John Duncan

DPRK NUCLEAR TEST

The DPRK nuclear and missile tests have been widely condemned but also throw into sharp relief why we need to get the international Arms Control and Disarmament community back to work after a Decade of Deadlock.  Followers of the FCO and Reuters Blogs and Twitter will know the long and tortuous road we have been following to try and achieve this.

Procedural wrangling in the Conference on Disarmament and in the meetings of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty and reluctance to deal with the DPRK’s claim to have withdrawn from its treaty obligations means that the Security Council is the only international institution able to act on behalf of the world community.  

Both David Miliband in his speech last week and The Prime Minister in his Lancaster House speech in March underlined the need for broader coalitions, for a recognition of the importance of common purpose and common action in our shared global society.  Nuclear fallout as Chernobyl showed 23 years ago does not respect national boundaries. As Bloomberg reported this morning the economic effects of the DPRK test were felt almost immediately in the regions economies.

Meetings in New York and Geneva over the past two weeks give some grounds for hope that such broader coalitions are indeed emerging, but this weekend’s events serve as a reminder that a new  “Decade of Decisions” in this area of foreign policy is long overdue.

Posted at 21:15 25 May 2009 by John Duncan  |  Comments[1]