UN Security Council (UNSC)

YMUN TAIPEIYale Model United Nations

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Dear delegates,

Welcome to the inaugural session of YMUN Taipei! As your committee director of the United Nations Security Council, I am absolutely ecstatic to be working with you all as we tackle the issues of Cyberwarfare and the conflict with North Korea. I am currently a sophomore at Saybrook College, majoring in Political Science and Philosophy.

Although a lot of the work I do on campaigns is with YIRA and its Model UN conferences, outside of YMGE I am active with the Urban Improvement Corps, which tutors area students, and with the Saybrook College Council, which is the student government group from my residential college. Outside of these involvements, I enjoy exploring nature and New Haven.

I’m absolutely excited to meet all of you come May. We will be working hard to establish guidelines to do what we can to prevent the outbreak. We will also be working together to develop solutions to the ongoing crises with North Korea and its isolation from the rest of the world. This is going to be an engaging and thrilling experience, so I hope you all are excited as I am to be part of this committee.

If you have any questions about anything, feel free to contact me at leo.espinoza@yale.edu

Sincerely,

Leo Espinoza, Yale ‘17

YMUN TAIPEI 2014Yale Model United Nations

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

History of the Commitee

Topic A —Cyber Warfare

Topic B—Korean Nuclear Crisis

Suggestions for Further Research

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History of the Committee

In 1945, the world had just experienced the deadliest conflict in human history. In order to forestall another such conflict, the allied nations that had prevailed in World War II founded the United Nations as a forum to foster international peace and cooperation.

This new body sought to define and protect human rights and freedom and develop international law that could safely bring order to a world torn apart by war. In addition, this new global government of sorts sought to promote social, economic, cultural, educational, and health cooperation and advancement.

In order to fulfill the United Nations’ promise of true global representation, the General Assembly was estab-lished to serve as a forum where representatives of each and every member country could have a voice and stage on which to express their voices. To be more effective in tackling the diverse set of challenges facing the world, the member nations established different subcommittees of the General Assembly dedicated to handling issues pertaining to specific aspects of the United Nation’s mission. The Disarmament and International Security Committee (DISEC) is one such subcommittee. Its role is to provide a forum for the passing of resolutions in order to promote disarmament and to regulate arms development and production.

Disarmament has a rich political-intellectual tradition with its origins in the thought and speeches of Wood-row Wilson during the First World War. DISEC, one of the original subsidiary committees of the GA and known as the First Committee, specifically works on these issues. It identifies different problems facing the international community in regards to arms control and world peace, debates these issues, and then attempts to come to a consensus, forwarding its opinions to the Security Council for further debate and eventual imple-mentation. Past agendas have included everything from reduction of military budgets worldwide to the ongoing debate over nuclear proliferation.

DISEC receives annual reports from agencies like the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) to assist in its evaluations and decision-making. DISEC convenes every October to discuss threats to interna-tional peace and security. All 192-member nations are welcome to attend. DISEC also coordinates with differ-ent UN bodies as well as non-UN bodies. Specifically, it works closely with the United Nations Secretariat (the executive arm of the U.N., which reports to the Secre-tary-General) through the Department for Disarmament Affairs.

While the committee cannot directly require that the international community or individual countries take

action, it has the power to directly recommend action to the Security Council.

Cyber Warfare Topic History

Regulating and preventing war has arguably been the pri-mary purpose of international law from the earliest trea-ties between city-states to the Geneva Conventions and the founding of the United Nations. The international community’s understanding of warfare has been gradu-ally broadened to include not just instances of formally declared war between nations, but also instances of armed conflict without declarations of war, international police actions, and symmetric warfare often involving terrorist or other nongovernmental parties. Still, war has generally been understood as kinetic, meaning that physical violence between armed parties is nearly always involved.

Armed conflict has been viewed as the defining feature of warfare primarily because it is through force and modern weaponry that humans can do each other the worst kinds of physical damage. Treaties, protocols, and the United Nations’ system of international government are all intended to prevent war whenever possible, and at the very least ensure that war does minimal damage to civilian populations, that combatants and civilians have access to medical care, and that no force beyond what is necessary to achieve military aims is used. By estab-lishing and codifying international norms of behavior during war—the Geneva Conventions being a perfect example—nations can know that their civilians and soldiers have some degree of protection against cer-tain kinds of weapons or ways of using force because all nations are held to the same standard. For a nation to target civilian populations, for instance, or to use chemical weapons invites an international response and makes that nation’s own civilians and soldiers vulnerable to retaliation. While some countries (and many terrorist groups or other non-governmental organizations) have targeted civilians, used chemical weapons, or employed torture, international regulations of warfare have proved at least somewhat effective in restricting certain of the most violent and inhumane tactics that have historically characterized armed conflict.

But while international law and protocols have a great deal to say about what an invading army, armed with tanks, rifles, planes, cluster bombs, and grenades may do to the army and civilians of the invaded country—and what tactics the invaded country may use to defend it-self—it has relatively less to say about some of the more modern ways countries and non-state actors may attack

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and inflict damage on others. In particular, as the world has grown more and more reliant on computers, data networks, electrical power, and a highly inter-connected financial system, the scope for wreaking havoc in a par-ticular country, or even globally, has expanded as well.

For instance, it would be considered an act of war for one country to bomb another’s oil fields or irrigation systems, even if such an attack resulted in relatively few casualties. The physical nature of the attack clearly warrants a response. However, a much larger blow could be struck to an advanced country such the United States’ wealth through a sophisticated digital attack that caused sustained damage to its banking system. By shutting down, even temporarily, the world’s largest banks, im-mense real-world damage could be done, as consumers and businesses, unsure of their ability to access savings, horde cash and cease contributing to economic activity. But could a digital attack on private banks ever warrant an armed response? While still (thankfully) theoretical, this is a question the world has struggled to address.

Moreover, the potential for damage from cyber-attacks is not merely economic. Many countries’ electrical power grids are operated digitally—an attack that shut down a country’s power systems could easily lead to physical damage. Hospitals rely on a steady stream of power in order to operate machines keeping patients alive—and while most have back-up generators, it is not inconceiv-able that some attackers might have both the means and the motivation to shut a medical system off from power. Air traffic control failure, missed emergency phone calls, spoiling food, water pump failures, and a thousand other disruptions to daily life could be caused by a damaged power grid—and all could result in human injury or death.

But while the world’s dependence on cyberspace is indis-putable, the actual threat posed by cyber warfare remains hotly debated. Despite increasing investments in cyber capacity by governments around the world, many of those investments go towards building defenses against cyber-attacks, and even investments in offensive capac-ity are often intended more to deter attack from other countries than to actually be used.

Moreover, much of what is labeled by the media as acts of aggression in cyberspace is more similar to theft than to traditional warfare, with private actors trying to ille-gally obtain corporate secrets for the sake of their own enrichment. Moreover, concerns have grown that the threat of cyber warfare could lead governments to make

inappropriate power-grabs in cyberspace, with the goal not of preventing cyber-attacks so much as monitoring their citizens’ online activity. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a body that includes China and Russia, has historically defined acts of cyber war extremely broadly to include the spreading of information by one state that could undermine the “spiritual, cultural, and moral spheres of other states.

