Weapons diplomacy since 1974 and North Korea’s tests

The recent announcement by the government of the intention to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes in Uganda is probably informed by increasing Third World demand for energy.
The realisation that fossil fuel resources are not finite provided the background against which the International Conference on Nuclear Power and its Fuel Cycle was organised by the International Energy Agency at Salzburg, Austria from May 2-13, 1977. Among the topics discussed were nuclear power and public opinion, nuclear prospects in developing countries and its anticipated problems.
A related United Nations first ever General Assembly Special Session on Disarmament was held in New York from June to July 1978.

The Non-Proliferation Treaty 1968, provided the framework for controlling the spread of nuclear materials and expertise.

The Salzburg Forum was planned to give a global and comprehensive overview of the status and potential of nuclear power with particular focus placed on its limitations and constraints. It is partly to those, North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, and recent news about Uganda’s nuclear energy plans that this colloquy benchmarks.
At the United Nations Special Session, which this writer attended as a “Technical Adviser” (accreditation contrived by the United Nations Protocol Office) to the Uganda Delegation led by Uganda’s Permanent Representative Yunus Kinene; even though what I didn’t know about armaments would have made me a millionaire if a conjurer had converted it into cash.

Apart from the implications of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical and biological weapons), the usual culprits were concerned that world peace and security would be compromised if they fell into the hands of a “mercurial Third World leader”, which I thought was peremptory, and now characteristic of the kind of superpower arrogance behind the impropriety of dragging seating Heads of State to the International Criminal Court at the Hague.

As if to suggest Uganda under the throes of military dictator Idi Amin might have been such a leader, the New York newspapers published stories about the killings in the country, complete with a photo of bemedalled Amin on the front pages with the caption ‘Butcher of Uganda!
With the DPRK’s leader threatening to attack Guam and the United States Power Grid, the narrative of “irresponsible Third World leaders” seems to have returned with spine-chilling vengeance to haunt the Americans, and the world.
The DPRK withdrew from the IAEA in 1993, as a bargain strategy for negotiating for economic assistance from the West in exchange for freezing its nuclear programme.

Because the first line of the next World War will be the kind of strategic weaponry the DPRK has recently successfully tested thereby invariably shifting the debate from whether the DPRK’s strongman is bluffing; to range, firepower, accuracy, vulnerability and invulnerability, and when to expect Nuclear Armageddon, North Korean leader Kim Il Un has rediscovered the effectiveness of rattling sabers as bargaining tools during the inevitable negotiations in the inevitable Weapons Diplomacy to avert catastrophe.
Nuclear weapons are useless unless delivered to the theatre of war and remotely detonated. Unlike Saddam’s Iraq, the DPRK has demonstrated capacity to deliver WMDs to enemy territory by testing a series of ICBMs and an hydrogen (bomb five times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima 72 years ago), that can be mounted on them as a warhead.

Even though counter measures such as the US Thaade Missile systems designed to destroy them in flight have been deployed in South Korea, defending against them might be difficult once, and if, they penetrate the shield.
With the apocalyptic consequences that is bound to create for the region as well as geostrategic reasons, Russia and China will be sucked into the conflict.
Taking tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea as the United States has intimated it will do, if asked by their ally, will take the world a step nearer World War III, which only negotiations can prevent.

Mr Baligidde is a former diplomat.
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