Peace can only be achieved by understanding

The DPRK is believed to possess nuclear weaponry and also the means of their delivery -- an acute security concern to some States. The proximate protagonists, the two Koreas, Japan and China, have close historic, cultural and ethnic links. Buddhism and also artistic influences are said to have travelled from South Asia to China and then on to Korea and Japan.

In the 12th century BC, the Shang dynasty in China was supplanted by the Chou dynasty. Ki-Tse, a dignitary of the ousted regime, with 5000 or so followers, left his country and went eastwards to Korea and founded a kingdom. There is the view that his descendants may have moved further east to Japan. Some archeological findings would tend to corroborate this, although any suggestion that the Japanese people are descended from Koreans is anathema to many in Japan even today. There are undercurrents in Japan's relations with the Koreas. Japan's suzerainty over Korea, followed by outright annexation early in the last century and subsequent rule that was far from benevolent, have left scars and memories that still rankle in the minds of many.

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Nuclear weapons, whether possessed by the DPRK or any other country are above all else an abomination. These cannot, of course, be disinvented but nuclear disarmament has been on the international agenda for decades. The very first resolution of the UN General Assembly in January 1946 had called for nuclear disarmament. In an advisory opinion in July 1996, the International Court of Justice unequivocally stated that there "exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control". Progress toward this "consummation devoutly to be wished", has been at a sedate, even glacial, pace. Such weapons are thus not proscribed. Nuclear weapons are claimed to be a deterrent to war; they kept the peace in Europe during the Cold War and are doing the same in South Asia today. Perhaps. What is true, beyond cavil and conjecture, is their power of absolute and indiscriminate devastation and annihilation and long term adverse effects. Such weapons may be a bane or a boon or both but none has disavowed the ultimate objective of their elimination.

The DPRK is not the most alluring of places to visit. Nor does it seem to have a very effectual or palatable system of governance. It is, however, a sovereign member-State of the UN, with all the rights and responsibilities that appertain to a sovereign State. An awkward question thus becomes inescapable. If thousands or hundreds of nuclear warheads are indispensable for the legitimate security concerns of some States, how in all fairness can the possible possession of a handful of such weapons for the same reason by the DPRK be unacceptable? The nuclear non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), the mainstay of the global nuclear regime, is cited to buttress arguments against any nuclear programme of the DPRK. This may not be altogether tenable because the NPT contains a clear proviso, Art. X.I, by which a State-party may opt out after giving a notice of three months. The DPRK did give such an intimation, which was not specifically invoked or revoked, several years back, if I recall correctly.

Nuclear weapons -- as also other WMDs -- are abhorrent, it would seem, not so much for their inherent power of wanton slaughter and mayhem; rather it has more to do with who or which country possesses them. When the US had a monopoly on nuclear weaponry, the States of New York or California, non-producers of such weapons, felt more reassured than threatened by the fact that the States of Tennessee and New Mexico were producers. Neighbouring Canada or Britain did not perceive any sense of menace or unease either. Distant USSR, however, did. It may appear incredible today, indeed the imagination boggles, that at that time the US, under the Baruch Plan, actually proposed that this prodigious source of energy be harnessed for peaceful purposes for the benefit of all humankind and placed under some form of international control. The plan did not, of course, materialise due in large measure to the absence of mutual trust and confidence -- so essential for any such endeavour -- between the US and the then USSR.

Why should a country like the DPRK, impoverished and virtually isolated, desperately short of even basic necessities like food, go for the nuclear option? Nuclear weapons are expensive to produce and also to maintain. Three reasons suggest themselves: 1.

The DPRK intends to understudy Chengiz Khan and the Mongols of old. Most improbable. 2. It is deemed a security imperative, especially after Iraq. Not unlikely if they perceive the US and the UK as aggressive and irrational powers, determined to impose a conformity on States that are militarily vulnerable. 3. Such weapons would afford a leverage to be parlayed into economic benefits which the DPRK desperately needs. Quite possible.

It would be infinitely preferable, more cost effective and also predictable in its consequences -- one should think -- to meet the DPRK's real requirements through peaceful dialogue rather than to resort to what may be construed as minatory pressures. Security guarantees as well as an effective aid package are surely not beyond the resources, generosity and imagination of the powers that count. In the Cold War era, the US State Department's Sovietologists constituted an elite corps. The crème de la crème of this elite included George F. Kennan, who once wrote, "If we are to regard ourselves as a grown-up nation...then we must, as the Biblical phrase goes, put away childish things; and among these childish things the first to go, in my opinion, should be self-idealisation and the search for absolutes in world affairs: for absolute security, absolute amity, absolute harmony".

It has been some 25,000 years since humankind has left the habitat of the jungle. The time is certainly overdue also to shed the habits of the jungle. General of the Army George C. Marshall, as commonsensical, stout-hearted and honourable a soldier as any that ever wore the uniform, observed wryly in his biennial report as Chief of Army Staff in 1945: "If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known". Why should this be so when countless good men and women of all nations surely dream the same dreams of lasting peace and happiness? In large measure this paradox may be attributed to two reasons; a lack of mutual trust and confidence between and among nations, and perhaps also a want of earnest and unremitting effort for peace.

The sage of Baltimore, H.L Mencken, in one of his less acerbic pronouncements, once lucidly explained the nature of mutual trust and confidence at the individual and personal level: "It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth, when you know that you would lie, if you were in his place". This thesis, with some adaptation, could conceivably apply to interactions between States as well, because at the end of the day inter-state relations come down to interactions between individuals and peoples.

Hence, of course, the importance of confidence-building measures between States.

As regards effort, differences are so patent in a nation's approach to war and peace. In war, nations are prepared to "spend anything, sacrifice everything and to give all". To organise peace there is not the same sense of exigency and thus the tendency to make haste slowly. The talk is invariably of an initial step, cautious beginnings, a graduated process or step by step strategy. The result, often and predictably enough, is "an unending sequence of beginnings that do not begin". A true peace, as Einstein put it, cannot be kept by force; but can only be achieved by understanding. Woodrow Wilson sought a "peace without victory". The Prophet Isaiah of old foresaw a time when the "wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together".

It is unlikely that Isaiah's prophecy will come to pass tomorrow or in the near future. Over a hundred years ago though, Longfellow had concisely and in verse prescribed a course toward this end, a course that applies even more so today:

"Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals and forts".