Such a definition is likely intended to justify the policies of some country to heavily restrict access to resources and information available on the Internet, often for domestic and purely political purposes, totally unrelated to true acts of cyber-aggression.

Nor is the West immune from criticism over its aggres-sive pursuit of security concerns in cyberspace. In May of 2013, Edward Snowden, a computer specialist for Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting company under com-mission by the United States National Security Agency, revealed widespread monitoring activity by the United States of phone, email, and other Internet activity be-tween people in and outside of the United States. These disclosures provoked international controversy, with several of the United States’ European allies and privacy advocates harshly condemning what they saw as sweep-ing violations of citizens of several countries’ rights to privacy. While the United States’ activity is primarily directed at detecting and forestalling acts of physical terrorism, the sheer breadth of its monitoring activity highlights the degree to which security concerns and cyberspace have become intertwined.

But while some countries may wish to use the threat of cyber warfare to justify domestic security or political policies with little to do with legitimate defense needs, cyber war is no longer a purely theoretical threat. In-deed, instances of cyber-attacks by some governments against others’ computer systems and infrastructure are becoming more frequent. Before Russia actually invad-ed Georgia in 2008, Georgia found itself the victim of a barrage of cyber-attacks that effectively overloaded and rendered in-operational Georgian Internet servers. Though Russia denies involvement, Georgia accused Russia of deliberately engaging in acts of cyber warfare. The fact that Russia cannot be definitively said to have been behind the attacks signals a perennial problem of bringing aggressors to justice in cyberspace: their identi-ty is often hard to prove.

The most famous use of cyber-means to accomplish quasi-military ends is probably the covert deployment of

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the Stuxnet computer worm by the United States and Is-rael against Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. Through infecting computer systems in Iran, the United States and Israel were able to cause several centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz nuclear plant and other locations to spin uncon-trollably fast, thereby disrupting a good deal of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity for a period of months or years.

Israel or the United States may have been more inclined to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities if they had not had other methods of disrupting Iran’s enrichment activities (and alleged pursuit of the capacity to build a nuclear bomb); seen a certain way, the Stuxnet virus can be seen as forestalling or delaying physical war or violence. On the other hand, the use by the United States—a country often held the most responsible for enforcing interna-tional codes of conduct—of cyber weapons to damage physical infrastructure shows that cyber weapons are a highly plausible component of modern warfare. And while the United States considered but decided against mounting a digital attack on former Colonel Gaddafi’s regime in Libya so as to not set an example sanctioning cyber warfare, if its willingness to use cyber weapons against Iran has emboldened countries like China, ac-cused of illegally using its own forms of cyber weapons.

Though China’s government denies accusations of cyber-attacks, it is widely suspected that it is behind hundreds of attacks on government and private sec-tor servers in the U.S. and elsewhere. While there is no doubt that several cyber-attacks originating from China are conducted by non-governmentally affiliated hackers, the American computer security company Mandiant has released a report claiming to trace many cyber-attacks to China’s official People’s Liberation Army’s Unit 61398, operating out Shanghai. Less certain is the motive be-hind China’s cyber-attacks; if it is true that these attacks are being carried out, is it because they China is seeking to gain a military advantage by gaining the capacity to shut down parts of other countries’ critical infrastruc-ture? Or is it because of the arguably less worrisome though still provocative threat of intelligence and corpo-rate secrets, in order to win a diplomatic and economic advantage?

Current Situation

Despite historical precedents for regulating new forms of weapons as they arise going back to the Geneva Conventions, efforts to define an international archi-tecture for regulating cyber war have come up relatively

short-handed. But even while efforts to internationally sanction cyber war have failed to gain much traction, most countries remain reluctant to admit their use of cyber weapons for fear of being accused of acts of war, or possibly humanitarian crimes involved in targeting arguably civilian targets. Moreover, all countries wish to be able to harness international sympathy if they them-selves become victims of cyber-attacks, so while coun-tries have been willing to accuse others over their use of cyber weapons, few will acknowledge their own use.

Because not all countries yet have sophisticated military cyber capabilities, this has resulted in a circle of re-criminations between a small number of countries that accuse each other of aggressively using cyber warfare in order to gain military, strategic, or economic advan-tages while denying any such involvement on their own part. The most prominent of these countries are the United States, Israel, China, Russia, Germany, Iran, and North Korea. But while the club of nations capable of mounting highly destructive cyber-offenses (or compe-tent cyber-defenses) remains small, it is likely to grow, and grow rapidly. Indeed, the thousands of attacks that come daily from ultra-patriotic but nongovernmental citizens in China on United States government servers shows just how low the barriers to entry can be for this type of warfare; as more and more countries develop and increase their reliance on the digital world, the more vulnerable they will become to sustaining real damage from attacks on their computer systems. The more vul-nerable they are, the more they will seek to build up not just cyber defenses, but also a credible cyber deterrent, meaning the ability to go on the cyber-offensive.

This sort of cyber-arms race has already begun; even as Western countries, facing large debt burdens, are moving to significantly reduce their total military spending, such countries are still finding ways to increase the resources they devote to building cyber defensive and offensive capability.

Tensions between the United States and China over the near-continuous barrage of low level cyber-attacks on United States government and business servers that have originated in China are reaching a boiling point; the United States is much more willing to openly accuse China of acts of cyber aggression than it was even a year ago. U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping failed to come to any agreement over this issue at a two-day summit in June of 2013, with President Xi denying the Chinese government’s role in

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cyber-attacks and pointing out the United States’ own history with cyber weapons.

Countries today do not even agree on what cyber war-fare is; to be called an act of war, need a cyber-attack inflict physical damage or cause death? Are attacks on civilian targets that don’t inflict immediate casualties still violations of the laws of war? Is stealing corporate secrets truly a security and defense threat, or should it instead be regarded as a trade dispute and be resolved through economic, rather than security discussions?

Without a better international consensus on what ac-tions in cyberspace constitute acts of war, what consti-tutes an illegal attack on civilians, and what constitutes a legitimate military tactic, the world will likely contin-ue along its current path of increasing disputes over low-level cyber-attacks that go unacknowledged by the perpetrator. Moreover, countries will spend more and more of their resources developing cyber weapons in order to deter others, creating a constant upward spiral that will put pressure on national budgets and take away money and attention from other causes. Vagueness also creates room for truly horrifying uses of cyber weapons against power grids or other targets that could cause im-mense damage to civilian countries. While countries cer-tainly need some level of defensive cyber capability, to protect populations in the case of declared war between against terrorist and non-governmental threats as well as other militaries, a better, clearer international regime of regulations on cyber warfare might forestall an all-out digital arms race, or even a full-scale cyber war.

