Will Japan go nuclear as a reaction to North Korea’s Oct. 9 Nuke test?

India plans to resume nuclear testing it had postponed in May 1998, as soon as the Indo/US nuclear deal is approved by the lame duck U.S. Congress in November

Readers are urged to lobby against India-U.S. ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal as it is against the long & short term interest of the Sikhs

 



Washington, D.C., Wednesday, October 11, 2006 - The world may be teetering on the edge of a new phase in the sixty-year-old age of atomic weapons testing (first 20 Kilotons nuclear device was tested by the U.S. on July 16, 1945) after North Korea’s underground nuclear test, on Monday, October 9, 2006. Everything now depends on what the United States, and other interested governments, do to try to repair a non-proliferation system that, despite its faults, has served the globe well for decades.

This harrowing development in North Korea could spur an alarmed Japan (under its’ new hawkish, ultra nationalist Prime minister, Shinzo Abe) to go nuclear within months as it is sitting on top of about 23 tons of weapon-usable plutonium, enough for about 8,000 nuclear weapons. Japan going nuclear, our very well informed sources in India tell us, will give the Indian rulers an excuse to resume nuclear testing of a thermo-nuclear device, at an underground site (which has been kept ready over the years) near Phalodi in North Eastern Rajasthan - about twenty miles from Pokharan - in the ‘backyard’ of the Sikh Homeland of Punjab. The then Neo-Nazi BJP government of India had postponed this thermo-nuclear test in 1998 after Pakistan surprised Delhi with its tit for tat nuclear tests in Chagai, in its Baluchistan province.

These are the same Sikh sources in India which correctly predicted the May 1998 Indian nuclear test and shook up the American Intelligence community. Some readers may remember that in the first week of May 1998 this column published an expose` about Indian covert activity near Pokharan in India’s Rajasthan state – later the site of India’s nuclear tests.  (See Khalistan Calling dated March 1, 2006 by clicking at: /home/khalistancalling/2006/march01.aspx) That report earned this column, Khalistan Calling, an honorable mention in a two-column story in the New York Times, of May 16, 1998, written by Ms. Elaine Sciolino (headlined, ”Scooped on Tests, U.S. scorns a Sikh Journal”) and also later on, the episode was favorably discussed on page two of an excellent book, “Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information,” (published in 2001 by Cambridge University Press – ISBN 0-521 58096 X hardback) written by Gregory F. Treverton, former Vice-Chair of the National Intelligence Council, Senior Consultant at Rand Director of Studies at the Pacific Council on International Policy. Our reliable source in India tell us that,  before embarking on the nuke testing route again, India will wait for the passage of the infamous Indo-US ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal, by ‘brain-washed’ members of a lame duck U.S. Congress in November 2006, which places no restriction on production of weapons-grade fissile material or nuclear testing by India. No one has to guess how Pakistan, Iran, (and probably China and some other oil-rich countries in the Middle East) will react to new Indian testing of a thermo-nuclear device!

A storm of predictable condemnation has rained down on the North Korea’s isolated regime in the wake of Pyongyang’s first atomic tactical missile warhead test on Monday, which was obviously synchronized with the new Japanese Prime minister Shinzo Abe’s state visit to Seoul, South Korea, on Monday, and the formal nomination of South Korean foreign minister, Ban Ki-Moon, by the UN Security Council to the post of UN Secretary General, also on Monday.  Japan, the United States, South Korea, and other countries, have described the North Korean test as a ‘provocation’ that would be met with stern measures. Even China called it a brazen act. But the strong words do not disguise the weakness of the international community’s position now that North Korea has finally crossed the ‘Rubicon’ and indisputably become what it has long claimed to be – the world’s ninth nuclear weapons state. The other eight nuclear-armed states are:- United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India and Pakistan.

In short, the big powers can huff and puff, but there is not a lot new in practical terms that they can do. The fact of the matter is that this development by North Korea was expected because, North Korea immovably associates nuclear weapons with regime preservation a la Pakistan and Israel. The world simply couldn’t stop it. A strong statement issued last week by the UN Security Council, under Japan’s presidency, urging North Korea to step back or face unspecified consequences, has been flagrantly ignored. Future UN action may be, too. And behind-the-scenes coaxing via South Korean and Chinese officials has also come to nothing. Nuclear arms in the hands of Pyongyang would put some of the world's biggest cities (Tokyo, Shanghai, Osaka-Kobe, Beijing, Manila, Seoul and Tianjin) in the shadow of atomic weapons. It might also prompt previously reluctant industrial powers like Japan and South Korea, and oil-rich countries in the Middle East,  to seek ‘safety’ in nuclear arms.

