CND Press Roundup - 13 January

• North Korea
• North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has used the Workers’ Party congress to double down on his country’s nuclear programme, admitting failed economic policies but calling his build up of nuclear weapons one of the great feats “in the history of the Korean nation”, the New York Times reports.
• Kim gave “an unusually detailed list of weapons that the North was developing”, the NYT adds, including: “ultramodern tactical nuclear weapons,” “hypersonic gliding-flight warheads,” “multi-warhead” missiles, military reconnaissance satellites, a nuclear-powered submarine, and land- and submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles that use solid fuel.
• Biden arms control 
• ‘An ambitious arms control agenda requires a new organization equal to the task’, James E. Goodby and David A. Koplow argue in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (£). 

US foreign policy 

• Biden ‘Asia tsar’
• The Financial Times reports that Joe Biden is set to name Kurt Campbell as his ‘Asia tsar’. Campbell is a former top Pentagon official who served as the official for Asia in Obama’s State department. A source told the FT that the decision was based on the need to “better integrate China policy across different government agencies with a veteran Asia expert at the helm”, as China is viewed as an issue that “every government agency… would have to grapple with more than in the past.” 
• Campbell, along with Biden’s appointee for national security advisor Jake Sullivan, is seen as one of the more hawkish Democrats when it comes to China. Two years ago, he wrote in Foreign Affairs: “Nearly half a century since Nixon’s first steps toward rapprochement, the record is increasingly clear that Washington once again put too much faith in its power to shape China’s trajectory.”
• Campbell co-wrote another piece on US foreign policy in the Asia-Pacific for Foreign Affairs yesterday, arguing that Washington should take lessons from nineteenth century European statecraft. Citing Henry Kissinger’s doctoral dissertation on Metternich and the Congress of Vienna, Campbell says that its key implication today is “that regional orders work best when they sustain both balance and legitimacy and that Washington should work to advance both in Asia”, by making “a conscious effort to deter Chinese adventurism.” 
• Biden CIA pick 
• Biden’s pick for CIA Director, William J. Burns, condemned Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA in a New York Times op-ed last year along with Jake Sullivan, denouncing Trump’s “aggressive escalation of sanctions, the blustery rhetoric of his senior officials, and his administration’s lack of direct engagement with Tehran.” Burns was central to negotiating the 2015 deal as part of the Obama administration, serving as a back channel in negotiations. 

British foreign policy

• Tory pressure
• The ‘Conservative Human Rights Commission’ has today demanded a rethink in relations with China, citing alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The group demanded a “comprehensive review” of China policy across all UK government departments, the BBC reports.
• This comes after foreign secretary Dominic Raab’s announcement yesterday that ‘UK firms doing business in China will face fines if they can’t show their products aren’t linked to forced labour in the country’s Xinjiang region’, as reported by the BBC. 
• China hits back at Boris claims
• Meanwhile, China has charged Boris Johnson with engaging in ‘groundless conjecture’, after the PM suggested that coronavirus may have spread as a result of people grinding pangolin scales, Sky News reports. “Groundless conjecture or hype-up of the issue will only disrupt normal international co-operation on origin-tracing”, China’s foreign ministry spokesman said. 

Nuclear power 

• Nuclear spacecraft 
• Rolls Royce has struck a new deal with the UK Space Agency to build nuclear propulsion engines for spacecraft, according to the Guardian.