In order to give debate more focus, delegates may want to focus in particular on these issues:

DEFINING AN ACT OF WAR IN CYBERSPACE

Many have described the fights in cyberspace as a totally new “5th domain” in modern warfare, beyond the tradi-tional ones of land, air, and sea, and the newer domain of space. According to such a theory, a modern conflict with all-out cyber war would look very different from previous conflicts, with computer specialists deploy-ing bugs that would shut down the enemy’s air traffic control systems, cause oil refineries and pipelines to explode, bring to a halt the opposing country’s financial system, and possibly shut down their power grid.

Cyber-attacks so sweeping and catastrophic would clearly redefine the face of modern war and constitute

obviously aggressive acts, meriting a full-scale military response. Indeed, while such an attack would cause far less death and destruction than a nuclear strike, the capacity to, in a very short time, totally shut down a country’s operations and capacity for resistance suggests some interesting similarities. To the extent such sweep-ing attacks are possible, countries will likely try to build up their own ability to execute them in order to deter others; much as in the case of the post-World War II wave of nuclear proliferation, an international response and regulatory regime may be required in order to pre-vent more and more countries building such destructive capacity. As with nuclear weapons, the danger as more and more countries acquire totally destructive cyber ca-pacity becomes that there are more and more pathways for hugely destructive weapons to be deployed.

But while the “5th domain” is not a bad prism through which to view certain aspects of war carried through to cyberspace, it can also obscure more plausible ways in which cyber weapons will most likely become a key part of modern warfare. Indeed, militaries today are so dependent on digital technology that it would be hard to imagine a war without some “cyber” component to itvi—would trying to disrupt the navigation or satellite monitoring systems of another country through spread-ing computer viruses count as cyber warfare? Or at-tempting to shut down computer systems at an opposed country’s military command center?

Perhaps most important is the question of when a cyber-attack might merit a physical response; when is an attack in cyberspace so clearly an act of war that it may be met with other acts of war, in or out of cyberspace? Some have argued that the term cyber war should only be used to describe cyber-attacks with a physical con-sequence. Under such a definition, a cyber-attack could only really be called an act of war if it caused damage to a physical system; the Stuxnet virus, with its impact on Iranian centrifuges, would be one of the few instances to date of such a cyber-attack. On the other hand, a tar-geted cyber-attack with a physical consequence such as Stuxnet may arguably be said to do less damage than an all-out attempt to shut down government servers, such as Georgia experienced in 2008, even though the latter form of cyber-attack may have fewer consequences.

As of now, countries have a wide degree of latitude to determine for themselves what sort of cyber actions might be considered an act of war; this council may wish to suggest a more formal set of criteria or method

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for determining what constitutes cyber warfare.

DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN MILITARY AND CIVILIAN TARGETS

Because government and civilian infrastructure often overlap in cyberspace, determining how to distinguish between a military and civilian target becomes a highly relevant challenge. Protocol 1, an addition to the Gene-va Conventions of 1949, prohibits military attacks that specifically target civilian populations and set in place a somewhat subjective criterion for military targets, forbidding any attack where the damage to civilians is likely to be out of “proportion” to the military objective in question.

While the notion of proportionality has generally ap-plied to “kinetic” conflicts (ones which involve physical force), as war increasingly moves into cyberspace, it is likely that the Geneva Conventions will be considered to apply there as well. But what does proportionality mean in a digital context? For instance, shutting down a country’s electrical distribution network might very well accomplish several legitimate military purposes: render-ing organization, communications, transportation, and the distribution of supplies much more difficult for an enemy force. But would the damage to civilian popula-tions be “disproportionate” to such an end?

Such questions are harder to ask because the casualties of cyber warfare might not be as directly evident as those caused by traditional conflict. A bombing that kills some number of enemy soldiers and some number of civilians has very clear casualties; a cyber-attack on an electrical grid might not cause any deaths directly, but re-sulting traffic accidents or ambulances that don’t make it to the hospital on time because of nonfunctioning street lights could kill civilians. Such a scenario is just one of many potential ways a cyber-attack could have indirect but very real—and sometimes fatal—consequences on a civilian population.

The question can become much subtler; while shutting down an electrical grid at the very least clearly causes civilians enormous disruption, what about shutting down government servers that may be used both to fa-cilitate strategic planning and more ordinary government functions? Strategic resources—such as oil pipelines or refineries—might actually be owned and operated by private companies, but may be highly necessary for a government militarily.

Moreover, as asymmetric warfare, often between ter-

rorist or other non-governmental bodies and traditional armies becomes more widespread, the lines between le-gitimate military actions in cyber-space and actions that serve only to disrupt civilians can become even blurrier.

In a civil war or an occupation, can a government attempt to shut down Internet service that might be necessary for rebel coordination but also serves large ci-vilian populations? Internet is not like food or water—in a sense, many might say it is not a violation of anyone’s rights to deny them access, especially during a period of violence. On the other hand, daily lives are becoming more and more intertwined with it in more parts of the world; shutting down service could easily bring business, food distribution, or even medical systems to at least a temporary halt.

NON-GOVERNMENTAL ACTORS AND CY-BER-WARFARE

This sub-topic is highly related to the issue of dis-tinguishing between military and civilian targets. In a broader sense, the issue of how and where non-gov-ernmental actors fit into the rules of war is one that has dogged the world for decades, and particularly since Al Qaeda’s 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Since 9/11, Western militaries proved highly effective at defeating the Iraqi army or, initially, the Taliban’s or-ganized resistance. Where they ran into trouble was in fighting non-uniformed terrorist or paramilitary forces and militias employing unconventional tactics, such as suicide bombing, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the use of civilian shields, and the targeting of civilian populations.

Effectively fighting such unconventional enemies who were often not clearly distinguishable from civilian pop-ulations produced a revolution in Western military tac-tics and strategy (in particular giving rise to the doctrine of counter-insurgency), but even more sophisticated military techniques proved unable to fully or permanent-ly bring peace to many violent areas.

In cyberspace, similar challenges present themselves; how can a nation respond appropriately to cyber-attacks question becomes particularly difficult to answer given the coming not from governments but individuals, or shadowy organizations? This emerging balance of pow-ers in cyberspace; countries with significant cyber capac-ities can, to some degree, deter each other from mount-ing cyber-attacks because of their own ability to respond in kind. But while a government has much vulnerability

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to cyber-attacks and is therefore particularly susceptible to deterrence, less can be done directly against individu-als or private organizations in the cyber realm. After all, even if their servers are shut down or infected, they can always move to new ones.

The most obvious manifestation of this phenomenon comes from China where thousands of cyber-attacks originate daily. Many of these are committed with the intent to steal corporate information or other items that could be used for private enrichment. At the same time, however, a phenomenon known as “patriotic hacking” is becoming increasingly widespread.

Patriotic hackers seek to defend their own country’s interests or reputations—and to attack those of their country’s perceived enemies—through actions not authorized by their own government. Examples in China’s case have included attempts to disrupt CNN’s website over its perceived-to-be unfair news coverage of Chinese actions in Tibet. Moreover, the United States believes that hackers from within China and Russia, possibly with or without their governments’ support, have attempted to imbed numerous viruses in the U.S.’s electrical grid, possibly giving such hackers power to do significant damage at will.

