Emerging nuclear weapon states have attracted considerable attention because the original custodians of nuclear weaponry have made every effort to control and regulate the emergence of new centres of nuclear-armed power. Even so, the spectre of nuclear conflicts continues to haunt humanity because neither the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) nor the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nor even the imposition of punitive sanctions has deterred the emergence of new nuclear powers.
States have justified and legitimised their option to become a nuclear state on the basis of national sovereignty and security. This ugly face of nationalism has been effectively presented by Jonathan D Pollack in his well-researched and objective study of the nuclearisation of North Korea.
It deserves to be clearly stated that a nuclearised North Korea is projected as the “bad boy” of the international security system, although China, India, Pakistan, Israel and now, probably, Iran have all justified their acquisition of nuclear weapon systems on the basis of their national fundamental right to protect national interests.
Similarly, the rigid and dynastic military regime of North Korea justified its actions on the basis of American imperialism, especially after the US-led Korean War of 1950-53. The author describes in great detail the long process of negotiations between the US and North Korea, as well as the ups and downs that eventually prompted the North Koreans to withdraw from NPT and accelerate their nuclear weapon programme from 2006 to 2010. The Americans, who treated North Korea as an international pariah, still wanted to successfully negotiate with the managers of the military state. Interestingly, the author has completely exposed an American propaganda-based myth that a nuclear weapon state of North Korea is a proxy for China in Southeast Asia. He has provided an enlightening description of North Korea’s relationship with Soviet Russia up to 1990 and China — pointing out that, contrary to American propaganda, both these Communist countries were extremely distrustful of Korea’s intentions on nuclear issues. Thus, as the author points out, the “characterisation of the DPRK as a buffer state or strategic asset for China … misses the mark”. In fact, the North Korean leadership was convinced that their nuclear weapon power was the only guarantee for survival in a hostile neighbourhood.
Although both the Russians and the Chinese considered the North Korean military dictatorship an unreliable ally, the situation for North Korea became more complex after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990s and the ascendancy of the reformist Deng Xiaoping in China. “Deng posed the fundamental question that hovered over the entire crisis: was North Korea prepared to irrevocably forgo nuclear weapons development? Kim Il-Sung offered Deng his personal commitment to denuclearisation, but he did not guarantee a comparable commitment by his successor,” the author writes, adding, “This was the end of the story. Deng Xiaoping believed that a denuclearised North was the only way that the DPRK could build normal relations with the outside world.”
The larger picture that emerges from Pollack’s study is that if a nuclear-weapon state is initially born as a security imperative, the arsenal is expanded not only for the needs of the state but also as a status symbol because of the global attention it attracts. That is why, in 1998, Kim Jong Il pursued a policy of “military first” to strengthen his regime’s military power, building the country’s first indigenous reactor and forging ties with the rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
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It is well known that Khan was known to the Americans, and neither China nor Communist Russia patronised him. The IAEA has not been able to stop the role of nuclear adventurists, like the Kims or Khans or others, and, in the process, North Korea in 2009 asserted its claim to be a nuclear weapon state.
Following the style of the so-called policy study scholars, Pollack offers some suggestions to different countries like Russia, China, Japan and especially the US to deal with the “caged and isolated nuclear weapon state of North Korea”.
This study, complete with 35 pages of footnotes, should be seriously studied by Indians to understand that partitioned countries are always worried about the power of their immediate neighbours. It will help India understand Pakistan’s genuine security anxieties from a powerful and nuclearised neighbour and Pakistan can also view India’s security concerns in proper perspective. Nuclearisation of nation-states is a dangerous route because every weapon, whether nuclear or conventional, is eventually used in wars.
NO EXIT: NORTH KOREA, NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
Jonathan D Pollack
The International Institute of Strategic Studies (Routledge)
247 pages; $39.95
