I’ve been thinking about North Korea’s explosion of an (apparently fairly unsuccessful, but still worrying) nuclear device. (“Device” is what you call it before it’s been recognizably made into a deliverable warhead/munition.)
I see that Kofi Annan has, refreshingly, been calling for the US to open direct talks with North Korea about its concerns:
- “We should talk to parties whose behavior we want to change, whose behavior we want to influence. And from that point of view, I believe that . . . the U.S. and North Korea should talk,” Annan said.
Bush is so far resisting this idea. Here’s what he said at a news conference today:
- In response to North Korea’s actions, we’re working with our partners in the region and the United Nations Security Council to ensure there are serious repercussions for the regime in Pyongyang.
I’ve spoken with other world leaders, including Japan, China, South Korea and Russia. We all agree that there must be a strong Security Council resolution that will require North Korea to abide by its international commitments to dismantle its nuclear programs.
This resolution should also specify a series of measures to prevent North Korea from exporting nuclear or missile technologies and prevent financial transactions or asset transfers that would help North Korea develop its nuclear missile capabilities…
The United States remains committed to diplomacy. The United States also reserves all options to defend our friends and our interests in the region against the threats from North Korea.
So in response to North Korea’s provocation, we will increase defense cooperation with our allies, including cooperation on ballistic missile defense to protect against North Korean aggression, and cooperation to prevent North Korea from exporting nuclear and missile technologies.
I hate it when a US president uses the formulation “reserves all options”. With regard to North Korea as to Iran, this is a threat of nuclear retaliation cloaked in only the flimsiest of diplo-speak garments. Somebody should tell the Prez that everybody already knows that the US has nuclear weapons… “And you don’t need to keep threatening in this ugly, bullying way, that you might be prepared to use them!”
Which brings me to the main thing I wanted to say here. Remember how, once it seemed as though the White South Africans were about to lose their monopoly control of nuclear-weapons technology in their part of the world, they suddenly decided that maybe their whole region would be better off without nuclear weapons and made rapid and very public efforts to dismantle their whole nuclear-weapons program?
Why on earth don’t we think that this same approach might be even more valid, today, as between the United States and the rest of the world?
Nuclear weapons are truly terrifying things. (I’ve been to Hiroshima and talked to survivors of the 1945 bombing there. I wish everyone else in the US could do the same.) They are terrifying in anyone’s hands. Including in the hands of a very poor, desperate, marginalized-feeling government like that of North Korea. So maybe as the march of nuclear proliferation continues around the world, instead of focusing just on a strategy that involves shoring up the strategic position of the US and its allies in these increasingly dangerously circumstances, we should focus on one that would look at human security as a function of the global interdependency of all humankind, and conclude that what’s needed today is the dismantling of all the world’s nuclear arsenals.
(As all NPT members states, including the US, committed to back at the time of signing the NPT, rtemember.)
Yes, there are all kinds of “cascade effects” that might follow from North Korea’s action– within eastern Asia, and far beyond. But I think Pyongyang’s recent test gives all of us around the world who hate these weapons a new chance to stand up together and say, No to everyone’s nuclear weapons! Human solidarity now!