Dealing with non-governmental actors in cyber-space who attempt to accomplish quasi-military ends is hard enough—equally worrying is the prospect that countries wishing to execute cyber military actions without invit-ing retaliation may sponsor covert cyber wars and hide their own involvement.

Because cyber actions are so often routed through numerous countries in order to veil their origin, any attempt to deal with the nongovernmental threat in cyberspace is likely to be effective only if it is a truly international one, involving the support and agreement of various countries on what should and will be done to preempt non-governmental cyber-threats.

CYBER-ESPIONAGE AND CYBER THEFT

While it should be clear by now that cyber weapons can and may be used to accomplish military ends, not every cyber-attack is an instance of cyber warfare. Indeed, most are not, though they may sometimes be referred to as such by various sources in the media.

Much more common than straight-up cyber warfare are instances of cyber-espionage or cyber-theft. Of course, some define cyber war broadly enough to include these

phenomena; China and Russia in particular have sought to argue that the dissemination of propaganda on the Internet may be called an act of cyber war, so as to justify their aggressive policies of online monitoring and censorship. And activities such as the United States’ demand that various email and social media cites share data on their users for the sake of detecting terrorists are, while not strictly military, certainly motivated by the desire to protect against real attacks.

This council will need to consider how broad it wishes its discussions on cyber war to be. Indeed, the most common cyber-attacks aren’t military or even intelli-gence-based; rather, they tend to be economic in nature, with Internet pirates attempting to steal corporate se-crets, intellectual property, or even credit card numbers or financial assets. On its face, such instances of blatant thievery seem more a matter for law enforcement or international trade organizations than for a security-ori-ented organization such as DISEC. On the other-hand, the pervasiveness and magnitude of cyber-theft and its international nature raises several security concerns. How far may a country go to protect its citizens and businesses from cyber-criminals? In pursuing such crimi-nals through foreign servers or casting broad nets in order to catch them, can one country infringe on anoth-er’s sovereignty?

Bloc Positions

Because so few instances of cyber warfare have, as yet, occurred, and even fewer have been admitted, many countries’ positions on the issues raised by cyber warfare are still developing and often are contradictory. Tradi-tional blocs and alliances don’t necessarily apply; while the United States and Europe are both concerned over China’s aggressiveness in the cyber-worlds, European countries have varied in their willingness to publicly back the U.S. in criticizing China. The same can be said of many European countries in regard to the United States and Israel’s efforts to disrupt Iranian nuclear develop-ment. And while Iran professes its anger at others for using cyber weapons against it, it has itself boasted of having the second largest cyber-army in the world.

Many countries’ policies on cyber warfare seem to vary with their own interests; often, they seem to not want to allow others to employ cyber weapons, while wishing to retain that right for themselves if they believe circum-stances warrant it. Meanwhile, many countries feel like bystanders in this debate as they currently lack signifi-cant cyber-power; even those countries, however, realize

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that sooner rather than later they will have to reckon with an increasingly digital (and, in some ways, vulnera-ble) world. Generally speaking, most countries’ positions fall into these categories:

COUNTRIES WISHING TO BUILD CYBER-OF-FENSIVE CAPACITY

In spite of its frequent denials, China has probably been the most aggressive country in deploying cyber weap-ons offensively in order to gain a security and economic advantage. Russia also falls into this category, as do Iran and North Korea. Often, such countries are seeking to gain an area of advantage in order to compensate for perceived military weaknesses in other categories. Israel and the United States also have extremely sophisticated cyber-offensive capabilities, and though hesitant about using them for fear of starting an arms race, they have shown themselves willing to use cyber weapons covertly to deal with threats they view as highly pressing.

COUNTRIES WISHING TO LIMIT THE SPREAD OF CYBER WEAPONS

Most European countries would fall into this category (though some, such as Germany, actually have significant cyber capabilities). In an era of economic stress and de-clining government budgets, most do not want to open up a whole other arena of combat and be forced to compete at the top-level. Other countries, such as Japan or South Korea, are probably more concerned of the cyber-threat coming out of China or North Korea and are therefore likely to support efforts they see as curtail-ing that threat, while supporting the aggressive buildup of deterrent capabilities by the United States.

COUNTRIES CONCERNED WITH MONITORING CIVIL UNREST OR DOMESTIC THREATS

Many countries may not see themselves as affected (as yet) by cyber warfare, per se, but are subject to a great deal of domestic political volatility and wish to main-tain various ways for monitoring and controlling unrest online. Particularly throughout the Arab Spring, gov-ernments such as Egypt’s have shutdown social media sites in order to inhibit revolutionary tendencies. Other countries, such as Turkey or China, have longer-standing restrictions on what their citizens can access through the Internet. These countries will be eager to make sure that any new international framework on cyber war does not interfere with governments’ ability to regulate and monitor the Internet—indeed, they may seek to for-mally codify that ability under the guise of preventing

cyber-attacks.

COUNTRIES MORE CONCERNED WITH CYBER CRIMES

Some countries with very low cyber capabilities may be more concerned with the economic aspects of cyber-crimes. This could either be in order to prevent crimes from being executed on their own citizens, or to ensure that their sovereignty is not infringed upon in pursuit of cyber criminals (some countries, such as Nigeria, are thought to be home to large cybercriminal networks).

COUNTRIES WITH LOW-CYBER CAPABILITIES THAT ARE CONCERNED WITH DEFENSE

Since the United States considered using cyber weapons in its efforts to depose Colonel Gaddafi’s military regime in Libya, many countries (particularly those hostile to the West) may worry that cyber weapons could provide another avenue for more powerful countries to exploit weaker ones. Such countries may seek to limit or ban cyber warfare outright.

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Questions to Consider

Delegates in this committee will want to consider a number of questions as they begin to draft clauses for submission. Nothing this committee produces will conclusively answer all these questions, nor should the committee hesitate to explore other areas of the topic to try to find answers to these complex, multi-dimensional problems. Still, consider these questions to start:

· What constitutes an act of war in cyberspace? When (if ever) can a cyber-attack warrant a physical military response?

· Can or should cyber warfare be banned? Are cyber-attacks an inevitable feature of modern warfare, or should the world nip the militariza-tion of cyber-space in the bud, as it has largely managed to do for the militarization of outer space?

· Do traditional understandings of civilian vs. mil-itary targets apply in cyber-space? How does the idea of proportionality apply? What restrictions must the world put in place in order to prevent catastrophic damage to civilian populations from cyber-attacks? Is it permissible for governments to mount cyber-attacks against private civilian targets if they serve a strategic role?

· How can the world’s governments cooperate to prevent and punish non-governmental actors who mount cyber-attacks?

· Is a digital arms race inevitable? Are there ways to prevent or slow the proliferation of cyber capabilities?

· Should a distinction be made between cyber war and cyber espionage? Do these categories de-mand different international regulatory regimes?

· How far may a country go in cyberspace to protect economic and corporate interests? Does Internet piracy ever constitute a military action, or ever warrant one in response?

