WASHINGTON - Think back to the days when stocks were high and the pillars of
capitalism seemed impervious to a destructive assault on their existence. Then
look hard at today's global order in which a nuclear war appears as unlikely as
worldwide recession and depression did a year ago.
Harvard professor Graham Allison evoked this disturbing comparison as he warned
of the potential for nuclear war breaking out in a world that has come to
believe the danger is essentially non-existent.
"We may be seeing the unraveling of that wonderful regime that can constrain
this activity," said Allison, author of numerous
books and articles on the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction. "If one
thing gets unleveraged, and you see an unraveling, pretty soon the whole thing
will unravel quickly. The global nuclear order looks no more secure today than
was the financial order a year ago."
Allison conjured that image while presenting the findings of a team of US
experts on the likelihood of a terrorist attack - including the use of weapons
of mass destruction. The team, under the Commission on the Prevention of
Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation and Terrorism, with a mandate from
US Congress "to assess our nation's progress in preventing weapons of mass
destruction proliferation and terrorism”, publicized its outlook in a report on
"World at Risk”, its release timed for maximum influence as Barack Obama
assumes the presidency on January 20.
Beginning with the flat assertion that "it is more likely than not that a
weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the
world by the end of 2013”, the report argues the risks of both biological and
nuclear attack have increased despite the "war on terror" waged by outgoing
President George W Bush since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Much of the report focuses on the Middle East, with Pakistan seen as the
crossroads for the transfer of nuclear material and technology on a circuit
that seems to run from Syria and Iran to North Korea. The most obvious single
villain is Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistan physicist cited as having "led a
nuclear proliferation network that was a one-stop shop for aspiring nuclear
weapons countries" ranging from North Korea to Iran to Syria.
Since the end of the Cold War around 1990, the US has "spent billions of
dollars securing weapons, materials and technology in Russia and the former
states of the Soviet Union", says the report, but in the same period "the world
has also witnessed a new era of proliferation" in which North Korea has
exploded a warhead and Iran "has been rapidly developing capabilities that will
enable it to build nuclear weapons".
The report offers few specifics, but Allison, proliferation expert at Harvard's
Kennedy School of Government, painted a dire picture of North Korea's rise as a
nuclear power since the breakdown of the 1994 Geneva agreement in 2002. "Kim
Jong-il has crossed all the red lines pretty much with impunity," he remarked
in response to a question by this writer at a briefing at Georgetown
University.
The clear inference was that North Korea has done whatever it wants when it
comes to developing nuclear warheads with no fear of punishment by the US or
other countries. So what's the solution, short of staging a pre-emptive strike
on North Korea's nuclear complex at Yongbyon as well as other critical sites,
including that of the underground nuclear test of October 9, 2006?
Allison, author of Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe,
had no real solution. "What means ‘fully accountable?" he asked. In North
Korea, the term means "Do what we ask and offer us some more."
Allison saw China as holding the key if it chooses to exercise its influence
over North Korea as the North's only ally, the source of much of its aid and
its most important trading partner. He believed, however, that China "is as
short-sighted" as the United States in exercising the type of pressure needed
to persuade, if not force, North Korea to abandon the program. "If China were
after its own interests," said Allison, "It would have been thinking, 'My God,
we're not going to live with this situation'."
Allison's portrayal of North Korea's potential for making mischief appeared all
the more alarming in the downward spiral of North-South relations. In the
latest blast, the North Korean weekly, Tongil Shinbo, responded to South Korean
President Lee Mung-bak's promise to "work calmly and flexibly to resolve the
current stalemate in inter-Korean relations" by saying "change must come in
South Korea by sweeping out the entire group of traitors".
The great fear is that North Korea, besides threatening South Korea, may
attempt to sell nuclear warheads to some of the world's worst terrorists. "Can
you imagine Kim Jong-il selling a nuclear bomb to Osama Bin Laden?" Allison
asked. He followed up by asking, "Can you imagine Kim Jong-il selling a nuclear
reactor to Syria” - exactly as North Korea did before Israeli warplanes bombed
it out in September 2007?
Jim Talent, former US senator and co-chairman of the commission that produced
the report, said the report itself was couched in general terms partly because
of disagreement among members.
"The commission doesn't have a lot to say about Iran and North Korea when we
couldn't agree on a whole lot," said the conservative Talent, a Republican from
Missouri. Coming up with a report on which there was unanimous agreement, he
said, was "not easy".
The commission's report appears carefully non-controversial when dealing with
North Korea. "After months of glacial diplomatic movement," it states,
"progress has recently been made on framing the verification agreement." The
report adds, however, that "it remains uncertain whether Pyongyang will
ultimately carry out its commitment to eliminate its nuclear weapons and
associated enrichment and reprocessing capabilities".
North Korea has heightened fears by stopping the process of disabling the
complex at Yongbyon where it's believed to have produced 10 Japan nuclear
warheads with plutonium at their core. Iran, although it denies having built a
nuclear warhead, has fabricated 5,000 centrifuges needed for warheads made from
highly enriched uranium.
Particularly alarming is the danger that other countries in Asia, notably
Japan, will enter a nuclear arms race to keep up with North Korea while Middle
Eastern nations, including Turkey, will want to match Iran. "They see the North
Koreans do it so others want to do it," said Talent.
Equally alarming, Talent added, is that "rogue regimes realize the key is
weapons of mass destruction".
The report, citing the rise in the number of terrorist groups since 9/11,
berated the US for failing to keep up "with the growing risks". The incoming
Barack Obama administration, it said, should do more "to communicate
effectively about American intentions and to build grassroots social and
economic institutions that will discourage radicalism and undercut the
terrorists in danger spots around the world - especially in Pakistan".
More specifically, the commission called on Obama to "undertake a comprehensive
review of cooperative nuclear security programs" and "develop a global strategy
that accounts for the worldwide expansion of the threat".
As "a top priority", said the report, "the next administration must stop the
Iranian nuclear weapons programs". And if diplomacy failed, said the report,
the US "must do so from a position of strength, emphasizing both the benefits
to them of abandoning their nuclear weapons programs and the enormous risk of
failing to do so".
The report stopped short, however, of calling for military intervention, saying
only that "such engagement must be backed by the credible threat of direct
action in the event that diplomacy fails".
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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