The following opinion piece appeared in Le Monde Diplomatique on 14th February 2013.

North Korea: the real threat

The real threat now is that of proliferation: the worrying possibility that North Korea could spread its nuclear knowledge to other countries as it has in the past; or that countries in the region whom do not have a nuclear weapon, like Japan and South Korea, might develop the bomb out of fear for their security. The former is a serious threat, the latter more existential, undermining as it would well-established norms in the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation effort. A further, slightly less direct, threat is the continued legitimisation (in their own eyes at least) of the United States’s quest for a missile shield, a dangerous idea that has already become a source of much tension between the US and Russia.

Is there any practical way of deterring North Korea from its nuclear ambitions? History suggests there is not. The only suspected case of a nuclear rollback — where a country has built an arsenal and then unilaterally dismantled it — is South Africa. And even if that suspicion is to be believed, the theory tells us that the decision to disarm was based on internal calculations of the security dynamic, and not because of external threats or pressures directed at its clandestine programme.

Countless sanctions against North Korea have not prevented it from exploding three nuclear devices to date, as well as testing a number of ballistic missiles (mostly unsuccessfully); both are activities that the international community, through the UN Security Council, has forbidden it from pursuing.

North Korea has broken every international agreement it has ever entered in to in this area, over a period of 28 years, transgressing far beyond Iraq and Iran. Yet war is not an option. North Korea could destroy Seoul with conventional missiles overnight, killing hundreds of thousands of people and destroying the Asian economies in the process. And special diplomacy between the main players in the region, including Russia and the US as brokers, has demonstrably failed.

Can we incentivise North Korea away from its nuclear ambitions? Unlikely. Generous incentives in the past were quickly abused and proved pointless.

North Korea seems to be from a different era, viewing the world through Cold War lenses where the possession of a nuclear deterrent is both the ultimate defence and the ultimate legitimacy. No country with a nuclear weapon has ever been invaded. And those countries with the bomb either sit at the international top table (the UN Security Council etc) or are courted avidly by the main global powers.

As with Iran, you cannot look at the nuclear issue in isolation. But then you have to ask yourself if there is any point in looking at this issue at all. Despite our best and worst efforts, North Korea has gone nuclear. The imperative now must surely be to keep it on side, to keep it from spreading its knowledge and technology to others. We must attempt to slowly draw the reclusive state into the fold, into the normalcy of international relations in the 21st century — ignoring if we must its nuclear transgressions. We have to include it if we are to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Huffing and puffing has got us nowhere.

China will condemn the test and the US will seek the strongest possible response. But both countries have failed to ratify the one international treaty that bans all nuclear weapon testing — the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty — and because of this the Treaty is not yet in force.

These countries should really recognise their own responsibility (and hypocrisy) here. Ultimately we will never be able to include North Korea in international efforts if it is eternally treated as a pariah. It will not give up the bomb when its people are starving, paranoid and desperate. And it will not give up the bomb while others continue to keep it. But it might give it away. And that is the greatest threat.

Eoghan Murphy is an Irish MP and previously worked at the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation.