North Korea did it
October 12th, 2006 by ashish
North Korea finally went ahead and declared that it has conducted an atomic test, and initial confirmations by tracking stations located around the globe have come in. As of now, it seems that North Korea has crossed a line, but there is really no certainity about whether it will face any major action. For any action to actually happen, China and Russia will have to overcome their traditional reluctance and agree that this action went over the line.
China must be feeling this the most. Unless China actually approves of the test, and it would be hard to believe that it could agree to the instability that this test induced, it’s advice has been rejected by the dear leader. This must be galling for the Chinese, especially because of the by-products. There are a couple of byproducts from this action that would not be comfortable for the Chinese;
1. This will introduce much greater militarization by Japan and South Korea, something that China would certainly not welcome
2. The stress to North Korea due to this test and the reaction may cause a lot more refugees from North Korea to seek asuylm in China, which is something that China would certainly not welcome
3. Loss of face; till now the Chinese were believed to have influence with North Korea, but this concept was blown up by the North Korean
Something will have to be done; there are a number of people wanting to see the reaction of the international community to this. If this is let go, Iran’s theocrats will be emboldened to try the same thing. Similarly, Pakistan will feel even more emboldened that nobody has questioned the level of assistance provided by Pakistan to North Korea’s nuclear plans.
North Korea is a state which is governed by the impulses of a single person without much feedback. This can be a major problem. As has been pointed out recently in a number of media reports, North Korea typically tries to sell its weapons system, and with interntational terrorism looking to strike against civilization, a match between North Korea and terrorism could cause nuclear technology to go into the very wrong hands. There needs to be concerted action to prevent any of these bad/worst case scenarios from happening.
