When Outlaws Get The Bomb

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Indeed, since the end of the cold war in 1991, not all the news on the nuclear front has been bad. South Africa, Ukraine and, more recently, Libya all willingly gave up nuclear weapons or the pursuit of them. Brazil and Argentina formally abandoned any thought of going nuclear. "I would also disagree with the basic premise that the pressure is all in the direction of going nuclear," says Mark Fitzpatrick, a proliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. The North Korea test, he says, will have only marginal effects on how other countries view their own security and the role nukes should play in them.

And some are dusting off the cold war theory that nukes are inherently stabilizing. "Nuclear weapons increase the international responsibility of every state that has acquired them," says a British general. Even Pakistan, roundly condemned as a rogue for its nuclear test in 1998 (conducted in response to India's tests held a couple of weeks earlier), is now viewed, as Fitzpatrick puts it, as a "responsible" nuclear state. It has not gone to war with India, its archrival, and--precisely because war now brings risk of nuclear annihilation on both sides--that prospect is less likely than it was before Pakistan joined India. Deterrence worked during the cold war, and it can work now.

MANAGING THE NEW RISK

What, then, can be done to rein in countries like North Korea? Pyongyang is especially prickly and dangerous, and already holds 10 million residents in the South Korean capital as virtual hostages. Seoul is only 30 miles from the border and has always lived under the threat of immediate destruction from North Korean firepower. Says a senior U.S. military officer: "[It is] within easy and rapid range of perhaps 10,000 artillery tubes with a 57-second flight time. That can cause World War II--size casualties." And that's without nuclear weapons. Now, unless the U.S. goes back to the bargaining table and somehow entices North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons--something most experts believe is unlikely--deterrence and containment become even more important. "The tactical game with North Korea--trying to get them to stand down their nuclear program--is now pretty much over," says Henry Sokolski, a former Defense Department nonproliferation expert in George H.W. Bush's Administration. "Now it's a strategic game, containing them and waiting for the regime to collapse."