Sanctions are the obvious tool to which the US, Japan and other concerned spectators such as Britain will now resort. But such measures have been tried before and have failed to modify Pyongyang’s behavior. In fact, they may have made it worse. It is only a little more than a year since North Korea agreed in principle to abandon its nuclear ambitions in exchange for US technology, aid and security guarantees. But financial sanctions imposed, last winter by the Bush administration, on North Korean banks and businesses operating via Macau (the old Portuguese colony, located 25 miles South of Hong Kong, now administered by China - since 1999) appear to have caused serious financial pain in Pyongyang. The North Korean’s retaliated by boycotting the six-party talks (China, Russia, South Korea, Japan, North Korea and the United States) once it hit renewed difficulties. North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-Il, may now be calculating that the weapons test, which by US and Russian standards was relatively small in scale, will strengthen his hand in any new negotiations once the fuss over the nuclear test dies down. Similar thinking may have been behind his decision in July to fire ballistic missiles over the Sea of Japan, in what now looks like a prologue to Monday’s main event.  Mr. Kim Jong-Il may prove to be right.

The prospect that the international community will ultimately have to deal with North Korea on Pyongyang’s terms has major implications elsewhere. Other countries with nascent nuclear ambitions will also be watching closely to see what happens next. Iran, whose suspect nuclear activities will soon be brought before the UN Security Council, may be encouraged in its defiance if no effective punitive action is taken against North Korea. Conversely, those in Washington who argue against direct talks with Iran, and against offering the sort of incentives proffered North Korea last year, may be persuaded by Monday’s blast that dialogue is indeed the only viable future option. The fact of the matter is that, the Bush administration’s refusal to honor the ‘framework agreement’, signed in 1994 by the Clinton administration with North Korea, that has led to the present impasse. North Korea and the US had signed the agreed framework accord, in 1994, under which Pyongyang vowed to freeze and dismantle its nuclear program in return for the construction of safe light-water nuclear power reactors (and fuel oil shipments while construction was going on) and other economic and technical aid.

The South Korean government is meanwhile surveying the ruins of its “sunshine policy” of peaceful engagement with North Korea. Like China, South Korea has consistently refused to cut off assistance and food aid to the North on the basis that engagement rather than confrontation is most likely to bring a change in relations. That position was maintained even amid intense international pressure for punitive measures after the July North Korean missile tests. And once the shock of Monday’s nuclear test wears off, the ‘sunshine policy’ is likely to be re-fortified. Densely populated South Korea (population about fifty million, area 38, 023 sq. miles) will always want a peaceful solution, because of the vulnerability of its capital city of Seoul – population over ten million – which is located right on the border with North Korea, and has been living under the shadow of over three thousand North Korean artillery guns pointed straight at its ‘heart’. Any other route spells potential disaster for South Korea.

The idea that the US could one day engineer a regime change on North Korea, a la Iraq and Afghanistan, by military force has also died a death when Pyongyang’s bomb went off on Monday. That event underscores the importance of dialogue. But the blast is also a spur to further global nuclear weapons proliferation by other countries. ‘There is no equalizer like the nuclear bomb’ as any Pakistani or Israeli will tell you. One does not need a degree in Political Science to realize that Monday’s North Korean nuclear test is a watershed event which will lead to an arms race in Asia, if negotiations fail. It will push all the governments in the region to increase defence spending and look at nuclear weapons with a ‘glint in their eye’.

Another ominous development, as a result of the North Korean nuclear blast, (and the Indo-US ‘nukes-for-mangoes’ deal, if it passes though US Congress in November) will be that hegemonic Brahmin rulers of India, will continue feverishly adding to their nuclear arsenal in the false hope of intimidating (and overwhelming) its poorer South Asian rival, Pakistan, which country it wants to absorb into their dream of Greater India or Akhand Bharat. Pakistan will resist Indian hegemony to the death. It is very likely therefore, that the fourth Indo-Pakistan war too, like the previous two wars, will also be fought in the Sikh Homeland which is located right in the middle of these two warring countries. The megalomanic Indian rulers in their jingoistic mad ambition for an Akhand Bharat (Greater India) often forget that Pakistan too is armed with nuclear weapons.

In the long term, therefore, just for survival we Sikhs must create a democratic buffer state of Khalistan, around our homeland, its shrines and people which would act as a bridge of peace and commerce between South and Central Asia. The buffer state of  Khalistan will geographically separate the nuclear-armed states of India and Pakistan on the ground. The Sikh homeland of Punjab has all the economic and natural resources of an independent state. Its people have the muscle, psychohistory and the political will. In the short term, we Sikhs must work for a nuclear free South Asia. The first step in that direction should be vigorous lobbying by the half million strong Sikh-Americans, on the Hill right away, against the US-India nuclear deal which might come up for legislation, in the ‘lame duck’ US Congress, sometime in November this year.  (For a background on the Indo-US nuclear deal, and what it entails please read Khalistan Calling, dated April 12, 2006, headlined, “Indo-U.S. ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal in limbo in the U.S. Congress,” by clicking at: /home/khalistancalling/2006/april12.aspx  and Khalistan Calling dated March 29, 2006, headlined, “Leading American political commentator Pat Buchanan ridicules the ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ Indo-U.S. nuclear deal,” by clicking at the following link: /home/khalistancalling/2006/march29.aspx)