North Korea’s nuclear gambit
By Tanvir Ahmad Khan

COMPARED to the nuclear tests carried out by India and Pakistan in 1998, the underground nuclear explosion in a northern mountain region of North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, DPRK) on October 9, 2006, registered rather limited seismic signatures. The political and strategic shock wave it has generated is easily bigger.

It has been described as the epicentre of a new and deadly arms race. It is also widely seen as the most serious challenge to American hegemony in the Pacific since the United States crushed imperial Japan in 1945. By any criteria it is a grievous blow to international non-proliferation and counter-proliferation regimes.

It is also the beginning of a long and bitter debate on how and why DPRK crossed the red line despite grave warnings that the United States and its regional allies would not tolerate the nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. Weeks before the mid-term elections that may change the balance of forces in the US House of Representatives and possibly also in the Senate, Democrats describe the North Korean test as a major failure of President Bush’s policies.

Impartial commentators call it a failure of nearly two decades of atomic diplomacy. Across the globe, many analysts also remind us that the North Korean nuclear programme could have been terminated by negotiating appropriate terms and conditions.

Nations aspiring to nuclear capability in the face of strong antiproliferation instruments have generally resorted to elaborate denial and deception. In comparative terms, Pyongyang fell back on this strategy only sparingly and often notified its progressive steps in advance. The regime also signalled periodically that it was willing to compromise on its nuclear ambitions on the right terms from the United States. Spurts of nuclear activity alternated with voluntary or negotiated freezing of projects.

Way back in August 2003, CIA concluded that North Korea had produced one or two simple fission-type nuclear weapons without conducting yield-producing nuclear tests. There is scant information about the test of October 9 but a significant change in the global nuclear map has taken place. Asia seems to have outpaced other regions of the world in redrawing it. India, Pakistan, China and North Korea add up to a hefty part of the global population facing the profit and peril of nuclear weapons. Even if Israel, which is lean in area and population but large in nuclear arsenal, is counted as a western nuclear outpost in the Middle East, the Russian state has an authentic Asian personality. There are many reasons why so many Asian states have embraced this option of extreme danger and crippling costs. But amongst them must be a deep reluctance to accept discriminatory regimes and, more importantly, the failure of the international order to resolve contentious issues in Asia.

The Korean peninsula was the theatre of a brutal war in the 1950s; it also has bitter memories of along Japanese occupation that ended only in 1945. The relentless pursuit of regime change in North Korea and Iran has also accentuated the quest for nuclear deterrence.

There was a relatively short period in the 1990s when the idea of nuclear nonproliferation seemed to have acquired some traction. Russia and the United States had concluded strategic arms reduction treaties and cooperated in retrieving nuclear weapons from the erstwhile Soviet states. Nearly all the UN member states had signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and quite a few had also acceded to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). India did not sign the NPT but demanded global disarmament. Pakistan campaigned for a nuclear free zone and a zero missile regime in South Asia but retained the right to go nuclear if India went ahead with nuclearisation.

But then things starting unravelling as various international instruments were seen to be selective and discriminatory. The leading nations reduced the number of warheads but compensated for it by developing a new generation of more lethal weapons including usable bunker buster tactical nuclear devices. The United States Senate refused to ratify the CTBT but expected the rest of the world to sign and ratify it. Pakistan was heavily sanctioned but Israel was permitted to accumulate a large nuclear arsenal.

In May 1998, Pakistan followed India in becoming a declared nuclear power. More recently, the Indo-US nuclear energy accord demonstrated that international nuclear regimes continued to be selective and discriminatory. The case of North Korea raises the question of whether the current practice of using intimidation to force aspirants to nuclear technology to abandon it altogether really serves the cause of non-proliferation. North Korea has lived with American sanctions for its entire history but evidently the broadening and deepening of these sanctions has been counter-productive as Pyongyang’s growing insecurity accelerated the quest for nuclear deterrence. It is a valid question to ask if it would not have been better to let North Korea return to the mainstream of the nations with fully safe-guarded nuclear reactors supplied by the West.

DPRK did make periodic efforts to break out of isolation by making a deal with the major western powers, particularly the United States, short of a regime change. It acceded to the NPT in April 1985. In 1992-93, the IAEA carried out six inspections of its facilities. In March 1993, DPRK expressed its frustration with the continued hostility shown by the United States and gave a 90-day notice to withdraw from the NPT. A day before the expiry of this period, it suspended action on withdrawal. When it finally left the NPT and expelled IAEA inspectors, it had gone through a tortuous and unsuccessful negotiating process.

