Nuclear Proliferation - Essay Example

North Korea Proliferation Long term resolution of the North Korean Proliferation issue Nuclear proliferation and the attempts to avoid it are probably one of the most discussed, oft repeated and controversial issues that plague contemporary global politics. Since the emergence of the modern territorial state in the aftermath of disbanding colonialism, security has been defined as the integrity of borders. Threats to security were ultimately reducible to the prospect of military forced penetration (Karp, 302). This had been the preferred mode of defining nation and national security for a long period of time prior to the Second World War. the complexity of the nature of security and threats to security found a completely different proportion when America was able to attack and defeat Japan with no penetration in terms of access within the Japanese territory. This displayed the strengths of nuclear weapons and the fact that it was no physical military penetration was no longer required to dominate an opponent. The hazardous nature of nuclear weapons was also put on show given the fact that Nagasaki and Hiroshima still bear marks of the nuclear strike made sixty years ago. The United Nations recognizes 193+1 states as having sovereign authority. Of these 190 odd states five are legally recognized as nuclear weapon states (NWS) under the terms of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Six countries (Argentina, Brazil, India, Israel, Pakistan and South Africa) are counted as the threshold states: they possess sizeable unsafeguarded nuclear facilities or have passed the brink of a nuclear test or of clandestine weapon production. North Korea falls under the bracket of the countries that have been suspected at some time or other of possessing or attempting to develop nuclear weapons. These counters are Iran, Iraq, Libya, Taiwan and South Korea. Against this basic background one could assumer arguably that any one of these states could have the potential to become Short Notice Nuclear Weapons State (SNNWS). SSNWS are states that have the capability to produce within maximum one year nuclear weapons of such quantity that could make them a factor in an unfolding conflict (Lange, 2007). North Korea has been seen as a rogue state for a while by the American administration, given the fact that it has steadfastly resisted US influence and remained communist/ dictatorial (Wit, Poneman and Gallucci, 221). The Wong administration has time and time again refused UN backed intrusions in its nuclear program and the world has been suspicious for a while about its nuclear ambitions. It was infact believed that North Korea or Democratic people’s Republic of Korea as it prefers to be called, was high on the Bush administration list of rogue states and constituted one end of what Bush termed “the Axis of evil”, Iraq and Iran being the other two. North Korea has also been under the scanner for its clandestine relations with China and the fact that many have believed that China has over the years proliferated arms to North Korea, thereby maintaining its influence in the peninsula (Wit, Poneman and Gallucci, 115). The threat of the non-state factors and North Korea’s alliance with them has also been placed under consideration. Since September 2005, the world has witnessed something resembling g a roller coater ride as far as the Korean peninsula is concerned. In September 2005, all the delegates to the Six-Party talks on the north Korean nuclear program signed a Statement of Principles in Beijing that suggested a resolution of the North Korean nuclear crisis might be possible. The air of hopefulness produced by this agreement barely lasted a day. After a series of aborted sessions, talks were suspended while two of the involved parties, i.e. North Korea and UN traded accusations. In July, 2006 the country launched six ballistic missiles and three months later in October, 2006 North Korea detonated what appeared to be an underground nuclear device (Barry, 37-41). North Korea’s small underground test in 2006 was instantly detected by 22 of the system’s nearly 300 stations, including one 7,000 kilometers away. Within two hours, the data had been analyzed and sent to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty’s (CTBT) member states. This was followed obviously by widespread international criticism. On February 13, 2007, the six parties agreed to sign an agreement to achieve a set of comprehensive steps within a sixty day period. The time frame came and went without any concrete progress toward the implementation of the agreement. There have been incidents this year that place North Korea’s nuclear ambitions back on the world map. After 2006, Pyongyang had been mostly comfortable playing the waiting game, making itself heard at world forums and bidding its time. There have been allegations made on the quiet in the hallowed diplomatic corridors of the world power centers that North Korea’s nuclear ambitions needed to be curtailed not just because of the threat this poses to the balance of power in South Asia but also because of the fact that North Korea because of its explicitly anti-American stance would see it fit to abet nuclear proliferation to non state actors that have become as much a threat to national security as any other factor in global politics (Delury, 77-81). The cumulative effect of these events seems to represent a dramatic transformation in the strategic situation in South Asia. North Korea has finally given evidence to the earlier skeptical world that it had developed nuclear weapons, and yet there have been efforts like the September 2005 and the February 2007 agreements to place the country on a path to surrender these weapons that it has worked so hard to develop. North Korea is the last Stalinist state on earth, and in October 2006 it became the latest country to join the nuclear club. Over the past two decades it has swung between confrontation and inch-by-inch conciliation with its neighbors and the United States, in an oscillation that seems to be driven both by its hard-to-fathom internal political strains and by an apparent belief in brinksmanship as the most effective form of diplomacy. This year, in the aftermath of events wherein the country despite being mysterious, inaccessible and heavily militarized, North Korea has managed to test another set of nuclear weapons. This was done despite the explicit agreements made in February 2007 wherein it had made assurances that it would eventually dismantle its nuclear program. In June 2008, the Bush administration removed North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism after Pyongyang submitted a 60-page report on its nuclear program. But the progress collapsed in December of that year when Pyongyang refused to accept terms proposed by the United States for verification. In April 2009 North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile despite widespread