A selective nuclear policy

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context:

• The resumption of North Korea’s largest fissile material production reactor, after operations were ceased in December 2018, has sparked speculation about its real and symbolic significance. 
  • The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has underlined that the restart of activity in Yongbyon constitutes a violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

Background

• In June 2008, in order to buttress its denuclearisation commitment to the U.S. and four other countries, Pyongyang blew up the cooling tower at the Yongbyon complex. 
• The move did little to assuage the concerns of critics, either regarding the plutonium stockpile the regime had amassed or its engagement in clandestine nuclear proliferation.
  • But it nevertheless led former U.S. President George W. Bush to ease some sanctions against North Korea, which he had in 2002 dubbed part of the “axis of evil”. 
• More controversial was Washington’s decision to revoke, less than two years after Pyongyang’s first nuclear explosion of 2006, the designation of “state sponsor of terrorism”. 
  • North Korea was placed on the terrorism list after the 1987 bombing of a South Korean airplane.
• A few months after blowing up the cooling tower in 2008, Pyongyang barred IAEA inspectors access to its reprocessing plant in the Yongbyon complex and eventually expelled them

More in News

• The above is the same reactor that the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, in a bilateral summit in 2019 with then U.S. President Donald Trump, offered to fully dismantle in exchange for securing complete relief from international economic sanctions, but to little avail. 
• The ageing five-megawatt reactor at the Yongbyon complex has been central to the North Korean reprocessing of spent fuel rods to generate plutonium, besides the production of highly enriched uranium for the development of atomic bombs. 
• Indeed, the opaque nature of Pyongyang’s nuclear programme partly accounts for the current confusion over the motives behind the restart of the reactor. 

Relation Between US and N. Korea

• The Biden administration has adopted a pragmatic path of declaring its readiness to resume negotiations with Pyongyang without the grandiose distractions of the Trump era that amounted to exerting little diplomatic leverage. 
• The U.S.’s key goal in northeastern Asia is the de-nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
• In his first congressional address, Biden said the nuclear programmes of Iran and North Korea posed a “serious threat to America’s security and world security.”
• He promised to respond through “diplomacy and stern deterrence”.
• His administration has also completed a review of the U.S.’s North Korea policy.

The Hindu Link:

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/a-selective-nuclear-policy/article36422251.ece

Question: North Korea’s nuclear capability without accountability could lead to tensions in the Indo-pacific region. Elucidate.