PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

 

25 JAN 2013
PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT
HUMAN SURVIVAL PROJECT

DPRK NUCLEAR TEST 'INEVITABLE'?

A third nuclear test by the DPRK (North Korea) has been all–but
inevitable ever since the  less than optimal results at its first two
nuclear tests.Between 1945 and 1990, the US and Russia  conducted over1000, and about 800,
nuclear tests, and the French around 200. Even now, the Republicans
refuse to allow the US to ratify the CTBT which would at least ban
further testing.
  

As of now, the DPRK has hardly more than 10 unreliable warheads of
around 10Kt maximum each. The DPRK's tests have all been less than
one Kt. It is speculated that the first DPRK test was a 'fizzle'.

It is therefore inevitable – given the priorities of the regime –
that they would want to 'improve' their arsenal and their delivery
system. And it is equally inevitable that sanctions will merely
reinforce their determination to do so. This is of course extremely
bad news for the entire North Asian region, leading as it will to
pressures from quarters in Japan, the RoK, and Taiwan, to 'go
nuclear'. This in turn leads to more itchy fingers over more and more
nuclear triggers, increasing the likelihood of actual use of nuclear
weapons by orders of magnitude.

Yet it must be said that the imposition of sanctions was never going to
do anything other than make the DPRK yet more determined to obtain
nukes no matter how many of its citizens might starve as a result of
that determination.

And while the DPRK has its 10 or so rather pathetic weapons, Pakistan and
India have 110 and 100 each, with the population of Kashmir being
told to build bunkers and 'duck and cover', as US and Russian
citizens did in the 50s and 60s. A nuclear war between India and
Pakistan, using 0.3% of global nuclear arsenals and around 200
warheads, could create immediate casualties of over 150million and
deaths from famine in the ensuing 'nuclear autumn' of up to one
billion globally.

An accidental nuclear 'exchange' between the US and Russia, who maintain
over 2000 warheads on high alert, on the latest Minuteman-III and
Topol-M missiles capable of launch in less than a minute, and who
have over 10,000 warheads total, would produce temperatures lower
than the last ice age, and would be the end of civilisation and
possibly of the human (and many other) species.  

The DPRK is quite incapable of that. Yet the US and Russia maintain their
missiles in a configuration in which an accidental apocalypse is
entirely possible.

An impending DPRK nuclear test cannot possibly be good news for the
planet, and makes it more likely that someplace sometime, by madness,
malice, miscalculation or malfunction, nuclear weapons will actually
be used.  

Yet the policies adopted toward the DPRK – (to be sure, not people who
are in any way easy or pleasant to deal with!) – are entirely
predictably going to bring about precisely the opposite result to the
result we all want. Blind Freddie can see this, and the DPRK itself
is telling us that in unambiguous language. The next DPRK nuclear
test, possibly accompanied by the launch of real ICBMs, unfolds with
all the inevitability of a greek tragedy. Perhaps there are NO
'right' answers to the North Korean problem.

And this is an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

John
Hallam
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