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North Korea & envisioning alternative nuclear futures

Ramesh Thakur

If the NPT status quo is already history, then we must either accept a world of more nuclear weapon powers, or move to a nuclear-weapon-free world. There is no third way.

THE FIRST country to engage in nuclear breakout in 1998, India has deplored North Korea's test as a threat to regional peace and stability and for highlighting the dangers of clandestine proliferation. Thus does India join the ranks of the nuclear powers preaching nuclear abstinence while engaged in consenting deterrence. Others have condemned North Korea's test as "brazen," "grave," and "provocative."

It truly is remarkable how those who worship at the altar of nuclear weapons condemn others wishing to join their sect as heretics. The problem is not nuclear proliferation, but nuclear weapons. The solution therefore is not non-proliferation, but nuclear disarmament through a universal, non-discriminatory, verifiable, and enforceable nuclear weapons convention, modelled on the lines of the chemical weapons convention.

For over four decades, the world has lived with five nuclear powers without a war between them. Yet today the nuclear future is less rosy than when the Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was indefinitely extended in 1995. The current triple crisis arises from non-compliance with NPT obligations by some states engaged in undeclared nuclear activities and others that have failed to honour their disarmament obligations; states that are not party to the NPT; and non-state actors seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.

For North Korea, nuclear weapons help to offset the loss of the former Soviet strategic counterweight, the infinitely greater economic dynamism of South Korea, and a perceptible diminution of Chinese enthusiasm for its erstwhile ally. In the past, Pyongyang has skilfully used a combination of threats, bluster, and tactical retreats to win numerous economic and diplomatic concessions. It may now have played its last card. If the regime is fully quarantined and collapses, or is attacked and defeated, the resulting instability will hardly be welcomed by others in the region. Conversely, if it survives as a nuclear weapon power, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan might be tempted to follow suit. Either way, threatening storm clouds will gather pace.

I abhor rather than applaud the North Korean test. That is because I believe nuclear weapons are abhorrent, period. I argued in 1996, in a submission to the Canberra Commission, that we face four nuclear choices: the status quo, proliferation, nuclear re-armament, or abolition. Events in the intervening decade have vindicated that analysis and the Canberra Commission's conclusions.

Restoration of the 1970 NPT status quo would require a rollback of nuclear weapons by India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea, as well as curtailment of Iran's programme. Trying to denuclearise South Asia or the Middle East is as unrealistic as demanding nuclear abolition immediately. It cannot be achieved by finger wagging at the nuclear naughtiness of recent gatecrashers into the nuclear club. The latest test, like the 11 claimed South Asian nuclear explosive tests of 1998, confirm the folly of believing — in defiance of common sense, logic and all known human history — that five powers could indefinitely retain their monopoly over one class of weapons.

Moreover, softening of the unilateral use of the military option over the past decade has given extra urgency to the motivation of would-be proliferants who fear being attacked by Washington. The Kosovo war sent a chill of apprehension down the spines of many countries that have their own secessionists. Who would be the next target of intervention by tomorrow's international moral majority? The experience of a rampant western coalition simply bypassing the United Nations to violate the norm of non-intervention caused massive disquiet and unease and made many countries more determined to upgrade national defence.

That lesson could only have been reinforced, especially for Iran and North Korea, by the Iraq war: Saddam Hussein was attacked because he did not have nuclear weapons. Nuclear warheads and missiles suddenly acquired extra appeal as leveraging weapons.

In the case of advanced countries, the flow of enabling technologies, material and expertise in the nuclear power industry can be used, through strategic pre-positioning of materials and personnel, to build a `virtual' nuclear-weapons portfolio capable of rapid weaponisation. Within the constraints of the NPT, a non-nuclear industrialised country can build the necessary infrastructure to provide it with the `surge' capacity to upgrade quickly to nuclear weapons.

Some NPT weaknesses were intentional. For example, the wording of Articles 1 and 2 deliberately permits the nuclear powers to transfer nuclear weapons to other countries (Cold War allies at the time) — that is, engage in geographical proliferation — as long as control of the weapons remained in their own hands. The popularity of regional nuclear-weapon-free zones, especially across the southern hemisphere, owed much to the desire to plug this loophole.

The wish to marry two incompatible goals — President Dwight Eisenhower's vision of "atoms for peace" and non-proliferation — produced the odd juxtaposition of Articles 3 and 4, and led in time to crises in North Korea and Iran. For nuclear energy for peaceful purposes can be pursued legitimately to the point of being a screwdriver away from a weapons capability.

Other NPT weaknesses became apparent with the benefit of hindsight. By failing to include clearly timetabled, legally binding, verifiable, and enforceable disarmament commitments, it temporarily legitimised the nuclear arsenals of the N5. By relying on the promise of signatories to use nuclear materials, facilities and technology for peaceful purposes only, it empowered them to operate dangerously close to a nuclear-weapons capability. It proscribed non-nuclear states from acquiring nuclear weapons, but failed to design a strategy for dealing with non-signatory countries. It permits withdrawals much too easily.

While consciousness of the risks of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, militant fanatics and other non-state groups has grown enormously, the collective memories of the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have begun to fade, lowering the normative barriers to the use of nuclear weapons. Because there is no standing agency or secretariat, the NPT depends on five-year review conferences for resolving implementation problems. Even these operate by the consensus rule, which does not make for decisive resolution of contentious issues.

If the NPT status quo is already history, and the risks of arms control reverses and proliferation are real, then we must either accept a world of more nuclear weapons and more nuclear powers, or move to a nuclear-weapon-free world. There is no third way.

It is difficult to convince some of the futility of nuclear weapons when all who have such weapons demonstrate their continuing utility by keeping them. The preaching of exhortations and the coercion of sanctions need to be buttressed with the force of example. The case for independent British and French nuclear deterrent forces is not compelling. Another circuit breaker in the countervailing nuclear-weapons capability spiral is the United States. Given its overwhelming military dominance with conventional arsenals, if its case to retain nuclear weapons is persuasive, then it should be even more persuasive for those countries that live in insecure neighbourhoods and lack the panoply of conventional military tools, underpinned by technological superiority, available to Washington.

Also, the best way to keep nasty weapons out of the hands of nasty groups is to keep them out of the hands of governments.

The NPT is tied to a frozen international power structure decades out of date. It became dangerously fragile because of the vertical proliferation of the nuclear powers for two decades, before they reconstructed the structure of cooperation in nuclear peace, called a halt to their proliferating arsenals, and began progressively to dismantle them under the virtuous cycle of mutually reinforcing unilateral, bilateral and multilateral arms control agreements and policies.

The road towards the nuclear-free destination includes still deeper reductions in nuclear arsenals; further constraints on the extra-territorial deployment of nuclear weapons; the entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty (CTBT); bans on missile test flights and on the production of fissile materials; and de-alerting and de-mating of nuclear forces, warheads, and missiles.

Such scenarios typically provoke dismissive comments from so-called `realists.' Realistically speaking, is there another option beyond those identified here? If not, then which is the most preferred option? As with Winston Churchill's famous aphorism on democracy, the abolitionist option may well be unrealistic; all other conceivable options are even less realistic as strategies of security and survival.

The only guarantee against the threat of nuclear war is the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. In most contexts, a step-by-step approach is the best policy. Such caution can be fatal if the need is to cross a chasm. In the case of nuclear weapons, the chasm over which we must leap is the belief that world security can rest on weapons of total insecurity.

(Ramesh Thakur is senior vice rector of the United Nations University in Tokyo. These are his personal views.)

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