By Kim Jae-kyoung
North Korea should never be recognized as a nuclear weapons state regardless of the technological progress it has achieved, according to experts on the reclusive regime.
They warned that doing so will give huge leverage to the North, tipping the balance of power situation in favor of the Kim Jong-un regime.
“We should not recognize North Korea as a nuclear weapons state. To do so would be a nuclear proliferation nightmare,” said Joseph DeTrani, a former U.S. special envoy to the six-party talks that included North Korea.
“The North wants to be recognized as a nuclear weapons state,” he added. “Their ICBM launches were in pursuit of locking in their nuclear weapons status.”
The warnings came as multiple reports indicate that Pyongyang has secured the technological capability to produce nuclear-tipped missiles apparently capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.
Citing U.S. intelligence officials, the Washington Post reported Tuesday that the North has successfully completed the production of a nuclear warhead that’s small enough to fit on its missiles, taking it one step closer to becoming a nuclear power.
The report came several days after the North successfully conducted two tests of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), suggesting that it is just a matter of time for Pyongyang to perfect the technology to allow those missiles to be equipped with miniaturized nuclear warheads.
Tara O, adjunct fellow at Pacific Forum CSIS, said that accepting the North as a nuclear state rewards the Kim regime in many ways.
She believes that it will give much needed legitimacy to the regime that can’t or won’t feed the majority of its population.
“It will be able to hold South Korea, the U.S., and others hostage and make unreasonable demands,” she said.
O expects that the world might see continuous and huge cash transfers, more kidnappings and assassinations without much expectation of consequences, and more and bolder military adventures without paying for its deeds.
“Basically, it will show that behaving badly has high rewards and little or no consequences, thereby emboldening the North Korean regime,” she said.
Despite harsher sanctions and diplomatic isolation, the North has shown no signs of giving up its ambition to become a full-fledged nuclear power.
During a speech at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Manila, Monday, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said, ““We will, under no circumstances, put our nuclear weapons and ballistic rockets up for negotiation.”
This indicates that Kim believes that nuclear weapons are the only resort that he can rely on to ensure internal control and secure his regime.
The bigger issue is that permitting the North to own even a small number of nuclear weapons could lead to a nuclear arms race not only regionally but also globally.
“We can never accept the North as a nuclear state. At stake is something even more significant than just regional security, which is the global proliferation regime,” said Balbina Hwang, a visiting professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies.
“North Korea abrogated the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and therefore must never be accepted by the international community as a legitimate nuclear state, or the NPT becomes meaningless,” she added.
In her view, if the North insists on continuing its nuclear program, at a minimum, it must understand the cost of doing so is to prevent its acceptance as a legitimate member of the global community.
William Brown, adjunct professor at Georgetown School of Foreign Service, said that it is important to understand Pyongyang’s objective in building nuclear weapons is not just to stay alive but are designed to force unification with the South.
“A bitter rivalry for the peninsula and, in time, one will win over the other,” Brown said, noting that the Kim regime perceives that North and South Korea are in a zero-sum game.
“So this would be like accepting East Germany as a nuclear state,” he said. “If they could rewrite history, these pundits might have given nuclear weapons to East Germany to keep it from disintegrating.”