Nuclear News: Talks in North Korea Stall; Russia and U.S. Vie for Global Nuclear Provocateur Status

Nuclear proliferation is in the news. In China, six-party talks aimed to get North Korea to disarm have stalled. North Korea', considered a terrorist sponsor by the U.S. State Department, began its weapons program in the 1950s. It culminated in a nuclear test in October, 2006. According to news reports, talks have faltered over the North Korean demand for compensation of 2 million metric tons of heavy fuel in exchange for disarmament. At least some of the other negotiating parties (which include China, South Korea, Japan, the United States and Russia, as well as North Korea) consider the demand extravagant.

There is less concern in the international community that North Korea would deploy a nuclear weapon, than that it may prove willing to sell nuclear weapons or technology. The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a private non-profit organization dedicated to nuclear non-proliferation, reminds that North Korea has a history of "exporting ballistic missiles and missile technology."

Terrorist groups might be among the first to line up to buy such technology, which is why nuclear non-proliferation is a counterterrorism issue. This issue was implicitly raised on February 10 at a Munich conference on security policy, where Russian President Vladimir Putin said the American movement of missile defense and detection systems to Eastern Europe might trigger a new spiral of the arms race."

Russia and the United States have the world's largest arsenals of nuclear weapons; both countries have committed to reducing their nuclear arsenals by 2012. Both countries also continue to sell nuclear technology. An American deal to provide civilian-use nuclear technology to India in December 2006 has been criticized as easily contributing to India's nuclear weapons development (in part, because existing reactors can now be dedicated to creating fuel for weapons). The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 has created conditions that facilitate traffic in illegal nuclear materials. The January 2007 story of a Russian man seized with 3.5 ounces of highly enriched uranium is a case in point (the event itself happened in early 2006), and the origins of the uranium itself remain unknown.

Historically, terrorist groups haven't shown an interest in inflicting the kind of large scale damage that a nuclear weapon or radiological device might be able to inflict. In fact, it's the opposite—groups with political aims have sought to create as much terror with as little damage as possible. Mainstream thinking in the counterterrorism community is concerned that the nature of terrorism has changed, and that new strains of ideology, such as religiously motivated terrorism, may have given rise to new motivations.

For more on North Korea:

• Profile of North Korea
• Timeline of Nuclear North Korea
• Nuclear Terrorism
• What is the United States Doing to Defend against Nuclear Terrorism?

Photo (c) Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC