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PNS: Dangerous Diplomacy - Israel, North Korea Both Rattle Nuclear Sabers

Fearsome parallels - written by a fellow who used to teach at Berkeley
and is a well known China expert --CH
http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=52a9a7ef321688e16ed5a0d12f2f5915
Title: PNS: Dangerous Diplomacy - Israel, North Korea Both Rattle Nuclear Sabers
   

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Dangerous Diplomacy - Israel, North Korea Both Rattle Nuclear Sabers
Franz Schurmann, Pacific News Service, Oct 18, 2002

In the game of nations, writes PNS Editor Franz Schurmann, nuclear arms are a diplomatic weapon used by all who have them. Two divided nations in the news -- Israel and North Korea -- have had nuclear weapons policies for 50 years or more, posing a danger to the world that remains after the end of the Cold War.

Is there any connection between President Bush's recent defense of Israel's right of retaliation against attack by Iraq and North Korea's admission a day later that it has secretly been pursuing a nuclear weapons project?

A clue to a possible connection can be found in the English-language edition of the Israeli daily Ha'aretz of August 15. Well-known military expert Ze'ev Schiff wrote: "If Iraq strikes at Israel with non-conventional weapons, causing massive casualties among the civilian population, Israel could respond with a nuclear retaliation that would eradicate Iraq as a country."

By revealing its secret nuclear weapons project to the United States, North Korea is in effect playing the same risky game of nuclear diplomacy as Israel.

Some in Washington have questioned whether North Korea has operational nuclear weapons. But the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has stated that North Korea's nuclear program began in the 1950s. That means Pyongyang has had a nuclear weapons policy for a half century.

As for Israel, "It has been actively investigating the nuclear option from its earliest days," according to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). "The program took another step forward with the creation of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) in 1952."

Israel is now reputed to have some 200 operational nuclear weapons. Like North Korea, Israel has had a nuclear weapons policy for 50 years.

Another FAS statement about Israel's nuclear weapons policy may also shed light on North Korean policy: "The Israeli nuclear weapons program grew out of the conviction that the Holocaust justified any measures Israel took to ensure its survival." It is well known that Israel is surrounded by hostile states. So is North Korea. Russia is no longer an ally. China is by treaty bound to defend North Korea, but Beijing is hardly an admirer of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. The two Koreas yearn for more family reunification, but, as a recent bloody clash on the high seas demonstrated, they remain bitter enemies.

If Israel fears deeply a "Holocaust II," North Korea fears it could share the fate of the German Democratic Republic, aka East Germany. North Koreans know well that it was Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev who "gave" run-down East Germany to booming West Germany. The "Gorbachev" for North Korea could be China President Jiang Zemin or his successor, Vice President Hu Jintao. China's relations with South Korea, after all, are far better and more profitable than with North Korea.

An incident in China's border areas near North Korea underscored the fragility of relations between Beijing and Pyongyang. In September, Kim Jong-il announced he was creating a special zone in North Korea to experiment with capitalism called the Sinuiju Project. Kim selected a very wealthy Chinese capitalist with Dutch citizenship, Yang Bin, to head the project, evidently without consulting the Chinese. As Yang was inspecting various towns in the China borderlands with Korea, where the people are mostly Korean, the Chinese police suddenly arrested him. It was not clear what the charges against him were, but they likely had to do with organizing independent activities without informing the authorities.

Even if Sinuiju should thrive, this will not rid the North Koreans of the fear that some day they could find themselves handed over to South Korea. South Korea's president has no desire to take over famine-stricken North Korea -- but neither was German Chancellor Helmut Kohl eager to be presented with East Germany by Gorbachev 11 years ago.

The one country that made the East German transfer possible was the United States. President George Bush Sr. could have said no, but did not. Now George Bush Jr. faces an analogous situation vis-a-vis North Korea. Significantly, just when the Israel and North Korean nuclear weapons news broke, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly was in Pyongyang. And Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was in the White House.

Few U.S. and international experts and diplomats fear that nuclear weapons will soon be fired. They are more concerned with resolving conflicts that have made America's recession so difficult to root out. But both Israel and North Korea are dangerously divided countries. Those divisions are cancers that threaten not only these countries themselves, but the world as a whole.

Schurmann (fschurmann@pacificnews.org) is an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and has long written on East Asia and China.

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