On Oct. 31 to Nov. 4, 2006, a delegation led by Prof. John W. Lewis, Stanford University, accompanied by Siegfried S. Hecker and Robert L. Carlin of Stanford University, and Charles L. (Jack) Pritchard of the Korean Economic Institute visited Pyongyang, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). This report summarizes the findings regarding the DPRK nuclear program based on our discussions with officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Korean People's Army, the Supreme People's Assembly, and the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center. Three members of our delegation made similar visits to the DPRK in January 2004 and August 2005. Before and after the current trip to the DPRK, Lewis and Hecker also had extensive discussions about the DPRK nuclear program with Chinese officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the military, the Central Party School, the China Reform Forum, the China National Nuclear Corporation, and the Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics.

This article presents a review of the sensitivities to proliferation attempts in each of the different stages of the commercial nuclear fuel cycle and within the nuclear power industry. As the global nuclear power industry may be on the brink of a major expansion that might rival its original growth at the inception of the nuclear age, the question is: Would this second expansion create uncontrollable proliferation risks in its wake? The basic answer is that the nuclear power industry in itself does not pose a direct proliferation threat; however, various elements of the nuclear fuel cycle could create different proliferation sensitivities if not safeguarded carefully. The first element of securing the nuclear fuel cycle is the understanding of which elements pose the greatest potential for successful proliferation attempts. These issues and several institutional and technical mitigation strategies to reduce the potential for possible proliferation are discussed here.

Executive branch officials routinely make thousands of decisions affecting public security and welfare. While it is rare that such discretionary decisions are entirely immune from some kind of judicial review, the courts' role is often so circumscribed or deferential that in some domains the probability of uncovering problems through such review almost certainly falls close to zero. The resulting amount of executive discretion carries considerable risks along with rewards. Some discretionary decisions undoubtedly benefit from the speed and flexibility associated with limits on judicial review. Yet judicial review's evisceration as a tool to restrain certain forms of discretion also makes it easier for some officials to promote appealing political impressions by subtly manipulating decisions, for others to engage in outright malfeasance, and for still others to simply fail to correct mistakes. Reliance on judicial review to generate information about executive discretion makes it difficult to address these concerns because courts routinely define much of their work in terms of applying the same standard of deference to every case in a particular class, limiting possibilities to increase the stringency of review in some policy domains without making the costs allegedly prohibitive.

As a conceptual alternative for monitoring executive discretion, this article develops a framework akin to that employed by courts engaged in the "sample adjudication" of class action and government fraud cases. It relies on the possibility of systematically auditing samples of discretionary decisions and making those results public. Although the efficacy of such a system depends on the political context and details of its institutional design, audits have the potential to sever the connection between the perceived costs of encroaching on discretion and the stringency of review. They also avoid the potentially distorted picture of bureaucratic activity created by a litigation-driven process.

Despite their value, such audits are nonetheless almost never undertaken by existing federal audit bureaucracies, nor does the legislature seem to conduct them in connection with oversight hearings. I discuss the political and bureaucratic dynamics working against these audits, suggest how they may be weakened, and conclude by discussing three implications of the analysis:

1. Judicial review fails to constrain a broad range of discretionary executive decisions subject to mistakes or malfeasance.
2. The limitations of traditional judicial review do not imply that discretionary executive branch decisions should be immune from some form of review.
3. Arguments for broad executive discretion are often radically underdeveloped and fail to withstand scrutiny.

One of the greatest challenges facing the United States today is the translation of its overwhelming might into effective influence. Traditionally, the United States has leveraged its power through bilateral and multilateral alliances. However, the end of the Cold War and the events of September 11, 2001, have led some policymakers and analysts to question the value of alliances in American foreign and defense policy. This monograph advocates that allies are more important than ever to the achievement of U.S. national security goals.

If the ultimate terror attack were to happen--a nuclear explosion in a city--the resulting death and destruction would be almost unimaginable. But we can imagine the geopolitical consequences. Can we do anything now that would help matters? Michael May, Jay Davis and Raymond Jeanloz argue that we can, by establishing a databank of known nuclear explosive materials. Using this resource it would be possible to establish where the materials came from and who was responsible for the terrorist act. Not just for purposes of retribution, but in order to assess the chances of further nuclear detonations.