attached to the sovereignty of his people,” she says, and “understands that we are defending common values — those of the European civilization.”
Compiled by Joseph Lawler from reports published by the various think tanks.
