The Hindu Business Line : <I>North Korea gatecrashes into the nuclear club </I>

The US and the world ought to have realised that it was a mere matter of time before other countries with scientific capabilities and the needed resources gate crashed into the nuclear club.

Those round the world who are hopping mad over the nuclear test conducted by North Korea overlook one salient characteristic of the history of man on this planet: Once the genie of a new advance in technology is out of the bottle, it cannot be put back.

So it has been in respect of all inventions, good and bad, from the fashioning of the first plough for agriculture to the concept of zero to gunpowder to maxim guns to paper making to printing to the laws of thermodynamics to heavier-than-air-machines to television to satellites in space. And so it will be till any vestiges of human race remain.

It is futile for thinking human beings to beat their breasts over the spread of what is today in the possession of one country to become common knowledge or even commonplace within a short period.

For, spread it will, by fair means or foul, by the sheer inventiveness of the human brain, and nobody can lay down the law, as King Canute did with the ocean waves, that other doors should for ever be a closed against it.

Especially so, when information technology and knowledge revolution have abolished time and distance and broken all walls. North Korea too could not have been stopped from having a go and it would have known the ropes, if not from A. Q. Khan, then by itself. After all, all human brains are capacious and agile enough to imbibe and improve upon new ideas, and if one group of scientists at one place hits upon a technology, it will be folly to assume that it can be held secret from all others by contrived means of embargoes, sanctions or social ostracism. Yes, for a while these may work, but not for all time.

So, the US and the world ought to have realised the day (July 16, 1945) the "Gadget" (as the prototype atomic device was called) ushered in the Atomic Age, that it was a mere matter of time before other countries with scientific (including poaching) capabilities and the needed resources gate crashed into the nuclear club.

It was impudent on the part of the nuclear haves to claim nuclear technology to be their close preserve and their right to deny the right of the rest of the world to lay hands on it their sole prerogative.

On whatever grounds a country or cartel arrogates such a power to oneself, they cannot but turn out to be impractical and unrealistic viewed against the compelling rules of realpolitik by which the world is governed.

North Korea has dared the US and ignored all the wise guys who were heavily leaning on it to desist. So, what can anyone do about its advent as the eighth member of the club, or to prevent the emergence of new members of whom there will be no dearth?

The wisest course for the world community is to convene a conference of government representatives, scientists, media and eminent achievers in various walks of life to do a radical rethinking on the existing premises and postulates of the NPT and the CTBT regimes so as to hammer out a self-denying ordinance for all (including the haves) without banking on browbeating, bulldozing or reading the riot act.

No country in today's world can be brought to its knees by these means any more.

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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