America, China need to act fast to contain N Korea

North Korea has been routinely pushing the world community around for years by blatantly launching missiles and conducting nuclear tests. Nothing has deterred its resolve to emerge stronger in terms of nuclear capabilities. Despite a ban by the UN and sanctions galore, the hermit kingdom has successfully test fired five nuclear bombs in the last decade. More than 20 ballistic missiles have been launched in little over a year, including one from a submarine. We do not know whether it has really ‘miniaturised’ its nuclear bombs, as it claims, and has the capability to fit them into a missile and destroy target nations. But what we do know is that the dangers are grave and very real. Pyongyang’s nuclear rise needs to be contained, and China has a crucial role to play in this game of persuasion and power. Even though the communist nation (China) backed sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council in 2006, when North Korea first tested a nuclear weapon, Beijing continued to offer an economic lifeline to its neighbour. China is North Korea’s most important ally, its biggest trade partner and main source of arms, energy and food. It sustains Pyongyang in multiple ways, and hasn’t shifted its policies in the last few years. China has its own share of regional insecurities. It uses North Korea to maintain a geographic buffer against South Korea, which is backed by the US.

However, North Korea’s brinkmanship is a “big, big problem” — one that poses grave dangers to regional security and beyond. How can the world trust a regime that purges its own people for the fear of dissent, and uses chemical weapons to silence detractors? How can it be trusted when intelligence on the country is so inadequate that the world doesn’t even know whether it has an atom- or hydrogen bomb (more dangerous of the two)? Installing THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence), an anti-ballistic missile system in South Korea might not deter the North. The US and the world at large need to impose harsher sanctions and isolate Kim Yong-un’s regime. It is important to denuclearise the country, and the US and China need to be together on this.