My Green Meadows

The Missile Of A North Korea

There’s a lot of made up concern about the imminent North Korean missile test. But no one can quite bring themselves to get in a stew over it. Hence the bored and anti-climactic utterances by US government spokespersons tha it is “unhelpfull”.

The Japanese argue that the rocket will pass over Japan’s “territotial sky” and therefor violate Japanese sovereignty. The height of territorial sky has not yet been internationally defined. The only general standard is that the height of the territorial sky should be extended only to a height appropriate to guarantee the security of each country. So, over the past 100 years, the height of the territorial sky has been internationally recognized between 40 to 50 km. Recently, however, some argued that the height of the territorial sky should be about 100 km, on the grounds that the flight altitude of ballistic missiles launched by many countries nowadays is generally within 100 km and that some of the satellites orbit more or less 100 km from the earth. As a result, nowadays, about 100 km is regarded as the height of territorial sky. No nation claims higher territorial sky, nor is it recognized.

But suppose the North was to launch a      straightforward, unembarrassed, honest to goodness ICBM? – would that be so wrong?  The “security” of the “West” has been guaranteed by such weapons for the past 60 years,… or so they say.

It violates United Nations sanctions perhaps – but then disregarding the opinion of the UN is not novel. West may not feel comfortable with it, but it seems to me that in answer to the North Korean question, ‘Why shouldn’t we possess and test missiles for our own defence?’, the rest of the missile-possessing, missile-testing world has no more persuasive answer than: “Because we don’t like you.”

The original five signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty — the United States, the United Kingdom, China, France, and the Soviet Union, now Russia – signed the NPT with the understanding under Article 6 that they would work in good faith towards general and complete nuclear disarmament. What we’ve seen in the intervening years is that they have retained and reaffirmed the role of nuclear weapons in their security policies. In some cases they have given new roles and missions to nuclear weapons and they seem to be committed to retaining nuclear weapons for the indefinite future. So there’s clearly a double standard here.

However,the concern is expressed that North Korea which claimed to have detonated a nuclear device on October 9th 2006  will supply nuclear and missile-relevant technology to countries elsewhere in the world, but also that it might supply weapons-usable fissile material to terrorist groups. The North Koreans deny that they would ever consider doing this and they dismiss it out of hand. But it’s something the world has to take very seriously given the fact that Pyongyang is well-known already for supplying ballistic missile technology to a number of states, and it’s also known North Korea has been involved in nuclear commerce as well with a number of states, in particular Pakistan through the [Pakistani nuclear scientist] A. Q. Khan [smuggling] network, so clearly this has to be taken seriously.

Obviously there’s great alarm in Japan and elsewhere in the region over North Korea’s scientific advancement of missile technology. What about a possible knock-on effect? Could this spur an arms race in the region?

What’s more likely in the case of Japan is that it will continue to reevaluate its current defense posture. It’s moving towards having a more robust conventional military capability, including long-range strike capabilities. It’s also very likely to move now even more closely into cooperation with the United States on a regional defense system.

Of the nuclear weapons states, four are outside the NPT: India, Pakistan, and North Korea, plus Israel, which has never declared as much but is widely believed to have a nuclear arsenal. They either never signed up or withdrew from the treaty. Doesn’t this show up a pretty major problem with the NPT: if you want to comply you’re in, if you don’t, you remain outside or withdraw and no one can do anything about it?

This serves North Korea  exactly right. One of the problems with the NPT now is that we have almost as many nuclear weapons states outside the treaty as are legally recognized under the terms of the treaty. And in the case of North Korea it was a nonnuclear weapons state party to the treaty, it then withdrew in 2003 and declared itself to be a nuclear weapons state, and of course it used its status under the NPT to acquire all the nuclear fuel cycle infrastructure needed to manufacture nuclear weapons. Basically it cheated — a clear-cut case of noncompliance with the treaty — and yet when it pulled out of the treaty nothing happened, the international community failed to take robust action against Pyongyang. It’s something that gravely undermines the legitimacy of the treaty regime, when states can be seen to flout its rules, exploit the rules, and — frankly — cheat and then get away with it.

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