Nuclear deterrent is ‘their ultimate life insurance policy,’ said former Canadian diplomat
Kim Jong-un’s speech to North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly last week could have been reduced to a simple “I told you so.”
Ever since becoming leader in 2011, Kim has made his nuclear weapons program a national goal — almost a doctrine — arguing it is the only way for smaller powers to keep from being “mercilessly violated” by superpowers. The current Mideast war, he told North Korea’s parliament, proves that “the true guarantee of a state’s existence” is a nuclear deterrent — and he vowed to expand it.
“That’s their ultimate life insurance policy,” said former Canadian diplomat James Trottier, who led four official missions to Pyongyang. After watching U.S. attempts at forced regime change in Iran — and previously in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan — “it reinforces their beliefs that they need their nuclear program for regime survival,” Trottier said.
Kim has never made a secret of his nuclear and missile ambitions. This past weekend, official photos included the supreme leader observing tests of upgraded “military muscle,” a fiery engine designed to be capable of carrying nuclear weapons to the U.S. mainland. Earlier in March, Kim made a show of sending 10 ballistic missiles 350 kilometres into the Sea of Japan, in defiance of military exercises being held between U.S. and South Korean forces. And so it went with cruise missiles, tanks and artillery, on display in North Korea as war raged in the Middle East.
Bitter words also flew out of Pyongyang, denouncing the U.S. and its “vassal” Israel as “rogue nations” carrying out “villainous acts” of war — reminiscent of Iran’s chants of “death to America.” And yet, there is no big U.S. military campaign against North Korea. No loud threats from Washington. Not even a mention of North Korea in the latest U.S. National Security Strategy, which lists worldwide dangers.
Iran, by contrast, is called a “chief destabilizing force” in that same report.
U.S. worried about Iran, but not North Korea
The U.S. and Israel have justified the war against Iran as imperative because they say it has a nuclear weapons program. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls the threat “existential.” Without military action, he said, “we will face a nuclear Iran… that will work to destroy us.” Iran has always insisted its nuclear program is for peaceful, civilian purposes only, pointing to a “fatwa,” or religious ban, on the development of nuclear weapons issued by former Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the mid-1990s. So why is Iran a target and not North Korea? It’s because Kim Jong-un already has “robust” nuclear deterrence, said Ankit Panda, an expert on geopolitics and author of Kim Jong-Un and the Bomb: Survival and Deterrence in North Korea… Source: cbc.ca/news/world