In 1994, an agreed framework was negotiated with elaborate reciprocal obligations. Pyongyang was to freeze graphite-modulated reactors, and all nuclear activities including fuel fabrication and reprocessing. In return, it would get a package of nuclear energy especially two US supplied nuclear power reactors, economic assistance and diplomatic support. By October 2002, North Korea was accusing the United States of reneging on its commitment. In 2003, North Korea increased pressure for a deal with the US by firing missiles towards Japan.

There was further escalation when it cancelled the inter-Korean agreement on keeping the peninsula free of nuclear weapons. While it drew up a list of concessions as a pre-condition of continued participation in the six-nation talks, Washington’s policy under President Bush hardened and started moving towards demanding compliance without a substantial quid pro quo. In August 2003, Pyongyang had asked for a non-aggression pact. Now, in October 2003, the United States, Japan and South Korea were willing to offer only security guarantees provided it dismantled its entire nuclear programme and, under IAEA verification, got rid of nuclear material. There were no attractive economic incentives. Pyongyang reacted by accelerating the extraction of plutonium from spent fuel rods. The stage was thus set for the present explosion.

North Korea’s delivery systems should not be under-estimated despite known hiccups in developing them. It has about 500 Scud missiles with ranges between 300-500km with 700-1000kg payload. The liquid-fuel Nadong missile has a range of 1300kms. North Korea has made considerable progress in developing Taepodong I and II three-stage missiles, precursors of inter-continental missiles capable of reaching the west coast of the United States.

It was easy to include North Korea in the infamous “axis of evil” and threaten it with preemptive war. But it is extremely hazardous for South Korea and the 37,000 US troops stationed on its soil to invade North Korea. Washington can punish DPRK only by making existing sanctions much harsher. Japan has already imposed unilateral sanctions for six months and South Korea is under pressure to give up it ‘sunshine policy’ of alleviating North Korea’s economic problems.

Given its fragile economy, North Korea will pay a heavy price but would the world be able to cope with a failed nuclear state? This is uncharted water with no precedents to guide decision-making. No other new nuclear weapon state ever presented the danger of ‘loose nukes’ as would North Korea if it was destabilised. Neither China nor Russia would want instability at this tri-junction of nuclear weapon capable states of vastly different social and political capacities.

Japan has a new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who is less squeamish about building military power. It will not be easy for him, or for that matter for the United States, to decide if the present policy of cautious ‘militarisation’ can be extended to a strategic decision to let Japan use its advanced technology and plutonium stockpile for building nuclear weapons. If Japan does opt for nuclear weapons, an intense arms race will follow.

It may be naive or wildly optimistic to suggest that North Korea’s gambit to use nuclear technology for a trade-off with security, respect and economic opportunity in the mainstream of nations can be revived despite the explosion of October 9. But it may be worthwhile to explore this possibility. The stakes now are so high and available options so fraught with risks that one may still hope that after an initial period of sabre-rattling, the world community may try to persuade the United States to work for a Korean rollback to create a nuclear-free peninsula that does not face any external threats and sanctions.

There are precedents such as South Africa for an acceptable and comprehensive settlement of nuclear issues. At the end of the day, the international community may find it better to offer North Korea a larger package of incentives than it had sought in 2002-03 to reduce nuclear risks and the disarray in non-proliferation regimes.



Have the terrorists won?
Adnan Gill

Almost immediately, the primitive instinct of self-preservation kicked in. Fearing reprisals, I was franticly calling and sending instant messages to family and friends advising them to stay indoors and avoid crowds as most of them happened to be Muslims and/or dark skinned.

An even more disturbing fact is that instead of feeling grief for the untimely death of the New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle, I was relieved to have learnt the pilot’s identity.

Initial reports of the crash had all the hallmarks of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The crash rattled America’s nerves so bad that within 10 minutes of the crash, NORAD scrambled fighter jets over several major American cities. US Coast Guard positioned several patrol boats and a Coast Guard cuter in the East River. While, literally, hundreds of first responders harmoniously took to their rehearsed duties. The drama and anxieties about a possible terrorist strike were mounting by each minute. As soon as the drama climaxed, to everyone’s relief, it fizzled away with news about the identity of the pilot.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one elated to have learnt about the pilot’s identity; even the whole American media seemed to have sighed a breath of relief. In what appears to be a maddening rush, joining the media chorus, even the New York mayor Michael Bloomberg in a news conference declared the plane crash to be an accident, as he appropriately patted the first responders on the back for a job well-done.

As if we wanted to be in denial, we desperately glued to our TV sets in a hope that any moment our leaders would declare the crash to be an accident. And the leaders didn’t disappoint us. Our hopes were so strong that we didn’t spare even a moment to contemplate other possibilities, like if the accident could have been an attempted suicide or a possible murder? Barely six hours later, a day that had started with revisiting the traumatic 9/11 memory lanes, it concluded with a comforting ease, that we survived another day without experiencing another terrorist attack.