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Korean Nuclear Crisis: Topic History

In the early 1940s, as the end of World War II became an imminent possibility with an Allied victory, President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chinese commander Chiang Kai-shek convened in Cairo, Egypt, to decide on the penalties that would be ascribed to those that had fought against them and the Allied nations. Discussions in the Cairo Conference of 1943 dealt with postwar Asia and soon became centered on the ramifications that Japan, spe-cifically, would face following the war’s end. The agree-ment created between the three men, at the end of the conference, called for Japan’s unconditional surrender of “all the islands in the Pacific which she has seized or occupied since the beginning of the First World War in 1914.” The leaders also agreed that “all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa, and the Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China,” and that “in due course Korea shall become free and independent.”

The latter clause would not be fully fulfilled. On August 6, 1945, as the dust over Hiroshima began to settle fol-lowing the US bombing, the Soviet Union marched into Manchuria and through the north of Korea, stopping only at the 38th parallel as per their previous agreement with the United States. In the aftermath of the war, the United States would secure an anti-Stalinist govern-ment in South Korea amenable to an American military presence within its territory (one that has continued to the present day). In the north, the Soviet Union used the pro-Communist reactionaries in a severely economically disparate territory to secure their influence over the area. Despite the Soviet Union’s withdrawal in 1948, the rise of communist-based “people’s committees” had already contributed to the growing power of a Kim-Il-Sung, who was official elected to power in the 1948 UN-re-

Cairo Conference of 1943

quested elections, declaring at the same time the birth of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

After this official and therefore internationally rec-ognized partition, Kim Il-Sung immediately amassed communist support throughout both North and South Korea, building up a military state with Joseph Stalin’s aid. He also quickly nationalized the assets and industries of all of North Korea. As Kim’s power became more and more consolidated in North Korea, he launched a popular movement called the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland; the front elects all can-didates for office and includes the three major political parties in North Korea. Following the implied approval from major powers in Asia, Kim launched an invasion of South Korea with the intent to reunify Korea by force. The ensuing Korean conflict resulted in high casualties and losses during an intense three years of fighting. Pyongang and Seoul exchanged hands several times before a combination of Chinese aid in the North and UN aid in the South led to a stalemate along the 38th parallel once more.

In the following years, North Korea continued to isolate itself economically—by encouraging a self-reliant policy of military industrialization and social welfare for the people—and politically—with its unpopular and in-ward-looking ideologies. A North Korea heavily depen-dent upon foreign aid, harboring a population of Kim family worshippers but seriously suffering farmers, and looked at askance by the majority of the world is what Kim Jong-Il inherited from his father. Further compli-cating the matter of North Korean cooperation with the international community was the fact that Kim Jong-Il continued in his father’s tradition of exacerbating his contemporaries, this time by refusing to comply with strict boundaries concerning the use of nuclear weap-ons. The unstable history of the nation, as documented above, has lent a hand in multiplying the concerns of the international community in their unwillingness to allow North Korea to develop or utilize nuclear weapons.

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Although nuclear weaponry was nascent, the world was fully aware of its catastrophic capabilities and the political power it could bring to the states that have such weapons in possession. The droppings of the first nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 pushed the world into a race for nuclear weapons and ushered in a global fear of all-out nuclear warfare. Leg-islation to limit testing began to be introduced: the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty restricted all nuclear testing to underground nuclear testing in order to prevent con-tamination from nuclear fallout; the Nuclear Non-Pro-liferation Treaty of 1968 placed restrictions on the types of nuclear exercises signatories could perform; and the 1956 development of the International Atomic Energy Agency established by mandate of the United Nations was meant to encourage the peaceful development and application of nuclear technology, institute international safeguards against misuse, and provide the necessary aid for the easy implementation of safety measures for nuclear use.

In the Koreas specifically, the Korean Armistice Agree-ment, signed and agreed upon by both North and South Korea, included a clause clearly stating that no innovative weaponry was to be introduced into Korea, thereby precluding the appearance of nuclear weapons. However, on June 21, 1957, the United States informed North Korean representatives that it “no longer consid-ered itself bound” by this clause and moved to deploy nuclear weapons to South Korea within range of China and the Soviet Union. Seeing no aid or nuclear weapons provided from China and Russia, its only recourse was

Bombing of the Hiroshima

by

the U.S. in 1945.

to deploy its troops closer to the border in the hopes of deterring nuclear attack, and building the large, fabled system of underground hideouts and escape routes became necessary. Eventually, the Soviet Union relent-ed, to some extent. In 1963, they provided instruction and assistance to North Korea in the development of a nuclear energy and training program.

Eager to defend itself, North Korea began to covertly develop its nuclear program as it fortified its military aboveground. North Korea was never able to avoid the suspicions of the international community, however. Despite the secrecy in which North Korea developed its nuclear weapons, U.S. satellites captured photos of North Korea’s nuclear weapons complex in 1990. As of 2003, North Korea retracted and declared itself no lon-ger a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was an agreement signed by 190 member states of the United Nations banning nuclear development and its use other than for non-peaceful purposes. After completing its first successful test of nuclear missiles in 2006, the DPRK has established itself as a nuclear power.

Current Situation

Among the functions of the United Nations Security Council is the preservation of international peace and security. In the wake of the Cold War and its sudden emphasis on nuclear power and weaponry, many coun-tries—in compliance with the UN—have either severely reduced or completely ended the manufacture of their nuclear experiments. As had been shown above, North Korea’s volatile history and clear intent to eventually control its southern neighbor implies that its use of nu-clear weapons may not only be targeted at South Korea, but might also be implemented in an irresponsible and highly dangerous manner.

The fallout from the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima during the Second World War served as a powerful reminder of the ramifications of nuclear warfare. The international community has rallied around the cause of nuclear nonproliferation, issuing economic and possible sanctions as necessary to nations less willing to com-ply. When India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in mid-1998, trade embargos and refusals to cooperate from foreign investors—despite the non-signatory status of both nations in regards to the nuclear nonprolifer-ation treaty—led to a quick end of their activities. In certain cases—most notably that of Iraq—the threat of nuclear technology being developed in nations unfriend-ly to the current Western global hegemony as led to severe action tantamount to small-scale wars.

In 2009, President Obama spoke in the city of Prague, Czech Republic, calling for a “world without nuclear

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weapons.” The Czech Republic, having spent several long years in the shadow of its nuclear weapons-wield-ing Russia neighbor, was overjoyed. The world over seemed to echo President Obama’s sentiment at that point in time, but support for nuclear disarmament would quickly rise as North Korea’s volatility became even more pronounced.

Despite the several UN resolutions deriding its previous testing and use of nuclear weapons, and the interna-tional community’s general negative response to North Korean defiance, on April 13, 2012, the nation launched a missile as the entire world watched.

Following Kim Jong-Il’s death, Kim Jong-un succeeded his father as leader of North Korea. In December of 2012, Kim launched a long-range rocket. After contin-ued nuclear testing, Kim threatened to exercise North Korean’s “right to a pre-emptive nuclear attack” against the US following UN sanctions against North Korea. Kim has also threatened to end the 60 year armistice with South Korea, launch nuclear strikes against the US, and declared creating nuclear arms and a stronger econ-omy the nation’s top priorities. North Korean plans to restart a nuclear reaction capable of producing a bomb’s worth of plutonium in a year, however, the state claims the facility would be used to generate electricity. Scien-tists estimate that North Korea has enough plutonium for four to eight basic nuclear bombs; the current census is that North Korea is readying a medium-range missile designed to reach US military installments in Guam and Japan.

