Flaying North Korea for nuke test is meaningless

About the recent nuclear tests, North Korea said that it is aimed at coping with “ferocious” US hostility that undermines the North’s peaceful, sovereign right to launch satellites.

The estimated yield of the latest test is six to seven kilo tons. It is a miniaturised, lighter atomic bomb which can be carried on a long range missile, the technology of which is more or less mastered by North Korea. The implication is North Korea is capable of hitting the United States of America.

As expected, alarm bells started ringing in the US. President Barack Obama immediately called North Korea’s latest nuclear test a “highly provocative act” that threatens US security and international peace.

Time has come for the humanity to rise and call off the American bluff. If the US on the pretext of guarding its national security could launch Iraq war without a cause and use drones indiscriminately to kill people in Afghan war, what is wrong in North Korea conducting an underground nuclear test to fortify its national security?

Time also has come for the leaders of other nations not to succumb to American pressure any more and also to read in between the lines of the American narrative.

If the fear of nuclear proliferation is a rallying point to indulge in condemnation of North Korean nuclear test, then the need is for a compelling rallying point to lift all sanctions against North Korea.

Humanity should rise to disallow the United Nations Security Council from becoming a tool in the hands of the USA and its allies to institute sanctions of any sort against any country inimical to the US and certainly not against North Korea.

Terming a country with a different ideology as a “rogue country” has become a pastime with the American leaders. The attending pastime of the Americans in power is to induce the pliable leaders of other countries to agree to impose sanctions on those “rogue countries.”

The characteristic of the present times is the notorious game the USA plays in the name of establishing “democracy” in other countries but with a definite aim to grab the natural resources of those countries. As far as China’s reaction to the nuclear test is concerned, one has to understand first what China is.

China has the colour of communism but capitalism fills its core. China has charmed the US to ignore the communist colour for an embrace over the Pacific Ocean.

China can accept North Korea only if it does not pose any threat to the capitalist and expansionist traits of China. Right now, China views the economically weak North Korea as trump card against the United States.

China also cannot accept unification of South and North Korea, because the militarily strong North and economically strong South, if united, could create problems for China’s ambition to become world power. Japan with its intrinsic ability to become nuclear power, and the systematically growing Vietnam after the heroic unification of the North and the South Vietnam, together with a unified Korea could alter the geopolitical situation around China.

Reactions to the tests, from the US, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and China betray their struggle to find their individual positions on the geopolitical chess game. The condemnation by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, NATO, the European Union, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, shows the wide spread deception practiced through these institutions.

Nowhere the universal deceit and arrogance is more evident than in the words of US President. “The danger posed by North Korea’s threatening activities warrants further swift and credible action by the international community,” President Obama said in released remarks.

These words of President Obama are a deceit because the US even under Obama is spending billions of dollars to perfect its nuclear weapons. Therefore the meaning that flows from the threatening words of Obama is, the US which wages war against other countries without a cause would not allow any country to pick up ability to fight them back. North Korea as a self-respecting nation is developing its ability to fight back the unjust United States.

Just like the people of Iraq suffered more from the sanctions imposed against Iraq than from the alleged despotic rule of Saddam Hussain, the people of North Korea would suffer more from the sanctions than from the vicissitudes of socialistic rule there.

For these reasons it is meaningless to condemn the latest nuclear test by North Korea. The same reasons also would show that it would be inhuman and unjust to subject North Korea to any sanctions.

The writer is former Indian Navy Captain with Ph.D. in nuclear technology from IIT Bombay and advocate of Supreme Court of India.