Is this the state-of-mind of a nation that is winning the war on terror? Or have the terrorists already won the war of nerves? We have become a nation of paranoia, where dark skinned citizens are forced to disembark airplanes for merely passing a cell phone to each other, and the possibility of terrorism is immediately and unanimously ruled out upon learning the identity of the Caucasian pilot of a crashed plane.

President Bush, close to 3,000 brave American soldiers, and thousands upon thousands of Iraqi civilians have been sacrificed to the Gods of your so-called war on terror, but that hasn’t even given us a rudimentary sense of security. How about we look for political solutions to snuff out the ambers of terrorism?



World’s 47th Corrupt Country
Amjed Jaaved

In its annual report on quality of governance, the World Bank has ranked India forty-seventh in the list of 200 countries surveyed for the level of corruption, quality of governance and enforcement of rule of law. The Bank’s director of global governance, Daniel Kaufmann has predicted that India’s fast growth rate of eight per cent will falter unless the rampant corruption is curbed.
Kaufman pointed out that concomitant growth of corruption pari passu with fast economic growth was a lame excuse. He pointed out that several countries (smaller than India) like Slovenia, Botswana, Estonia, Tanzania, Ghana, Mozambique and Nigeria had made substantially arrested corruption and demonstrated improved governance. India could emulate them in improving her score on level of governance. sThe report observes that rule of law is a sine qua non of democracies. But, India has a poor record of enforcing the rule of law.
There are several stages of economic growth. Attaining eight per cent growth is no guarantee for self-sustained high growth in future years. To avoid slow-down in existing level of economic growth, India should launch an all-out war against corruption in various sectors of her economy.
Kaufmann elaborated those widespread practices of graft eventually slow growth in the long term (above 10 years). Corruption leads to poor enforcement of the rule of law, weakens regulatory systems, adds to political instability and makes the government less effective. The cumulative effect of these factors worsening of the quality of governance in a country.
It is significant to note that, despite its tall claims, India has not been able to reduce corruption during the past year. Earlier, Transparency International, in its annual report (London, October 18, 2005) had ranked India 88th in the list of 159 countries surveyed for the level of corruption.
The organisation had observed that there was a correlation between poverty and corruption. The nations perceived as the most corrupt ranked among the world's poorest, which showed how corruption and poverty fed off each other.
The Transparency International conducts its surveys in cooperation with Indian NGOs like ORG-Marg Research. The survey reflects how various classes of Indian people view government’s performance in various sectors. The survey tries to quantify the over-all amount of bribes paid to various government departments. Indian police is generally perceived to be the most corrupt. However, corruption is accepted as a ubiquitous feature of other law-enforcing or nation-building departments.
The critics in Indian media are rueful at India's current rating. They point out that the survey draws inferences from a limited number of households contacted through questionnaires. They assert that India truly deserves the number one position on the corruption scale.
According to analysts, the mechanisms of public accountability in India have collapsed. Corruption has become a serious socio-political malady as politicians, bureaucracy and armed forces act in tandem to receive kickbacks. The anti-corruption cases, filed in courts, drag on for years without any results. To quote a few cases: (a) There was no conviction in Bofors-gun case (Rs 64 crore), because of lethargic investigation (the case was filed on January 22, 1990 and charge sheet served on October 22, 1999). Among the accused were Rajiv Gandhi, S K Bhatnagar, W N Chaddha, Octavio, and Ardbo. The key players in the scam died before the court's decision. (b) No recoveries could be made in the HDW submarine case (Rs 32.5 crore).The CBI later recommended closure of this case. (c) No progress on the Taj-heritage corridor case, Purulia-arms-drop case and stamp-paper case.
Indian Express dated November 11, 2003 had reported that the stamp-paper co-accused Assistant Sub-Inspector of Police (ASI) drew salary of Rs 9,000, but his assets valued over Rs 100 crore. He built six plush hotels during his association of six years with the main accused Abdul Karim Telgi. The ASI was arrested on June 13 and charged under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act. Investigations by the Special Investigating Team (SIT) probing the stamp scam had found that the ASI Kamath accepted Rs 72 lakh from the scam kingpin, Abdul Karim Telgi, on behalf of IGP Sridhar Vagal.
The problem is that the modus operandi of corruption ensures that it is invisible and unaccounted for. There are widespread complaints that the politicians exercise underhand influence on bureaucracy to mint money.
World Governance Survey has rightly observed that in India ‘Right from birth to death, nothing happens without bribery and corruption.People can neither live nor die with dignity’