It will be 911 times 2356

It’s exciting isn’t it? That creepy strange little man in North Korea has managed to build himself a nuclear weapon. Really though this was inevitable; acquiring the capabilities to build nuclear weapons was the only real way that Kim Jong-Il was going to protect himself from the West. The USA specifically are far less likely to attack your country, if you can defend yourself with nuclear weapons.

North Korea has been targeted for some time now; they were infamously included in the so called “axis of evil.” Look what happened to the first country included in that axis; Iraq was attacked, occupied and its leader ousted. This was all on the pretence that they were developing weapons of mass destruction and a pre-emptive attack was required in order for the US to defend itself from the threat of attack.

Now if I was the leader of North Korea, I would probably start thinking that my country might be next. Indeed who’s to say that if the US hadn’t ended up bogged down in Iraq for so long, they wouldn’t have turned their attentions towards Korea? The circumstances of the invasion of Iraq would certainly suggest that to be a possibility. The likelihood of such an attack would be considerably reduced, if North Korea proved that they could defend themselves with nuclear force. It is believed they have intercontinental missiles capable of reaching the west coast of the United States; it would seem now that they are not too far off being able to attach nuclear warheads to these missiles. The US would never initiate an attack on a country that could fire a nuclear missile at its shores.

So really with America’s constant threats and accusations towards North Korea, their quest to join the nuclear club has only been encouraged. A country with nuclear capabilities is treated with a lot more respect that one without. No one would give a toss about Pakistan if they didn’t have the bomb.

It is all well and good for the most powerful nations to try and rule the world, of course they should, when you have power, you want to exercise it. However the problem with trying to tell people what to do, is that they are far less likely to listen to what you have to say, if you are not seen to be practicing what it is you are preaching. It is of course no coincidence that the 5 permanent member nations of the United Nations Security Council are the 5 original countries to have had nuclear weapons before all the talk came along about nuclear non-proliferation. Now these countries have all signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treat (NPT) and encouraged all others to do so. Basically, now they’ve got nukes, they don’t want anyone else to get them either. There is certainly nothing wrong with this at all, if you are in power you will want to stay in power and try to prevent others from being capable of challenging that power. We should not though be at all surprised though if countries don’t do what we tell them to do. Why would other countries agree not to develop nuclear weapons if the people who are telling them not to wont get rid of the ones they have already? Even, in the case of the US develop more.

The powerful nations of today should in every way try to prevent other nations from proliferating nuclear weapons, but they should not be surprised when their attempts fail. The only real way for nuclear non proliferation is to eliminate all nuclear weapons from the earth, including those held by members of the UN Security Council.

Of course we shouldn't discount the possibility that this test was actually faked and the explosion was not caused by a nuclear chain reaction. For North Korea, having everyone else think they have nuclear weapons is just as good as having them.