Late in May, North Korea exploded its second nuclear device. It had recently tested its long-range Taepo Dong (U.S. designation) missile in satellite-launching mode, and it test-fired several shorter-
range missiles. At about the same time Iran successfully tested a two-stage solid-fuel missile, Sajil II, which can reach as far as Israel and Egypt. Both tests were widely condemned, and the South Koreans announced their support for the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), under which North Korean ships carrying missile components can be stopped at sea (under a United Nations Security Council mandate).
For their part, the North Koreans stated that the PSI was tantamount to renouncing the armistice that suspended the Korean War in 1953, because under the armistice no maritime blockade was to be mounted. North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il pointedly toured military units near the border, including massed artillery rocket batteries aimed at Seoul. The Japanese government termed the North Korean tests an intolerable provocation and formed a committee to decide what to do. Advocates of nuclear non-proliferation pointed out that the test, which had a relatively small explosive yield (probably 2 to 8 kilotons, compared to 15 to 20 for the bombs dropped in 1945 on Japan), had been detected by many seismographs, suggesting that anyone trying to beat a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would fail.
As North Korea's main trading partner, China is uniquely placed to influence that regime. China denounced the North Korean nuclear test, but it seems unlikely that it considers such tests (or the proliferation they imply) so threatening that it would willingly strangle the North Korean regime. In the past, Chinese policy on proliferation has been to spread nuclear and missile technology, on the theory that nuclear arms deter the superpowers. As for missiles, for years the U.S. government has been trying to curtail Chinese sales, the main customer for which is Iran.
For the North Koreans, missiles and nuclear bomb components are their only real exports. All attempts to convince them to disarm involve attempts to offer something more attractive. However, the North Korean regime also sees its bomb and missile programs as indispensible insurance against attack by the United States and South Korea. It does not particularly matter whether any such attack is likely; the North Koreans use that threat as a way of legitimizing their regime.
By cutting off some supplies, the Chinese probably could strangle the North Korean regime, but it is difficult to imagine why they would want to do so. Right now they see any North Korean bomb as directed at the United States, and they probably welcome any dilution of our power, particularly if they are looking forward to a confrontation over Taiwan. The Chinese are also painfully aware that well before any North Korean collapse, they would face a very unwelcome flood of refugees (which they experienced during previous North Korean crises).
Nuclear Insurance
The basic and unasked question is why governments should welcome measures to prevent nuclear proliferation. At least in the United States, it is generally assumed that nuclear weapons are an unalloyed evil, so the best future would be one without them. The United States, we say, reluctantly retains them, but it has signed a Non-Proliferation Treaty that envisages moving toward a non-nuclear world. The underlying logic is that the more weapons there are, the greater the chance one will fall into the wrong hands. The current situation in Pakistan, in which there is a possibility that radically anti-American Islamists will gain control of a nuclear arsenal, seems particularly frightening. Much the same can be said of Iran.
Nuclear weapons are, in effect, insurance: push us too far and you will be wiped out. That is surely the Israeli position and it may be the Iranian position, too. Americans who see Iran as a potential aggressor may forget that to many Iranians the important reality is that American and British secret services overthrew the Iranian government in 1953. The country's bomb program dates back, not to the fundamentalist revolution of 1979, but to the Shah's time, when we considered Iran our great regional ally and a bulwark against Soviet-oriented states like Iraq. None of this makes President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a rational international actor who accepts deterrence in theory or in reality, but it does suggest that there is more to the Iranian program-and more determination-than might be explained simply by anti-Israel or anti-American rhetoric.
The rub comes when a nuclear power tries to use these weapons to gain advantages beyond simple deterrence. The U.S. Cold War experience was that nuclear firepower has limited coercive value. It seems generally accepted that the sort of mass damage that nuclear weapons would cause should not be imposed except in retaliation for such attacks. The question is always whether regimes that seem to place a low value on human life, such as that in North Korea, understand such rules.
Why, then, have all governments not sought such weapons? One answer is that all who think they can obtain them either have tried, are trying, or are under someone else's reliable nuclear umbrella. Another is that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty contained a very tasty carrot: signatories could sell nuclear technology only to those who renounced nuclear weapons. That is why the Russian reactor sale to Iran is denounced in the West. The Russian reply has been that they will control the reactors so that they cannot be used to make plutonium for bombs, but that (probably deliberately) misses the point: it is not just a matter of not helping a signatory make bombs, it is supposed to offer a reason for not doing so.
A second answer is subtler. If country X has bombs and missiles, they can be turned inward as well as outward. Whoever controls the bombs is in effect the government. That is why the Iranian missile and bomb programs are controlled by the Revolutionary Guard, who in theory answer to the ayatollahs rather than to any civilian authority. If it turns out that President Ahmadinejad is really the leader of the Revolutionary Guard, then the question is whether he or his associates plan to seize full control of Iran from the ayatollahs themselves, and that question might provide enough leverage to slow down the Iranian program. Probably nothing else can do so. Similar questions apply to North Korea.
All of this suggests that the Non-Proliferation Treaty is unlikely to prevent regimes that feel threatened-exactly the rogue regimes we most fear-from building bombs, at least in small numbers. Bombs deal with the mortal threat such a regime faces, at least from the outside. We can certainly try to slow them down by making it difficult to obtain the necessary technology, but the record does not make for great optimism.
Before 1991 Saddam Hussein was close to having a bomb; his only problem was obtaining enough uranium (this became obvious only when one of his sons-in-law defected temporarily, and told us where his program was). The South Africans successfully built bombs and apparently tested one over the South Atlantic without anyone being sure it was theirs. The Indian bomb program trundled on for years without being detected, at least by U.S. intelligence. It is generally assumed that Israel has a substantial nuclear arsenal, but its policy has been to allow its prospective enemies to think so without formally admitting that fact. Both Sweden and Canada came very close to building bombs, but decided that they would not be worth the unpleasantness.
Many advocates of nuclear arms control suggest that a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would end the problem, but it is not clear why potential nuclear states would sign. For the North Koreans, the whole point of the exercise was to announce that they had a bomb (deterrent) by testing it. Others would probably feel similarly. Without some sort of world government with a world police force, it is difficult to see why a government that thought it was under threat would renounce the one reliable way of frightening off its enemies. And for us? Nuclear disarmament may be an idea whose time is unlikely ever to come.