Nuclear summit comes amid rising
threats By Thalif
Deen
Against the backdrop of a politically
waffling, nuclear-armed North Korea as its
unpredictable neighbor, South Korea will host a
nuclear-security summit this month to be attended
by more than 40 heads of state and government.
As Japan still struggles to cope with its
disastrous nuclear accident in Fukushima last
year, the Seoul summit will focus on specific
guidelines for nuclear safety - and also measures
to prevent nuclear terrorism.
UN Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon, a former foreign minister of
South Korea, said he was looking forward to the
summit, scheduled to take place in the Korean
capital from March 26-27.
After a meeting
with visiting South Korean Foreign Minister Kim
Sung-hwan last week, Ban commended the leadership
of the South Korean government "in advancing the
international
community's efforts to
prevent nuclear terrorism and strengthen the
global nuclear security and safety regime".
Dr M V Ramana, a physicist at the Nuclear
Futures Laboratory and the Program on Science and
Global Security at Princeton University in New
Jersey, said: "I hope this summit manages to focus
some attention on the urgent issues of nuclear
safety and security. Unfortunately, I don't think
we have any grounds for optimism."
With a
few honorable exceptions, he said, the response of
most governments and heads of state to the
Fukushima nuclear accident that followed an
earthquake and tsunami last March has been the
continued pursuit of business as usual in their
plans for nuclear construction and operation, with
no real reflection about the broader implications
of the accidents.
"The general view
promulgated by nuclear establishments, and
reproduced by governments, is that while Japan
might have had an accident, their own nuclear
plants are fully immune to accidents," he said.
"This view is not conducive to either
safety or security," said Ramana, author of The
Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in
India and a member of the International Panel
on Fissile Materials and the science and security
board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
The first nuclear-security summit was held
in Washington, DC, in 2010, while the United
Nations hosted a high-level meeting of world
leaders to discuss the same subject in September
2011.
The second security summit in Seoul
will take place in the wake of last month's
announcement by North Korea that it is willing to
stop nuclear tests, uranium enrichment and
long-range missile launches in exchange for US
food aid.
Dr Rebecca Johnson,
vice-chairwoman of the International Campaign to
Abolish Nuclear Weapons, is skeptical of the North
Korean assurance.
"This is the third time
in 20 years that the despotic North Korean
leadership has offered nuclear restraint and
access for IAEA [International Atomic Energy
Agency] inspectors in return for food," she said.
So while all should welcome the chance
that has opened up, the United States and other
participants (China, Japan, Russia and North and
South Korea) in the six-party talks on the North's
nuclear program are understandably cautious not to
claim this as a major breakthrough.
The
potential wild card this time is Kim Jong-eun,
successor to his father and grandfather but an
unknown political quantity, she added.
Does he have the will and authority to
begin a process of change in North Korea, or is he
just emulating his father in dangling inspections
in order to relieve domestic pressure in his
hungry, underdeveloped country? asked Johnson, who
is also executive director and co-founder of the
Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy.
She said North Korea was undergoing an
inevitable transition after the sudden death of
Kim Jong-il.
"That offers potential for
positive change or destabilization. Only time will
tell if this is the beginning of the end for North
Korea's provocative nuclear program, with its
exhibitionistic nuclear tests and displays of
weapons-grade plutonium," she said.
If so,
Johnson said, then Kim Jong-eun's offer will prove
to be an important first step, provided that
Washington and Seoul can respond constructively.
"Even so, it is likely that this will be a
wary courtship, with many missteps and jumps in
the wrong direction, but with the hope that North
Korea can be encouraged to keep moving toward
de-nuclearization and disarmament," she said.
Meanwhile, studies have shown that the
primary drivers for states' leaders to acquire or
renounce (or refrain from) nuclear weapons are
domestic politics, even if the rhetoric is couched
in security justifications.
Such is the
voodoo power assigned to nuclear weapons for power
projection and deterrence that insecure leaders
will seek to develop or hang on to them regardless
of the costs, Johnson said. "For them, it's
about nuclear weapons as symbols of power even if
their use would be politically or militarily
suicidal," she said.
Still, Johnson said
South Korea also needed to make a reassuring
gesture of its own now - one that would come as a
huge relief to the farmers and fishing communities
of Jeju Island who are desperately trying to
prevent their diving grounds and the Gureombi
Rocks of the iconic haenyo female shellfish
divers from being dynamited to build a new naval
base for US Aegis destroyers equipped with missile
defenses against possible attack from North Korea.
She said construction on the Gangjeong
naval base should be halted immediately. There's
no point in irrevocably damaging Jeju's marine
environment, and the South Korean government can
present its own restraint as a confidence-building
measure to encourage Kim Jong-eun to take further
constructive steps, Johnson said.
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