Last week North Korea’s Kim Jung Il regime announced that it had launched a long-range rocket carrying a satellite. No evidence was found, however, that the satellite reached orbit. Due to technical flaws, both the rocket and the satellite may rather have landed in the Pacific Ocean.
President Obama called the launch a "provocative act." “Rules must be binding,” he said. “Violations must be punished.” He did not elaborate, however, on what specific rule he believes the North Korean dictator has broken and on how many other countries have similarly violated the rules established by international agreements, specifically by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968.
The NPT aims to ensure that nuclear materials are used only for peaceful purposes and do not contribute to the development of nuclear weapons. Of the 189 countries that ratified the NPT, five insisted on the right to produce nuclear weapons: the U.S., China, Russia, Britain, and France. India, Pakistan, and Israel have stubbornly refused to participate in the NPT while North Korea withdrew as a signatory in 2003. All four countries have developed their own nuclear weapons.
There is no international treaty that forbids any country to develop and deploy its own missiles. When last week our ambassador to the United Nations complained in the Security Council about the North Korean missile launch, China predictably objected saying North Korea, like other nations, has a right to launch satellites, and Russia's deputy U.N. envoy insisted that "Every state has the right to the peaceful use of outer space."
In addition to China and Russia, many other countries see our opposition to North Korea’s development of missiles and nuclear weapons as hypocritical. While persistently pressuring North Korea to desist from any nuclear arms development, we obviously condone India’s, Pakistan’s, and Israel’s failure to forego nuclear armaments.
Like China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Israel, Iran, Egypt, and North Korea, we Americans also have so far refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1996. In his Prague speech, however, Obama committed his administration to pursue U.S. ratification of the CTBT “immediately and aggressively." He explained that "After more than five decades of talks, it is time for the testing of nuclear weapons to finally be banned."
Regrettably, the President’s proposals for international controls on nuclear arms development and deployment are lacking consistency. He claimed that “Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat, not just to the United States, but to Iran's neighbors and our allies." He also pointed to the alleged threat of Iran’s production of nuclear energy to justify the projected highly controversial stationing of U.S. missiles near Poland’s Russian border.
Yet, the President never mentioned that both Iran and all Arab countries consider Israel’s arsenal of some 200 warheads as the biggest danger to the Middle East. Records of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment also show that our Israeli friends have undefined chemical warfare capabilities and an offensive biological warfare program.
During his visit to Turkey, Mr. Obama diligently tried to convince the world’s Muslims that we Americans want to live in peace with them. Yet, he conveniently failed to address the fact that Muslims worldwide question our fairness and evenhandedness when we routinely condone and finance the Israelis’ large nuclear arsenal and their continuing oppression of the Palestinian people.