international opposition, and reacted to a tightening of sanctions by the United Nations Security Council by expelling international nuclear inspectors and declaring its intention to revive its atomic weapons program. On May 25, 2009, North Korea announced that it had successfully conducted its second nuclear test, again defying international warnings. The United Nations Security Council unanimously passed a resolution on June 12 to tighten sanctions targeting North Korea's nuclear and missile development programs, including encouraging United Nations members to inspect cargo vessels and airplanes suspected of carrying weapons and other military materiel. The United States and allies like Japan and South Korea have brought back measures, such as freezing Pyongyang's overseas bank accounts, that seemed most painful to the regime in the past. North Korea’s nuclear programs have their roots in the aftermath of the Koran crisis of 1950s where the country was forced to retreat in the face of the blitzkrieg offensive by the UN forces despite the support it received from China (Sigal, 25). The Korean peninsula has always has strategic importance for the Americans and the Chinese and neither have been willing to give up their respective influences in the area. The country’s nuclear program was initially thus a defense mechanism but has at times threatened to take up an offensive stance. The rationale that North Korea has provided thus far is remarkably similar to the one given by most aspiring nuclear nations. The idea is that North Korea needs nuclear weapons for reasons of security and self-preservation- a shield against the growing nuclear power being accumulated by South Korea. The DPRK has in fact used this metaphor time and time again. According to an April 13, 2006 commentary on the Korean Workers Part newspaper, Nodong Sinmun, “The DPRK’s possession of nuclear weapons is for self defense from A to Z and serves as a powerful shield to defend peace”. Pyongyang fears the massive military threat that is posed by the armed forces of Washington and Seoul (Cha, 216-19). A nuclear program offers insurance against South Korean conventional military and economic security. While the conventional militaries o South Korea, and the US are sophisticated, considerable and probably appear daunting to North Korean leaders, it is likely that they are equally if not more alarmed by the sizeable nuclear arsenal of the US military (Mansourov, 25-38). Furthermore, North Korean leaders believe that their country has repeatedly been under nuclear threat from the US since the Korean war. The idea therefore is to use nuclear abilities not in an offensive manner but as a deterrent. At present however, it would be best to describe North Korea’s stance on nuclear program development as one of vague ambiguity. Pyongyang currently believes that its interests are at present best served by keeping both its allies and its adversaries guessing about its military capabilities. To this effect North Korea has taken drastic steps to inform the world at one end about the successful testing of its ballistic missiles and on the other by denying vehemently its use and war oriented efforts to develop its nuclear arsenal. There can be in fact a marked similarity in what North Korea is doing now to what India and Pakistan did the later part of the 1990s. Given the fact that one can now assume that the reason for the development of nuclear capability in North Korea’s case is primarily deterrent, one could assume that like India and Pakistan, there would be no usage of the arsenal anytime soon. North Korea at present is achieving the purpose behind its nuclear program. It has managed to keep itself on the military radar of the world’s most developed military potentials and it has managed to ward off dominance in the military sense from USA and South Korea despite its relative economic poverty and absence of strength. Having said this one could at beast hazard guesses at conditions that would make Pyongyang give up its nuclear ambitions. First, North Korea would need to be made to feel secure and to believe that no country posed an imminent or direct military threat suc that it no longer required a military shield. This condition would obviuously not be easy one to satisfy given the fact that the North Korean leadership is paranoid and has long believed that it is under nuclear threat from the United States. Secondly, one could assume that bargaining would have to be the name of the game if North Korea has to abandon its nuclear program (Ganguly and Kapur,183-212) . It would have to be given assurances-technological, diplomatic and economic. Economic sanctions have been used in the past and have not deterred North Korea even in the slightest, given the fact that DPRK has succeeded in surviving for many years under Us-led sanctions. Finally, a process of integrated dialogue wherein the country is not made to feel pressured under the stress of US dominance is an immediate requirement if the ever increasing nuclear ambitions have to be curbed. For this, US will have to give up its ‘big brotherly’ attitude which it has displayed over many years to the nations of the east. In conclusion therefore it may be stated that North Korea and its developing program of nuclear development is one of the most controversial issues in contemporary internal politics given its bombastic nature. In future, in the absence of concerted efforts one might just see an interesting twist in the North Korean tale. The only issue at hand is that this would have major repercussions on the balance of power in the south Asia. Reference: Karp R C, Security with nuclear weapons?: different perspectives on national security, pub, Stockholm, Barnes and Nobles, 1991 Lange K, Confidence Building in Security Affairs, pub, Lecture delivered, Chinese Association for Military Science and the PLA foreign languages University, Luoyang, November, 2007 Cha V D, North Korea’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: Sword, Shield or Badge, pub, Political Science Quarterly, vol.117 no.2, 2002 Mansourov A Y, The origins, Evolution and Current Politics of the North Korean Nuclear Program, pub, Nonproliferation Review, Review 2. No.3, 1995 Sanh-Hun C, 2009, North Korea Perfects Its Diplomatic Game: Brinkmanship, pub, The New York Times, April 2, 2009 Sigal L V, Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea, pub, Priceton University Press, 1999 Wit J S, Poneman D and Gallucci R L, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, pub, Brookings Institution Press, 2005 Delury J.  North Korea:  20 Years of Solitude, pub, World Policy Journal, Vol.25, pp75-82, Winter 2008 Barry M P.  North Korea Requires Long-Term Strategic Relationship with the U.S., pub, International Journal on World Peace, Vol.24, pp37-41, March 2007 Ganguly S and Kapur P S, Nuclear proliferation in South Asia: crisis behaviour and the bomb, pub, Taylor and Francis, 2008   Read More

