Destabilizing tremors from N. Korean nuke blast

NUCLEAR POWER: So, North Korea, a "rogue state" to the West, becomes the latest entrant to the euphemistically-termed, world's "Nuclear Club."

By exploding an underground nuclear device, North Korea has not only earned the dubious distinction of being a nuclear power but has also forced some changes on the global power balance.

Prior to the North Korean nuclear blast, the global military balance was tilted strongly in favour of the West, since the bulk of the world's nuclear arsenals is confined to the Western hemisphere.

With North Korea going brazenly against Western opinion and opposition and acquiring a nuclear capability, those states which were denigrated by US President George Bush as constituting an "Axis of Evil", would seem to have acquired military parity with the West.

It would be remembered that Iraq, Iran and North Korea were labelled by Bush as comprising the "Axis of Evil", a few years ago.

The possibility of Iran being emboldened to go for a nuclear weapons capability, in the wake of the North Korean blast, adds credence to the perception that the global military balance is on the threshold of substantial change.

There is, apparently, a school of thought that the West needs to get tough with North Korea; even going to the extent of advocating the military option against the extant communist state, in a bid to preserve the current global power structure.

This would amount to courting a dangerous confrontation with North Korea which would have unsettling consequences even globally.

The safer option for the West would be to go ahead with tough economic and other sanctions which would hopefully prompt a re-think on the nuclear option in North Korea.

However, the safest course would be the redeployment of diplomatic means by the West to induce in North Korea a willingness to cooperate with the prevailing nuclear non-proliferation regime. This is on account of the antagonisms a tough course by the West would engender on this issue.

The crux of the issue is the fundamental irregularity at the heart of the prevailing nuclear non-proliferation regime. The ideal way to enforce the regime would be for the world to go non-nuclear. That is, total world nuclear disarmament.

This proposition, the West would consider highly unacceptable because a nuclear capability is one of the keys to preponderant military power.

If the West had not acquired a nuclear capability, they would not be perceived as particularly powerful today. Therefore, the West would find the total disarmament option unacceptable.

However, this fundamental contradiction between preaching and practice would not give the West the required moral authority to enforce nuclear disarmament on the rest of the world community.

The West would be in a position to enforce the disarmament regime on the rest of the world only if it had rejected the nuclear weapons option. Since it has not done this, the West's position on nuclear disarmament is seen as weak. Accordingly, its diktat is ignored.

Nevertheless, a nuclear-weapons free world remains the ideal to strive for. If no double standards are adopted on this question by the West, the nuclear non-proliferation regime could be made a reality.

Until then, the scramble for a nuclear weapons capability could not be avoided among the world's more volatile and militarily ambitious powers.

These issues too touch on the need for UN reform - a key concern of incoming UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. In his efforts to democratize the UN system, Moon would not be in a position to ignore disproportionate power imbalances among key states in the system.

If Moon succeeds in his efforts to reduce these power imbalances, it would be possible to eliminate the more glaring contradictions in the administration of the nuclear non-proliferation regime.

For instance, the US and the rest of the West could be compelled to strictly observe the terms of the nuclear non-proliferation regime.

Therefore, a more democratic UN could hold the key to a nuclear weapons free world. If power within the UN Security Council, for instance, is more evenly wielded, recalcitrant states could be held to account by the UN, more concertedly and unitedly.