Delusions of order

Marginal states like North Korea can turn desperation into power and make the powerful look utterly desperate. We need to rethink power in the 21st century

The fragility of the world order is often revealed at its margins. North Korea8217;s test of a nuclear device is a profound historical moment. It encapsulates the way in which the unfinished history of the 20th century has transformed into a new challenge for the 21st. It represents the failure of every single approach to world politics perfected in the last century.

On the face of it, the world has limited options. Military action seems politically difficult and will risk a huge human catastrophe, since Kim Jong ll can put his own population at risk or unleash refugees on the rest of the world. The possibilities of Chinese pressure precipitating a regime change remain open, but whether or how this will be effected remains unclear. Sanctions could consolidate the regime or make it worse. But the most likely silver lining is that North Korea has played its trump card and may now be open for negotiation. It would be a pity, however, if this occasion were not used to reflect on how multiple historical trajectories produced this crisis.

The Cold War may have ended with a victory for the idea of the West but in most frontline states, whether Afghanistan or the Korean peninsula, the result was more an unresolved nightmare than a clear path to progress. The inability of the great powers to sort out these margins have produced two axes of conflict that will be central to contemporary security concerns. If Afghanistan became a haven for terrorism, North Korea has acquired weapons of mass destruction. And balance of power8217; has led every great power in the world to mollycoddle patently bad and irrational regimes.

While the Chinese condemnation has been swift, the truth is that it propped up North Korea and awoke to its dangers too late. But how familiar is this story from the 20th century, whether it is the Americans with Saddam or the Chinese with Kim 8212; dictators supported to keep open a pressure point? Often the urgent need to shore up an enemy of an enemy does not produce stability, it empowers potential rogue states. How many dictators in the 20th century have run circles around their great power benefactors? Some of the most dangerous politics have emanated from boundaries and regimes artificially carved up either in decolonisation or by great powers sharing spoils.

But most importantly North Korea8217;s tests are a reflection on the illusory character of power in the international system. Here is a small impoverished country, with a desperate leadership, thumbing its nose at the US, and the world. North Korea has done what so many small groups and countries managed to do in the 20th century. Afghanistan with the Soviets, the insurgents in Iraq and now North Korea have drawn upon an underestimated resource.

The world will need a radically different approach to power in the 21st century. The efforts of all powers, their arms build-ups and choreographed shows of power, are designed to match strength for strength, weapon for weapon, power for power. Yet the truth is that the insurgent and the marginal have the capacity to produce more instability than the conventional jostling for great power status. But all power has operated with the illusion that to possess power means the ability to control. This may be true in some measure, but the way in which the objectives of great powers slip out of their grasp should give us pause. The real challenge may not be great power politics; it will be preventing the creation of small nations or groups desperate enough to try anything.

The US will have to ask how its crusade against the 8220;axis of evil8221; has produced more insecurity on a large scale. Many countries in the world have concluded, not without justification, that the only bulwark against the insecurities the exercise of US power produces are weapons of mass destruction. The response to this view cannot be an application of more power; it has to be a creating of a framework that does not breed insecurity in the first place. China needs to pick between one of two approaches to international relations. Either it can say: we will play the power game indiscriminately. We will support whoever is willing to side with us, supply arms to whoever buys them, and not bat an eyelid in securing nuclear cooperation. Or it can learn from the mistakes of the US and focus more insistently on the pacification of violence and prevent the means to inflict it from spreading.

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India8217;s worry is whether this will strengthen the non-proliferation lobby8217;s opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal. There is gloating that the spotlight might turn on Pakistan8217;s assistance to N. Korea. We should not hold our breath that the US will deviate from its self delusion. We should be more concerned that China will in the wake of the Indo-US deal offer extensive nuclear cooperation to Pakistan.

For us, the question is the same as that facing China. Do we want to be the kind of power that is happy to grab power wherever it can get it? We are not North Korea or Iran or Pakistan. Our record on proliferation is exemplary. But we will have to admit the real issue is not proliferation of nuclear weapons, it is their legitimacy as a currency of power, a legitimacy to which we subscribe. The world may not be prepared for delegitimising nuclear weapons, but then its condemnations of North Korea are only crocodile tears.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi