Defying the constant warning from the international community, including its ally China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), also called North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests and launched several long-range rockets including the latest Pukguksong-2[1] in violation of Security Council resolutions.[2] As a result, North Korea has faced severe economic sanctions.
The term, "Christ-Buddha path to Korean unity" refers to the need for the North Korean leadership to show the wisdom of Lord Buddha and for the South Korean side to exhibit the compassion of Jesus Christ. The window for a peaceful unification of an ancient country will close within four years, as by that time, the North Korean Leadership (NKL) would have succeeded in weaponising its nuclear devices and delivery systems sufficient to devastate both Japan and South Korea, a risk impossible to consider, much less accept.
North Korea has been a conundrum for both China and the U.S. With sophisticated missiles and nuclear weapons, Pyongyang is believed to be “on the verge of a strategic breakout – quantitatively (by ramping up its warhead numbers) and qualitatively (through mastery of warhead miniaturization and long-range ballistic missiles) – that directly threatens the U.S.
Many, who had sounded the death knell to Russia after the disintegration of the erstwhile Soviet Union in 1991, have been proved wrong. Some even thought it was the beginning of Russia’s ‘Monroe Doctrine’? However, with 12.5 percent of the landmass of the earth’s land surface as its sovereign territory, encompassing two continents bounded by two oceans and sharing its borders with over a dozen countries; it has little choice but to get involved in the rough and tumble of the world’s geopolitics.
Narendra Modi's 'Act East' through the Northeast is a bold move to situate the country's long-troubled far frontier region at the heart of the country's geo-economic outreach into South-east and East Asia, whose Tiger economies provide one of the best long-term option for India’s economic future.
The 1950–53 Korean War ended in a stalemate because the United States followed the same strategy of what may be termed “truncated objectives” that was in play during the 1990–91 campaign by mainly the US forces against the Iraqi armed forces led by Saddam Hussein. That campaign deliberately stopped short of occupying the country and removing the Baghdad-based dictator from power, exactly as the Korean War ended with Kim Il Sung still in power in Pyongyang.
Nuclear weapons have been shaping the conduct of power politics in South and Southern Asia particularly since Indian and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998. Pakistan-India-China is a unique triangle in the world where all these three nuclear weapon states share the geographical boundaries with each other. These states do have reasonable missile capabilities too. There are some variations amongst these states in regards to their nuclear weapons holdings however; every state is anticipated to have a minimum of around 100 weapons each.
China has gone around Asia, particularly, Southeast Asia telling countries to behave because they are smaller than China. Beijing however, is strangely more diffident when it comes to Pyongyang’s consistently cocking a snook at it and also complicating China’s regional security environment at the same time.