Along with the usual considerations, the United Nations must pay special attention to the following issues specif-ically:

Relations with South Korea

It should be very clear that for the first step in stemming

Kim Jong Un greeting the North Korean military

the enmity driving much of North Korea’s dangerous nature is its inability to reconcile with its neighbor to the south. While it is far beyond the power of the United Nations to bring the two nations together geographical-ly, diplomatic relations must be the first action in ensur-ing peace for North and South Korea.

The South Korean economy has taken a decidedly more successful route than its northern counterpart, progress that is in large part due to its wholesale engagement in the capitalist and international free market. South Korea has been a UN member state since 1991, has coined the OECD, and has even seen one of its own elected as the UN’s Secretary-General (Ban Ki-moon). After hosting the annual G20 meeting, it seemed that the nation’s star would find no end in its ascent. For years now, as a re-sult, South Korea has maintained aide programs targeted at North Korea’s disparaged and needy civilian popu-lation, ranging from education outreach to agricultural cooperative programs. The Republic of Korea considers itself—and is considered—an indispensable regional and global contributor to peace, security, and prosperity thanks to its increasing involvement in UN peacekeeping and aid agencies.

The North Korean government has often assumed that South Korea is on a perpetual smear campaign, direct-ed at toppling the Kim dynasty from within. For this reason, they have continuously referred to the South Korean government as “puppet authorities” bent upon worsening the already-horrible lives of North Korean civilians.

As far as nuclear diplomacy is concerned, South Korea’s chief concern is the assurance that their interests will not be subordinated in US negotiations with North Ko-rea to end nuclear proliferation. While eager to establish a policy of family reunification, contact in international forums, and North-South exchanges, the South Korean government is wary of how far the United States will go to reestablish communication with North Korea, who will not engage in even multi-party talks if a South Korean delegation is to be present.

Although Kim Jong-un called for a better relationship with South Korea at the start of 2013, tensions have rapidly escalated between the two Koreas. Following UN sanctions, Kim has withdrawn from all non-aggres-sion pacts with South Korea. Given the recent nuclear threats, South Korea has said it will respond to an attack from North Korea by targeting its top leadership. On March 11, 2013, the US and South Korea began military drills, which North Korea condemned.

North Korea has since rejected talks with the “puppet regime” in the South and both countries have pulled workers from the Kaesong industrial zone in North

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Korea. The industrial zone was viewed as a beacon of hope for reconciliation and sunshine policy between the two Koreas, which are technically still at war since the Korean conflict did not end with a treaty.

It is imperative that the two nations discuss the issue bilaterally at an early point in North Korea’s nuclear dis-armament, especially if the hostility fueling the weapons craze is meant to dissipate fully. The United Nations Security council will find it difficult to move forward with any other recommendations or actions of it cannot first establish that South-North Korean diplomacy has truly failed.

The North Korean Civilian Population

Much of the North Korean civilian population lives a miserable life. A famine that hit in the early 1990s has never been recovered from; people starve daily in their own homes. North Korea’s economy is based large-ly around nationalized industries currently generating almost no output, and a large military force that is given the prime choice of all available resources, leaving scraps of leftovers for the rest of the civilian population. The ecological devastation that has occurred as a result of land-planning without regulation and illogical plans to increase food production has led to increase chances of drought and flooding.

Just around ¼ of the children aged under five in North Korea are underweight for their age, and a 1/3 of the population is malnourished. Most North Koreans can only sustain themselves with maize, vegetables, and wild foods-a diet lacking entirely in fats, proteins, and other necessary micronutrients. The situation is dire; since the 1990s, almost a million North Koreans have starved to death. The health, education, and sanitation systems are in similar states of disrepair and decrepitude.

There is almost a complete repression of freedom of speech, information, and association in North Korea. Citizens cannot move freely in the country and emigra-tion is strictly forbidden. Criticizing the government is grounds for an arrest and confinement to prison camps. Thirty percent of the North Korean population is confined to these prison work camps designed to hold political insurgents and undesirables. Civilians trapped in these camps are often only husks of their former selves by the time they get out, if they get out. The hundreds of thousands of people, children included, detailed in prison camps are subjected to forced labor, torture, and public executions. The death penalty is administered with due process for a variety of offenses, including attempts to escape from the country or a prison camp. Under Kin Jong-un, these prison camps appear to be growing in size. However, the full extent of human rights violations in North Korea is uncertain due to the

exclusive nature of the country.

It is important to consider the North Korean civil-ian population because they are, despite their misery, fiercely loyal to the cult of personality surrounding the Kim family. Civic organisms all praise the government and the deceased rulers Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-sung. Almost all the films, plays, and books produced in the country aim to promote the cult of personality sur-rounding these figures. Media is strictly regulated to promote propaganda in favor of the government and against the US and South Korea. Civilians mourned the death of Kim Jong-Il, “the great saint born of Heaven,” as countless people publically paid homage at the public parades in honor of their deceased ruler.

Dealing with a trigger-happy government without the usual promise revolutionaries from within will mean that the United Nations Security Council will not hold much leverage over the North Korean government. This is an issue because the usual economic sanctions, should North Korea not comply with demands for disarma-ment, will only lead to the already much-embittered civi-lization populations suffering even more—and it is likely that they will simply blame the international community, since their belief in the government will not allow them to defame or disparage their leaders.

It is also increasingly likely that even if North Korea were to attempt to launch a nuclear attack, count-er-threats would be incredibly unlikely to deter the gov-ernment, which has already shown a deep disregard for their own people. Furthermore, the government has a series of underground tunnels accessible to high-stand-ing party members, easily allowing them to escape in the case of nuclear attack. This alone should serve as deter-rent for the international community when considering a counterattack—the deaths of millions of civilians who are already destitute is not at all desirable.

North Koreans mourning the death of Kim Jong Il

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The Chinese Question

China entered the Korean conflict in support of North Korea and later pledged to give military aid to North Korea in the case of an outside attack. Since then, China has been considered North Korea’s “most important ally, biggest trading partner, and main source of food, arms, and fuel.” The two countries share a border that roughly corresponds to the Yalu and Tumen rivers. In 2000, China and North Korea made an agreement re-garding the joint management of border ports that con-nect the two countries. Pyongang is extremely economi-cally dependent upon China; half of all Chinese foreign aid is to North Korea, and trade has increased rapidly since the 1980s. China is North Korea’s largest trading partner and provides half of North Korean imports. It is unlikely that North Korean will act in a manner not reflective of the economic giant’s aims.

China, in return for this show of continuous support, has also served as a strong deterrent for anti-North Korean activists and defectors. Any escapees from North Korea who attempt to assimilate into China and are caught are deported back to North Korea. China has gone as far as to hold South Korean activists—most notable Kim Young-Hwan, a senior researcher for the Seoul-based Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights—on the basis of the illegality of their attempts to help North Korean defectors. China usually charges these activists with the endangerment of Chi-nese national security, since their actions are thought to chip away at the bond between North Korea and China.

