The world has recently been on the edge with increasing
tensions between North Korea, the United States and its allies primarily South
Korea and Japan with North Korea recently ramping up its missile programme and nuclear
tests under the garb of regime survival.
Kim’s regime claims that besides learning how to build, they have also learned
how to miniaturize a hydrogen bomb; competent enough to fit on the new Intercontinental
Ballistic Missile (ICBM), furthermore, have also developed a system
skilful enough of delivering it, and this nuclear arsenal was recently
showcased to the world via various tests.
These
actions of the North have prompted a jittery American President who often seems
ignorant of the plausible repercussions of his words. The country has been
notoriously secluded since the Korean War. Their military is shockingly anachronistic
with wood powered trucks as perceptible from some recently leaked photos. North Korea is at the bottom tier of pretty much every
human development index in circulation, outdone only by few countries such as
South Sudan and Somalia.
The question now arises as to how the nation got trailblazing
science for such atomic weaponry? World
primarily points at India and Pakistan. A nuclear scientist from Pakistan Abdul
Qadeer Khan was alleged to have stolen information on Nukes from Europe and was
arrested for transferring the same to North Korea. Country conducted its first
ever nuclear test with a Plutonium Based bomb in 2006 and later on, boasted by
confirming that their borders are now lurking with nuclear technology.
Since then the country has been conducting
various tests and to tackle this, UNSC imposed certain sanctions on North Korea
including certain economic ones that cut Pyongyang’s $3 billion in export
earnings by roughly a third.
South Korea and Japan till now have been subject to “Nuclear
Umbrella” of the US. But at some juncture North Korea will be competent enough
to target some of major US cities and Japan and South Korea have indicated
uneasiness over the “Nuclear Umbrella” if the US itself some day, comes under
the range of North Korean Nukes.
On comparing the armies of the North and the South, the
Northern has about three times the manpower of South but on the contrary North
is qualitatively inferior to the South. Qualitative superiority may help the
US-ROK armies to win many regular battles but once the supply of US-ROK
precision munitions gets exhausted the armies could lose much of their
qualitative advantage.
The Kim dynasty has gathered these military abilities to
dissuade a likely US action against them. To impede this development of Nukes
by the North is a mammoth task as some theoretical measures (like the economic
sanctions which are only partially implemented by China) are unlikely to stop
North Korea. The country is working in an almost unstoppable way and has almost
5,000 to 6,000 artillery and rocket launchers within the range of South Korean
Capital.
Tensions
have further escalated by the US President’s recent addresses, where he has
openly laid threats of “destroying North Korea” which was also demonstrated in
Trump’s speech at the UN, where instead of calling for peace, he called the
Korean Dictator “Rocket Man” and threatened of “destroying North Korea”.
After the World War II, the general trend to accumulate nuclear
technology was for the “propagation of peace” which was based on the principle
of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) which states that if some country uses
nuclear arsenal, then it is mutually assured to destroy itself by way of
retaliation from the other nation.
Many experts have suggested that the best way to solve this
issue is to persuade North Korea to put an end to its nuclear program. But the
Kim Family has clearly stated it would not be as foolish as the Libyan Leader
Gadhafi, since he acceded to give up his nukes and was later overthrown with
the US help. Dictator of North Korea is primarily concerned with the survival
of his regime and thus is extremely thin-skinned to any such intimidation
whatsoever.
The past speaks of North Korea easily crossing the “red
lines” established by the US and that too without facing any noteworthy
consequences. The urgency of the time calls for the peace loving countries to
come together and adopt a multidimensional approach towards North Korea like
economic sanctions, spreading information in North Korea that would disturb the
country’s internal political environment, threatening to take military action
and in a way trying to persuade the Dictator, that his nuclear arsenal is doing
no good to him and his regime but in a way, is working towards jeopardizing his
regime.
Written By
Rahil Setia
I Year
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in the article are those of the author and do not reflect the views and opinions of the Blog.
Comments
Post a Comment