Author: Manoj Joshi
Publication: The Times Of India
Date: November 19, 2002
For the past three decades, New
Delhi has been preaching the world the inequities of the Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT), but it is unlikely to derive any pleasure from the revelation
that Pakistan is providing nuclear weapon-making technology to North Korea.
As the country's nuclear tests shook
the foundations of the NPT in 1998, India cannot afford to take a moralistic
stand on the subject.
Whatever damage had to be done to
India's interests had already been accomplished through the first part
of the bargain, when the North Korean- supplied No-Dong or Ghauri medium-range
ballistic missile brought most of India under the range of Pakistani nuclear
weapons.
It is now the turn of countries
like Japan and China, and South Korea, to worry about the consequences
of Pakistan's irresponsible behaviour Having helped Pakistan to cross the
nuclear threshold and equipped it with M-II missiles to lob them on India,
Beijing is clearly hoist on its own petard. A sinking regime in Pyongyang
won't think twice about threatening former friends and neighbours.
Following the Indian tests, Japan
took the high road of chastising India. But now, if the North Koreans test
their bomb, Japan may feel compelled to cross the threshold. Tokyo has
a nuclear establishment that has everything in place to do so-lots of plutonium,
superb machining capability as well as space launch rockets that could
double as missiles.
Pakistan has breached the central
taboo of the nuclear age: Thou shalt not help other countries to make nuclear
weapons. In the 1950s, the US refused to share nuclear technology with
its allies like France. Russia broke with China on the issue.
While China cynically aided Pakistan's
nuclear and missile quest in the 1980s to humble India, Pakistan and North
Korea form a different class of proliferators. Both are bankrupt "failed
states" which feel that their dangerous weapons are their only bargaining
chips.
What will be the consequences of
the world's nuclear regime coming apart? The immediate one will be to enhance
the danger of a nuclear war. But it could also kick-start a movement to
eliminate nuclear weapons from the face of the world. The biggest opponent
of such a course is the most powerful country in the world, the US.
No country or group of countries
can even hope to match, leave alone best, the US in the next 50 years in
conventional or non-nuclear military capability Yet the Americans have
been the principal opponent of the movement to rid the world of nuclear
weapons. But even the US may realise that yesterday's idealistic yearning
could be today's common sense.
