North Korea successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) recently. The missile is proficient and can transmit a nuclear warhead that can sail at least 5,000 miles in distance.
The ICBM test is the latest in a series of galling acts by North Korea and the most momentous development in the regime’s nuclear programme in many years.
It additionally crosses a precarious threshold. The international community has long been apprehensive about North Korea’s nuclear programme, but until now the regime has failed to validate the ability to deploy a missile beyond their territory.
The missile launched recently shows that North Korea, also known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), can at least haul a rocket capable of reaching the United States of America (USA).
The development is enough to make one perturbed. The question is, what does North Korea’s ICBM missile presuppose? Let’s assume we can do nothing to curb the regime’s plans; but what are USA’s current missile defence capabilities?
I am distraught that North Korea has resolved to go ahead to develop portentous weapons that are prohibited by the United Nations because of their high threat quotient to international peace and security.
If the aspiration of the communist nation to develop nuclear weapons is not obviated, it may put across two severe consequences.
The first one is, it may restore nuclear arms race in the region and globally. That may be coming at a time the world is striving to curb nuclear proliferations.
The next ramification is the threat it constitutes to the Korean Peninsula, and perhaps the entire region as well.
Viewed from global vista, the homogeneous defiance by the DPRK with no visible sanctions, may indicate that the idea of mutual security upon which the UN is founded may be gratuitous.
Unfortunately, the sanctions regimen the UN placed on the country looks more like an incentive than a deterrence. The result is that within the last few months, DPRK has tested prohibited projectiles about ten times. The recent successful ICBM test is the 11th.
The country may have eventually succeeded in building and testing its imaginary weapon, the ICBM, in realisation of its ambition to be able to target and hit the US which it regards as ‘sworn enemy’ of the North Korean people.
It is imperative to recognise that the North Korean imbroglio was an invention of the Second World War. When the war ended, two Allied powers (Russia and the United States) controlled the Korean Peninsula. While Russia got the North, the US grabbed the South.
Soon, Russia and the US fell out over ideological variations which led to the Cold War. The war affected the peninsula to the extent that both the North and the South took to the contrasting ways of their ‘colonial masters’.
Subsequently, the North invaded the South, leading to what is known as the Korean War of 1950-53. Since then, both sides have been at war technically till date.
The South prospered enormously while the North was floundered in arms build-up, economic misery and cult hero-worship. But from every indication, it seems the Americans have found themselves in a quandary where their military might has been impotent in compelling a relatively weak North Korea to do their bidding.
Given his compulsive thought on nuclear weapons, it is apparent that the North Korean leader, President Kim Jong Un, is a homicidal maniac who could hazard a first nuclear strike unless he is stopped by preemption.
The DPRK question has dawdled. I think the US and the world require a new approach to the threat from the Korean Peninsula, and the most useful means is direct negotiation resulting in a peace treaty.
Again, such treaty should include the unification of the North and South Korea. If Vietnam and Germany could unite after substantial years in dissolution, I believe it is attainable.

Arnold Alalibo