China has joined North Korea in saying that the United States adds to regional tensions and upsetting the natural balance between the two Koreas, citing their joint naval

The Sino-Korean Border

and nuclear exercises around the American base in South Korea. The United States has been firm in main-taining their military base, stating: “It demonstrates out strong alliance with South Korea, our ability to defend South Korea,” U.S. Army Col. Patrick Stackpole, chief of staff for U.S. forces in Japan, told reporters in Tokyo. “We will continue to conduct those type of exercises to basically show that we are a strong ally of South Ko-rea.” This implicit threat is not only targeted at North Korea—the United States maintains this base largely as a buffering force against growing Chinese power in the event that the nation makes any unwanted military ad-vances, especially at the behest of its North Korean ally.

Although the two have historically shared diplomatic re-lations, China has shown concern at North Korea’s nu-clear weapons program. The Chinese are concerned with North Korean volatility and have taken the necessary steps for a possible disentanglement from North Ko-rea. In January of the last year, South Korean diplomats met with Chinese officials in order to discuss a peaceful transition of power from Kim Kong Il to Kim Jong Un. Their meeting also centered around the topic of denu-clearization as a necessary component of cultivating peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. A hotline was set up between foreign ministers from either nation, and the Chinese President urged his Korean counterpart to work harder to improve ties with North Korea. China has also been influential in facilitating dialogue between the DPRK and other nations, especially in the Six Party Talks between the two Koreas, China, Russia, USA, and Japan.

In 2013, as North Korea prepares for a missile test after repeated threats against the US and South Korea, China has pledged to join the US in a disarmament process to remove nuclear weapons from North Korea. China may provide the key to negotiations with North Korea and improved North-South Korean relations as China has major economic leverage over the county. However, Chi-na remains wary of American military buildup in South Korea and is unlikely to welcome a stronger American presence in Asia.

Russia’s Ambiguous Relationship

From the days during which North Korea was estab-lished, the Russia (earlier known as the Soviet Union) was a military and political ally that largely shaped the state’s ideology, guided the founding of the Korean People’s Army, and backed North Korean forces with weapons, air forces, and vehicles during the Korean War. Relations between the two nations further improved as North Korea became a Stalinist state under the leader-ship of Kim Il-Sung.

Relations briefly soured during the premiership of Ni-

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kita Khrushchev, who advocated de-Stalinization, which conflicted with the Communist totalitarian ideology that was central to the authoritarian power of the Kim family. Publicly denouncing the Soviet Union’s ideology as anti-Marxist, North Korea sought independence from its former ally in the 1960’s, during which North Korea’s turned away from the Soviet Union and moved towards China.

Although relations spiked again during the 1970’s and 80’s, relations between the two countries cooled to neutral nearing the final years of the Cold War. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, ties with North Korea were no longer seen as vital to Russia. Furthermore, since Russia has abandoned its Soviet communist ide-ologies, Russia was no longer compelled to provide aid to its neighbor. As Russia moved away from the days of brinkmanship, Moscow became self-sufficient and moved away from needing North Korea for its urani-um deposits. After Russia recognized South Korea as a growing economic power and the partnership between the two grew more closely, the strength of the Rus-sian-North Korean friendship waned.

Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which incurred a wave of sanctions and a cooling of relations between Russia and its Western neighbors, the political bonds between the former war allies fostered as influence over North Korea became key, if Russia were overcome the new trade barriers. Russia also seeks to have a hold over North Korea as a check on China’s rising economic and the United States’ military influence in the East Asian re-gion. According to IB Times, “by 2020, Moscow intends to increase annual trade with North Korea to $1 billion.” Regarding Russian-North Korean relations from a mil-itary perspective, the two nations still cooperate. Since 2011, former North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Il has also moved numerous times to Russia, specifical-ly to confer about conducting joint military drills with North Korea’s ground and naval forces.

Despite the fact that Russia recognizes the DPRK’s lim-ited economic abilities to build upon and cooperate with Russia’s economic investments, the DPRK’s political instability jeopardizes Russian economic interests, which include developments in the gas industry near the Rus-so-Korean border and proposed underwater gas pipeline linking Russia to South Korea. Russia is also frustrated with the DPRK because, according to thediplomat.com, “North Korea often acted…without regard for Russian interests.” For these reasons, Russia expresses immense concern over any action that can put at stake the stability of the region, and has multiple times denounced North Korea’s nuclear testing and non-compliance with inter-national obligations. Although Russia has multiple times refrained from issuing or protected North Korea from crippling sanctions, Russia firmly stands for peace, dia-

logue, and negotiation to resolve the tense nuclear crisis of the Korean peninsula. Russia’s support and under-standing of the DPRK’s precarious situation also greatly depends on the DPRK’s respect for Russia’s security interests. Nevertheless, Russia still remains one of North Korea’s key allies, but as of right now, when compared to China, Russia has a much smaller leverage over the increasingly isolated nation.

Questions to Consider

The Security Council must seriously consider the possi-ble ramifications of allowing North Korea to continue developing nuclear weapons, and the possibility of their own attempts to end these events from happening. Deci-sions made in this convening of the Security Council could end in a declaration of war that—with the de-structive and enhanced capabilities of not only nucle-ar technology by the advanced weaponry on hand in general today—could lead to a devastating end for many world-wide. Here are a few questions to guide your de-bate and the resolutions you produce.

1. Should the United Nations utilize military force in its plan to end nuclear proliferation in North Korea? How could it justify this without attract-ing negative international attention but before a North Korean strike severely harms a popula-tion?

2. What will the role of the South Korean military base be following North Korean agreements concerning nuclear disarmament? Will it be safe/advisable for the United States to withdraw its troops in a show of good faith?

3. How will the United Nations Security Council, if it chooses to utilize military force, assist in the creation of a new government? To what extent will democratic sentiments be forced upon the population?

4. In what way can the United Nations lessen nu-clear restrictions in North Korea—if at all—in order to allow the nation to continue to harness nuclear power for the sake of providing work-ing factories and other sources of energy for its civilian population?

5. Following North Korean compliance—if that occurs—will the United Nations Security Coun-cil allow North Korea to join as a member state? Pending what considerations?

6. What other unmentioned political interests of the Security Council (especially those of Russia, China, and the United States) are related to this issue, and from what other angles may this coun-

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cil perceive or address this crisis?

7. How can previous proposals by the UNSC and other relevant organizations be improved to con-vince the DPRK into halting its nuclear develop-ment programme?

8. Have the sanctions of humanitarian aid and trade embargoes achieved their desired results? Should the sanctions and punishments be lifted to promote better relations with the DPRK, in interests of convincing it to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, or should the international community continue to press the DPRK into ceasing development of nuclear weapons?

