Mitchell Reiss
Mitchell Reiss
Mitchell B. Reissis a senior American diplomat who is now the President and CEO of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Virginia. Immediately prior to this post, he served a tenure of four years as the 27th president of Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. He served as Director of Policy Planning at the United States Department of State under Colin Powell. He also served as the United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland, with the diplomatic rank of Ambassador, until stepping...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDiplomat
CountryUnited States of America
The Nuclear Suppliers Group is one area the president highlighted in his speech that's extremely important and that needs to be improved.
Then the final thing is enforcement. What happens when we actually catch somebody who has violated international law, rules, and regulations?
What Libya did was make a strategic determination that it would have a better future-a more secure, a more prosperous future-if it abandoned its weapons of mass destruction.
I think all of us are pretty disappointed with the abdication of responsibility by many unionist leaders, ... No political party, and certainly no responsible political leadership, deserves to serve in a government unless it cooperates and supports fully and unconditionally the police, and calls on its supporters to do so.
We need to do a lot more thinking about how the regime is going to evolve, how the bad guys are going to adapt their tactics, and what measures we're going to need in order to go forward.
What we can do is to explain as clearly as possible what the benefits would be of him going down one path, and what the potential consequences would be if he chooses another path.
We are hopeful that the North Koreans can show a little bit more realism, a little bit more flexibility.
It is fundamentally, existentially, in their own interest that they and their neighbors do not acquire nuclear weapons.
We have a model that we're following, and it's the Libya model.
You are either going forward or you are not.
There is a different future that is available to North Korea, if they choose differently.
The nexus between terrorism and nuclear weapons, or even nuclear material, is obviously a current concern.
The other countries did not share the same concern the United States had in the early '90's - that North Korea actually had an ongoing nuclear weapons program.
Now North Korea certainly is located in a different place geographically, but I think it faces the same type of strategic decision. Does it want a different future for its people?