Korea and the bomb
The North Korean government last week withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The decision follows a publicity campaign by the United States claiming that North Korea is developing or has already built an atomic bomb.
As part of the US campaign, the International Atomic Energy Agency had demanded to inspect two sites. North Korea refused permission, citing fears that inspection would be a cover for spying on behalf of the US, which is currently conducting massive military exercises in South Korea.
While the grotesque dictatorship of Kim Il-sung cannot inspire confidence in the truth of North Korean government statements, US governments (both Democrat and Republican) have a long track record of lying whenever it suits their interests, which is nearly always. They get so much practice at it that they have become quite adept at lying plausibly, but that is hardly reason to believe them.
In the present case, we should remember that the US also conducted a similar campaign in regard to a supposedly imminent Iraqi nuclear weapon, and the reality proved to be that Iraq was incapable of producing a bomb in less than several years, if ever.
However, there is a more fundamental question here. Nuclear weapons are not a reasonable solution to any problems confronting the world or individual countries. But as long as any country has such weapons, it is the right of every country to obtain them — particularly when a nuclear power has a record of interfering in other countries' affairs.
The United States, the only country that has ever dropped nuclear weapons on an enemy, has no moral, political or any other authority to determine what countries are or are not allowed to obtain nuclear weapons. This is doubly true in the case of North Korea, long regarded by the US as an enemy.
The threat of nuclear weapons will be removed only when all countries renounce the right to have them. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which attempts to divide the world permanently into possessors and non-possessors of nuclear weapons, cannot possibly work in the long term — nor should we want it to. Nuclear disarmament of all the countries which have such weapons needs to be put on the political agenda as a matter of urgency.