9. The DPRK upholds its right to develop nuclear weapons to safeguard its own nation from the military and political pressures from its powerful foreign enemies. Such pressures include what the DPRK believe are imperialist infringements on its national sovereignty to develop its own energy and defense program and actions done to jeopardize the well-being of the country. Is the DPRK’s perspective warranted? Why or why not?

10. What actions should the Security Council, the international community, and other relevant groups undertake to protect civilians and nation-al security, in case conflict breaks out?

11. Other than the sanctions imposed, the standards of the IAEA set, and the dialogue attempts between the DPRK and the international com-munity, are there any alternatives that can be undertaken to address this issue?

12. Russia and China are the two P5 nations that have taken only ambiguously moderate stances against, and even at times protected from in-ternational pressure, the DPRK. If the Security Council is to create an effective plan to incen-tivize the DPRK into abandoning its nuclear weapons programme, what type of plan would it take for China and Russia to be in support?

Structure of the Committee

Structure of Debate—Modified Parliamentary Proce-dure: we will use parliamentary procedure as a starting point, but expect more moderated and unmoderated caucuses than time on the speaker’s list. During the conference, we may make certain adjustments to regular parliamentary procedure in order to achieve better and fuller debate.

Security Council Documents: The ultimate goals of this UNSC simulation is to pass one resolution on each topic

that the committee has chosen to address. Resolution writing in this committee will not deviate in any way from traditional resolution format. For more informa-tion regarding resolution writing, you will be able to consult the Delegate Guide during the conference.

In addition to writing resolutions, foreign ministers at the UNSC will be able to write and pass communuiques, which announce a unilateral or collective position or action on any relevant issue. Communiques effective-ly function as directives to a home government or to several governments; thus, they represent unilateral action on the part of an individual state, or multilateral action of a group of states that are part of the Security council, as opposed to the UNSC as a whole. Commu-niques will not be written in resolution format, but in numbered paragraph form, with each paragraph outlin-ing the specific position or action that a government or governments are taking. Given that all delegates in the simulation will represent every nation’s foreign minis-ter, communiques will certainly have an impact on the course of the simulation.

The conference will be divided into two sections, with one being devoted to each topic. In the first session, each delegate will give a speech to be approximately ninety seconds long outlining positions of their coun-try. After this, time will be allowed for an unmoderated caucus where delegates are to formulate clauses to be submitted for debate. Chairs will review submissions and after the lobbying period is over, debate will commence and will go clause by clause.

When a clause is introduced, the author of the clause will give the first speech, answer any questions, and then s/he will have the option to yield to a colleague or the chair. Following the initial speech in affirmation of the clause, more speakers will speak against and for the clause in an alternating manner, all the while answer-ing any points of informations the delegates may have for them. Delegates may continue submitting clauses throughout the debate, but they may not be introduced until all other submitted clauses have been debated. The chairs highly encourage concise delegate speeches. They are also likely to be implementing time limits on the speakers.

Amendments of the first and second degree will be accepted, but delegates may not abstain while voting on them. Due to our unusually large committee size, observing nations will be able to participate in the discussion of the different clauses as well as be able to vote on procedure, but they will not be able to vote on the clauses themselves or on the resolution as a whole. Votes for those two tasks will be limited to the fifteen member states of the UN SC.

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The YMUN Taipei UN SC will abide by standard parlia-mentary procedure. Following this structure for both of the two topics, it is our hope that one resolution will be passed on behalf of all member states.

Voting Procedure: this simulation will follow standard UNSC voting procedure, with one more regarding communiques. In brief, in order to achieve quorum, nine member nations must be present. To pass any proce-dural or substantive proposal, there must be nine votes in the affirmative. In the case of a substantive proposal, France, the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States must all vote in the affirmative or abstain so as to not exercise their veto power. No abstentions are permis-sible when voting on procedural matters. When calling roll, in lieu of stating “present,” a nation may classify itself as “present and voting.” This nation will forgo its right to abstain from substantive considerations for the duration of that committee session. Regarding com-muniques, these documents offer the foreign ministers present at the UNSC flexibility to take unilateral or collective action on particular issues by bypassing the UN. There is no official voting procedure for communi-ques, and they may be submitted by a state or a group of states at any time. Upon submission, the communiques will have binding force on the state or states that have submitted the document.

Other Communication: The UNSC simulation will naturally involve significant interaction with home gov-ernment and other international actors and institutions. All foreign ministers will have significant opportunity to seek specific information or feedback from their nation-al governments. In addition, representatives from inter-national institutions will be available to present reports and address the questions and needs of the Council.

Each delegate is also responsible for a position paper outlining the topic, the country’s position on the topc, and proposed solutions. Topic papers should be no more than 1 page per topic; delegates should expect feedback on position papers before the start of commit-tee.

Suggestions for Further Research

While this report introduces the issue at hand, delegates are strongly encouraged to read and digest information from other sources. To grasp general overviews of the different countries that will also be discussing this topic, delegates may read some of BBC’s country profiles of the member states in the Security Council. Another page with credible, concise, and relevant information on this specific matter is the CIA World Factbook. Delegates are also advised to follow up with current events regard-

ing this topic. For information on global current events, delegates may choose to read BBC, the International Herald Tribune, or Al Jazeera.

Another source that delegates may choose to read is the UN itself. For additional research, delegates may note how the UN addressed Iran’s nuclear programme, which does not abide by IAEA regulations and is heavily sus-pected of developing nuclear weapons. Reading treaties (such as the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the NPT) and resolutions in detail can also give delegates a clearer pic-ture of what has already been done by the international community.

Delegates who wish to introduce creative ideas and tack-le the agendum from specific, technical perspective may also digest more information regarding the DPRK’s mil-itary strength, the potential capabilities of the DPRK’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, or other reports from the IAEA.

In any sort of research, delegates are advised to not only prepare for the conference by gathering sources regard-ing his own delegation’s stance on the issue but also by reading information on the stances of other countries. Aside from reading alternative sources of information, delegates are highly encouraged to think extensively about the political interests behind the involvements in the crisis.

As you ponder this topic further, delegates, here are some more resources you can use to gather information in preparation for committee:

· http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pa-cific-15278612

· http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamen-tary_Library/Publications_Archive/CIB/cib0203/03CIB18

· http://www.atomicarchive.com/Reports/Northkorea/

· http://www.nti.org/country-profiles/north-korea/nuclear/

· http://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997_05/sigal

· http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Ko-rea_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

· http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kore-an_War#Division_of_Korea_.281954.E2.80.93present.29

· http://www.cfr.org/china/china-north-ko-rea-relationship/p11097

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· http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/world/asia/some-chinese-are-souring-on-be-ing-north-koreas-best-friend.html?pagewant-ed=all&_r=0

· http://www.reuters.com/arti-cle/2014/04/04/us-northko-rea-usa-un-idUSBREA331IG20140404

· https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kn.html

· http://thediplomat.com/2013/12/the-significance-of-russias-frustra-tion-with-north-korea/

· http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/russias-vladimir-putin-eyeing-closer-ties-north-koreas-kim-jong-un-1442713

Position Papers are due by May 19th for feedback and by the first committee session to

qualify for awards. Please submit your position papers to your chair via email.

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