When Outlaws Get The Bomb

Sunday, Oct. 15, 2006 By BILL POWELL
Kim Jong Il, during reporting of the news that North Korea has successfully carried out an underground nuclear test, on Japanese television.
JEREMY SUTTON-HIBBERT / WPN
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The international community can also make it difficult for rogue nuclear states to make a buck off their new technology. To its credit, the Bush Administration has implemented the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a program now involving about 80 countries. They work to interdict material and equipment they believe is headed for use in the production of weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. and its allies credit improved intelligence sharing and cooperation for successes like the October 2003 interdiction of the German-owned ship BBC China, which was intercepted carrying centrifuge components to Libya. But there are still huge gaps. The PSI relies on "actionable" intelligence, and Representative Pete Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, acknowledges that U.S. human-intelligence assets in "hard targets" like North Korea are sorely lacking. Says Derek Smith: "It really comes down to having the intelligence capability to be able to determine which modes of transferral are going to be used, so you know which ship to go after. Certainly, we're not going to be able to put a blockade in place on air, sea and land all around North Korea."

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China, which has not signed on to the PSI, has been a valuable partner. This summer North Korea conducted conventional- missile tests--in defiance of its chief patron Beijing and the rest of the world. And now China, which has sold conventional missiles to Iran in the past, is stepping up efforts to deter Pyongyang from moving missile and missile-related technology to Iran. A high-ranking diplomat in East Asia tells TIME that China has denied overflight rights to North Korean aircraft bound for Tehran.

Overshadowing everything is the reality that this is a different world from the one that existed during the cold war--and the established powers are at sea in trying to cope with it. Defense intellectuals like Thérèse Delpech, director of strategic affairs at the Atomic Energy Commission in France, reject classic deterrence theory as a model for today's nuclear age. "The new actors, such as Ahmadinejad or Kim, are much more prone to act [impulsively] rather than like the United States or the Soviet Union" during the cold war, she asserts. And even if that's not true--Iran's Ayatullahs and Kim may want nukes primarily to secure their hold on power--there is little question that the world faces big problems dealing with the new nuclear challenges. "The United Nations keeps pushing back deadlines, and the matters at hand get more and more serious," says Delpech. "There has to be the will among the principle powers to recognize that proliferation has to be viewed in a way that goes beyond parochial national interests."

Is there that will? The Bush Administration insists there is, and that cooperation among the Western allies will ultimately rein in North Korea and deter future nuclear wannabes like Iran. Yet that may be more hope than reality. Says Delpech: "We're now facing two very grave cases of proliferation at the same time, and we have to use this moment of condemnation to pull the [established world] powers together." But considering how long it took for the Security Council to ban the sale of luxury goods to Pyongyang, time does not appear to be on our side. [This article contains a diagram. Please see hardcopy or pdf.] NUCLEAR WORLD