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News analysis
The North Korean challenge
by K. Subrahmanyam Special to The Tribune

NORTH KOREA has announced for the first time in public that it has assembled nuclear weapons and rejected moves to restart disarmament talks anytime soon. It has declared it needs the armaments to protect itself against an increasingly hostile United States. As is to be expected, North Korea’s neighbours South Korea, Japan, China, Russia, and its chief interlocutor the USA have condemned the North Korean declaration and the move to withdraw from the six-nation talks which have gone through three rounds so far. This North Korean move is likely to be linked up with President Bush’s state of the Union speech and the recent statement of US Secretary of State Ms Candoleeza Rice’s references to North Korea.

As is usual with Western media on nuclear issues it is following the cue from the US Administration. It would appear that the most important causation for the North Korean move is the verbal exchanger between Iran and Western European countries (Germany, France and UK). Within the last few days, the Iranian leadership has asserted its right to pursue the peaceful nuclear technology (uranium enrichment). With the forthcoming presidential election, Iran is taking an uncompromising stand on the nuclear issue.

In President Bush’s calculations Iran and North Korea are the two poles of the axis of evil. In these circumstances what is more rational for PyongYong but to step up the pressure on the USA and its allies on the nuclear issue even as there is increasing tension between the USA and its allies on the one hand and Iran on the other. Unlike Iran which as of now disclaims any intention to acquire nuclear weapons, but only to sustain the pursuit of peaceful nuclear technology, PyongYong has now affirmed that it has nuclear weapons for its defence.

North Korea and Iran will also be calculating that their stands are bound to create problems for the USA and its allies in the forthcoming Non-proliferation Treaty Review Conference to be convened in May this year. Both these countries are able to derive a lot of courage for their defiance from the way the greatest proliferating nation-Pakistan-has been able to get off not only without any penalty but with successful blackmail of the USA and the West to reward it munificently. They appear to have decided to follow the example set by General Musharraf and indulge in the same kind of blackmail in the hope that the USA which could not discipline Pakistan is in no better position to act against them either. Both countries, just like Pakistan, can also hint at allowing weapons of mass destruction to fall into terrorist hands. They have therefore reasons to expect just as the USA and its allies forgave Pakistan’s transgressions, they would have to negotiate arrangements to live with the Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons as well.

Iran with its oil riches is not easily vulnerable to economic sanctions. The USA tried it in the eighties and failed. US sanctions and help to Iran to get round those sanctions made the Hindujas billionaires and most valued citizens of Her Majesty, the Queen of Britain. North Korea cannot be allowed to collapse by China. North Koreans have a well recognised reputation for terrorism. They murdered the entire South Korean cabinet while on a visit to Yangon. They are in a position to blackmail South Korea and Japan. Even if North Korea is more vulnerable than Iran in the longer run it has significant capability to resort to terrorist acts in the short run and blackmail South Korea and Japan.

Further, Pakistan continues to need North Korean help to sustain its missile programme. In such circumstances one cannot expect their linkages with North Korea to be completely broken. It is to be seen whether the USA will be able to successfully break this linkage or succumb to Musharraf’s blackmail that he has to maintain his nuclear-missile connection with North Korea lest he be overthrown by a bearded general who may hand over the nuclear materials and weapons to jehadi elements.

The USA and its allies are bound to attempt to delink Pakistani case from those of Iran and North Korea as they have been doing in the last so many years. The present move of North Korea and the Iranian assertions are serving notice to the international community that yielding to one blackmail is logically bound to lead to others. In the case of North Korea even the terrorist elements are under state control and therefore the North Korean case can be considered as a threat wholly from a state actor who is liable to be deterred. If that conclusion is reached by South Korea and Japan there is bound to be pressures on those two leaderships to go nuclear.

Dr A.Q. Khan should be laughing at the sorry helpless state to which he had reduced the mighty superpower. Osama Bin Laden was not a patch on Dr A.Q. Khan in the damage he has done to the USA. Unlike Bin Laden, Khan is enjoying a very comfortable life in Islamabad.