[R-G] After Iraq, it's not just North Korea that wants a bomb

[Sid Shniad]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/27/north-korea-nuclear-weapons-us 

The Guardian 27 May 2009 

After Iraq, it's not just North Korea that 
wants a bomb 

The nuclear weapons states are the main drivers of proliferation. Only 
radical disarmament can halt their spread. 

­By Seumas Milne 

The big power denunciation of North Korea's nuclear weapons test on Monday 
could not have been more sweeping. Barack Obama called the 
Hiroshima-scale ­underground explosion a "blatant violation of international 
law", and pledged to "stand up" to North ­Korea - as if it were a military 
giant of the Pacific - while Korea's former imperial master Japan branded 
the bomb a "clear crime", and even its long-suffering ally China declared 
itself "resolutely opposed" to what had taken place. 

The protests were met with ­further North Korean missile tests, as 
UN ­security council members plotted tighter sanctions and South Korea 
signed up to a US programme to intercept ships suspected of carrying weapons 
of mass destruction. Pyongyang had already said it would regard such a move 
as an act of war. So yesterday, nearly 60 years after the conflagration that 
made a charnel house of the Korean peninsula, North Korea said it was no 
longer bound by the armistice that ended it and warned that any attempt to 
search or seize its vessels would be met with a "powerful military strike". 

The hope must be that rhetorical inflation on both sides proves to be 
largely bluster, as in previous confrontations. Even the US doesn't believe 
North Korea poses any threat of aggression against the south, home to nearly 
30,000 American troops and covered by its nuclear umbrella. But the idea, 
much canvassed in recent days, that there is something irrational in North 
Korea's attempt to acquire nuclear weapons is clearly absurd. This is, after 
all, a state that has been targeted for regime change by the US ever since 
the end of the cold war, included as one of the select group of three in 
George Bush's axis of evil in 2002, and whose Clinton administration 
guarantee of "no hostile intent" was explicitly withdrawn by his successor. 

In April 2003, North Korea drew the obvious conclusion from the US and 
British aggression against Iraq. The war showed, it commented at the time, 
"that to allow disarmament through inspections does not help avert a war, 
but rather sparks it". Only "a tremendous military deterrent force", it 
stated with unavoidable logic, could prevent attacks on states the world's 
only superpower was determined to bring to heel. 

The lesson could not be clearer. Of Bush's "axis" states, Iraq, which had no 
weapons of mass destruction, was invaded and occupied; North Korea, which 
already had some nuclear capacity, was left untouched and is most unlikely 
to be attacked in future; while Iran, which has yet to develop a nuclear 
capability, is still threatened with aggression by both the US and Israel. 

Of course, the Obama administration is a different kettle of fish from 
its ­predecessor; it had earlier floated renewed dialogue with North Korea 
and has made welcome noises about nuclear disarmament. Whether such talk was 
ever going to impress the cash-strapped dynastic autocracy in Pyongyang - 
which had had its fill of broken US commitments and the new belligerence 
from its southern neighbour - seems doubtful. In any case, having gone so 
far, it was surely inevitable the regime would want to rerun its half-cocked 
2006 test to demonstrate its now unquestioned nuclear power status. 

Yet not only has America's heightened enthusiasm for invading other 
countries since the early 1990s created a powerful incentive for states in 
its firing line to acquire nuclear weapons for their own security. But all 
the main nuclear weapons states have, by their persistent failure to move 
towards serious disarmament, become the single greatest driver of nuclear 
proliferation. 

It's not just the breathtaking hypocrisy that underpins every western 
pronouncement about the "threat to world peace" posed by the "illegal 
weapons" of the johnny-come-latelys to the nuclear club. Or the double 
standards that underpin the nuclear indulgence of Israel, India and 
Pakistan - now increasing its stock of nuclear weapons, even as the country 
is rocked by civil war - while Iran and North Korea are sanctioned and 
embargoed for "breaking the rules". It's that the obligation of the nuclear 
weapons states under the non-proliferation treaty - and the only 
justification of their privileged status - is to negotiate "complete 
disarmament". 

Yet far from doing any such thing, both the US and Britain are investing in 
a new generation of nuclear weapons. Even the latest plans to agree new cuts 
in the US and Russian strategic arsenals would leave the two former 
superpower rivals in control of ­thousands of warheads, enough to wipe each 
other out, let alone the smaller fry of global conflict. So why North Korea, 
no longer even a signatory to the treaty and ­therefore not bound by its 
rules, or any other state seeking nuclear protection, should treat them as a 
reason to disarm is a mystery. 

Obama's dramatic plea for a "world without nuclear weapons" in Prague last 
month was qualified by the warning that such a goal would "not be reached 
quickly - perhaps not in my lifetime". But a lifetime is too long if the 
mass proliferation of nuclear weapons is to be halted. Earlier this 
month, ­Mohammed ElBaradei, the outgoing director general of the 
International Atomic Energy Agency, told the Guardian that without radical 
disarmament by the major powers, the number of nuclear weapons states would 
double in a few years, as "virtual weapons states" acquire the capability, 
but stopped just short of assembling a weapon, to "buy insurance against 
attack". 

This is what Iran is widely assumed to be doing, despite its denial of any 
interest in acquiring nuclear weapons. And the evidence is now growing that 
the US administration is heading towards harsher sanctions against Tehran 
rather than genuine negotiation, as two former US national security council 
staffers, Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, argued in the New York Times at 
the weekend. That was also the message Hillary Clinton sent to North Korea 
last month when she said talks with the regime were "implausible, if not 
impossible". 

In fact, they are desirable, if not essential. Obama has set out a positive 
agenda on the nuclear test ban treaty, arms cuts and control of fissile 
material. But if, instead of slapping more sanctions on Pyongyang, the US 
were to push for far broader negotiations aimed at achieving the 
long-overdue reunification of Korea, its denuclearisation and the withdrawal 
of all foreign troops - now that would be a historic contribution to peace.