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Still 1,126 Nuclear Tests
Behind the United States
North
Korea's Bomb
By JOHN CHUCKMAN
You might think from all the political
noise that something extraordinary happened when North Korea
conducted an underground nuclear explosion. But let's put the
test, apparently a small-yield, inefficient device, into some
perspective.
The United States has conducted
1,127 nuclear and thermonuclear tests, including 217 in the atmosphere.
The Soviet Union/ Russia conducted 969 tests, including 219 in
the atmosphere. France, 210, including 50 in the atmosphere.
The United Kingdom, 45, with 21 in the atmosphere. China, 45,
with 23 in the atmosphere. India and Pakistan, 13, all underground.
South Africa (and/or Israel) one atmospheric test in 1979.
From a purely statistical point
of view, North Korea's test does seem a rather small event. You
must add the fact that my title, North Korea's Bomb, is
aimed at being pithy and is thereby unavoidably inaccurate. Having
a nuclear device is not the same thing as having a bomb or warhead,
much less a compact and efficient bomb or warhead. North Korea
still has a long way to go.
But North Korea's test is magnified
in its effect by several circumstances. First, war in the Korean
peninsula has never formally ended, and American troops might
well be vulnerable to even a school bus with a nuclear device.
Just that thought is probably horrifying to many Americans who
are not used to being challenged abroad, but I'm sure North Korea
has already been warned that that would constitute national suicide.
Two, the test comes when Bush
has been exploring military means to end Iran's work with nuclear
upgrading technology. There is no proof that Iran intends to
create nuclear weapons, but, being realistic, I think we have
to say it's likely. Iran faces nuclear-armed countries, hostile
to its interests, in several directions. Security of its people
is an important obligation of any state.
I doubt Bush intends invading
Iran - invasion's extreme advocates, neo-con storm troopers like
David Frum and Richard Perle having proved totally wrong about
Iraq - but that doesn't exclude some form of air attack. Iran
has deeply buried its production sites, so the usual American
bombers and cruise missiles will be ineffective. There has been
talk of using tactical nuclear warheads, but I think there would
be overwhelming world revulsion to this. The Pentagon may be
considering non-nuclear ICBMs, there having been talk of arming
a portion of the American fleet with non-nuclear warheads to
exploit the accuracy and momentum of their thousands-of-miles-an-hour
strikes for deep penetration. But Russia's missile forces are
on hair-trigger alert against the launch of any American ICBM,
and the time for confirming error with shorter-range sea-launched
missiles is almost nonexistent.
Bombardment of Iran may now
be more questionable, something we may regard as a good outcome
of the North Korean test. How do you justify an attack to prevent
the development of nuclear weapons in one country when you have
done nothing of the kind in another that actually has them? This
is even more true because Iran, while not Arabic, is Islamic,
and public relations for America in the Islamic world already
are terrible.
Third, what many analysts fear
most from North Korea is its selling weapons or technology to
terrorists. North Korea sells a good deal of its limited military
technology to others, although this does not make the country
in any way special, the world's largest arms trafficker by far
being the United States. Many would argue that American weapons
have supported terror, those used in Beirut, for example, ghastly
flesh-mangling cluster bombs dropped on civilians. The answer
to this fear about North Korea brings us to the simple human
matter of talking. The U.S. must give up its arrogant, long-held
attitude against talking and dealing with North Korea, for here
it is certainly working against its own vital interests.
It is an interesting sidelight
on North Korea's test that at least portions of its technology
came from A. Q. Kahn's under-the-table operations in Pakistan,
America's great ally in its pointless war on terror. Perhaps
Kim Jong Il should volunteer troops for Iraq. This would undoubtedly
change America's view of him dramatically. Cooperation won a
lot of benefits for the dictatorship in Pakistan regarded by
America as a rogue nuclear state just a few years ago.
All completely rational people
wish that nuclear weapons did not exist, but wishing is a fool's
game.
Efforts for general nuclear
disarmament are almost certainly doomed to failure at this stage
of human history. Why would any of the nuclear powers give up
these weapons? They magnify the influence and prestige of the
nations that have them. And why should other nations, facing
both the immense power of the United States and its often-bullying
tactics, give up obtaining them? Moreover, technology in any
field improves and comes down in cost over time, and it will
undoubtedly prove so with making nuclear weapons.
The entire Western world has
conspired to remain silent on Israel's nuclear arms, even when
Israel assisted apartheid South Africa to build a nuclear weapon.
If nuclear weapons are foolish and useless, why does little Israel
possess them? Why did South Africa want them? Why did the Soviet
Union, despite a great depression and horrible impoverishment
after the collapse of communism, keep its costly nuclear arsenal?
If Western nations can understand
the dark fear that drives Israel, why can they not understand
the same thing for North Korea? The United States has refused
for years to talk and has threatened and punished North Korea
in countless ways. When the U.S., under Clinton, did agree to
peaceful incentives for North Korea to abandon its nuclear work,
it later failed utterly to keep its word.
Bush has treated the North
Koreans with the same dismissive contempt and threatening attitude
he has so many others. How on earth was this approach ever to
achieve anything other than what it now has produced?
We keep hearing that North
Korea is irrational and unstable, but I think these descriptions
are inaccurate. A regime that has lasted for more than half a
century can be called many things, but not unstable. Soviet-style
regimes were very stable. It was when such governments attempted
reforms and loosened their absolute hold on people's lives that
they toppled, but there seems little likelihood of a Gorbachev
assuming power in North Korea.
North Korea has done some bizarre
things over the last fifty years, but I do not think a careful
speaker would describe the nation as irrational. North Korea
has been isolated and ignored by the United States. It is American
policy that frequently has been irrational, Bush's mob having
been especially thick in their behavior towards the country.
I may be exaggerating when
I write of bizarre North Korean acts, for since World War II,
what nation has done more bizarre, damaging things than the United
States? Over forty years of costly hostility and terror against
Cuba? The insane, pointless war in Vietnam? The insane, pointless
invasion of Iraq?
Harsh sanctions against North
Korea, already advocated by the emotionally-numb Bush, are a
foolish response. North Korea's rulers would not suffer any more
than did Saddam Hussein under American-imposed sanctions against
Iraq after Desert Storm. Only ordinary people would be driven
to misery and starvation, just as they were in Iraq where tens
of thousands of innocents died.
How much easier and more productive
just to talk.
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
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