Thank Pakistan
Business Standard / New Delhi October 10, 2006
For several years North Korea has been threatening to conduct a nuclear test. Yesterday, it finally did so, after having warned last week that it was about to take the step. As with India—twice (1974 and 1998)—the US has been caught unawares. So have China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, which, along with the US, will now lead a barrage of international criticism, which almost certainly will be followed by economic sanctions. No one knows whether North Korea, beset with economic difficulties already, will implode or survive the pressure. China’s attitude will be crucial. Reports say that North Korea gave China, its former mentor and ally, a 20-minute warning. China says that it will “resolutely oppose” North Korea, whatever that may mean. It would have been better off not supplying nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan, which supplied North Korea with nuclear technology in return for its missiles.
Will there now be a North East Asian nuclear race? Japan has said that the test constitutes a “serious threat” to it. Given that the new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is a nationalist who is looking to make Japan militarily powerful again, this could even mean Japan seeking to exercise its nuclear option. It has enough fissile material to do so. But a change in policy will not be easy if the US exerts its influence and if the strong anti-nuclear lobby in the country has its way. South Korea has tried to develop nuclear weapons in the past and it was only the US nuclear umbrella, not to mention other forms of suasion, which prevented it from going nuclear. Now it too will wonder what to do next, especially since it seems clear that when push comes to shove—as in the case of, say, Taiwan—the US will hold back from going the whole hog. So nuclear self-reliance may well become the watchword in the region. After all, of the six countries that have interests there, four—the US, Russia, China and North Korea—are now nuclear weapon states. Why should the other two hold back? Surely, they might argue, their going nuclear will make the region more stable in that everyone will have an effective deterrent.
Whether such downstream nuclearisation happens or not, yesterday marks the end of the meaningful existence of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which had already been coming apart. The moment its life was extended into perpetuity, in 1993, its death knell was sounded. The treaty required everyone to disarm. Instead, the nuclear club said we will remain nuclear forever, and others can never go nuclear. India was first to respond to the inequity, though pressure from the US to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) also had a bearing on its decision. Pakistan followed. Now North Korea has—after having first signed the NPT and then withdrawn from it. When Iran tests, as more and more people think it eventually will, Israel may follow and the NPT will not be worth the paper on which it got all those signatures.
The question remains: what does North Korea hope to gain from the test? One answer could be that it was provoked by American mishandling of talks and agreements reached, not to mention accusations on flimsy evidence. Another answer may well lie in domestic politics. In recent years the country has been even shorter of electricity, food and foreign exchange than ever before. Kim Jong Il, the North Korean supremo, is aging and has been under pressure. It should not be forgotten that his father had legitimised his succession by putting him in charge of the nuclear programme. Faced with an internal revolt of the junta that rules the country, he may well have used his trump card. So internal developments in North Korea will bear watching as much as the international ones.
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