Since September 2005, the world has witnessed something resembling g a roller coater ride as far as the Korean peninsula is concerned. In September 2005, all the delegates to the Six-Party talks on the north Korean nuclear program signed a Statement of Principles in Beijing that suggested a resolution of the North Korean nuclear crisis might be possible. The air of hopefulness produced by this agreement barely lasted a day. After a series of aborted sessions, talks were suspended while two of the involved parties, i.e. North Korea and UN traded accusations.

In July, 2006 the country launched six ballistic missiles and three months later in October, 2006 North Korea detonated what appeared to be an underground nuclear device (Barry, 37-41). North Korea’s small underground test in 2006 was instantly detected by 22 of the system’s nearly 300 stations, including one 7,000 kilometers away. Within two hours, the data had been analyzed and sent to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty’s (CTBT) member states. This was followed obviously by widespread international criticism.

On February 13, 2007, the six parties agreed to sign an agreement to achieve a set of comprehensive steps within a sixty day period. The time frame came and went without any concrete progress toward the implementation of the agreement. There have been incidents this year that place North Korea’s nuclear ambitions back on the world map. After 2006, Pyongyang had been mostly comfortable playing the waiting game, making itself heard at world forums and bidding its time. There have been allegations made on the quiet in the hallowed diplomatic corridors of the world power centers that North Korea’s nuclear ambitions needed to be curtailed not just because of the threat this poses to the balance of power in South Asia but also because of the fact that North Korea because of its explicitly anti-American stance would see it fit to abet nuclear proliferation to non state actors that have become as much a threat to national security as any other factor in global politics (Delury, 77-81).

The cumulative effect of these events seems to represent a dramatic transformation in the strategic situation in South Asia. North Korea has finally given evidence to the earlier skeptical world that it had developed nuclear weapons, and yet there have been efforts like the September 2005 and the February 2007 agreements to place the country on a path to surrender these weapons that it has worked so hard to develop. North Korea is the last Stalinist state on earth, and in October 2006 it became the latest country to join the nuclear club.

Over the past two decades it has swung between confrontation and inch-by-inch conciliation with its neighbors and the United States, in an oscillation that seems to be driven both by its hard-to-fathom internal political strains and by an apparent belief in brinksmanship as the most effective form of diplomacy. This year, in the aftermath of events wherein the country despite being mysterious, inaccessible and heavily militarized, North Korea has managed to test another set of nuclear weapons.

This was done despite the explicit agreements made in February 2007 wherein it had made assurances that it would eventually dismantle its nuclear program. In June 2008, the Bush administration removed North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism after Pyongyang submitted a 60-page report on its nuclear program. But the progress collapsed in December of that year when Pyongyang refused to accept terms proposed by the United States for verification. In April 2009 North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile despite widespread international opposition, and reacted to a tightening of sanctions by the United Nations Security Council by expelling international nuclear inspectors and declaring its intention to revive its atomic weapons program.

On May 25, 2009, North Korea announced that it had successfully conducted its second nuclear test, again defying international warnings.

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