Leader
Chairman Khan Kim Jong-il:
Hans Blix: Kim Jong-il: Hans Blix:
Kim Jong-il: Hans Blix:
Hans Blix? Oh, no!
Let me look around, so I can ease the UN's collective mind.
Hans, you're breaking my balls here, Hans. You're breaking my balls!
I'm sorry, but the UN must be firm with you. Let me see your whole palace, or else...
Or else what?
Or else we will be very, very angry with you. And we will write you a letter, telling you how angry we are.
Team America If the New York Times1
keen to bring it up3 is to be believed, the DPRK is not
just helping the Syrians with nuclear plants. The assassination of Kim Jong-nam was one admission of North Korea’s chemical weapons, the forthcoming UN report will seemingly be another one. Between 2012 and 2017 at least 40 shipments from North Korea carried components for weapons of mass destruction to Syria, to enable it to kill its own civilians and threaten others in the region. Prior to Kim Jong-un, AQ Khan was the world’s most
prolific disseminator of WMD. Despite various lessons learned and investigations2
into how he did it, the world
would appear to lack a methodology for dealing with proliferators. Despite blowing hard the Trump administration appears powerless against both the use of chemical weapons in Syria and the proof of proliferation by the Kim regime. It would be optimistic in the extreme to believe that
the weapons, precursors, technology and expertise that DPRK is providing to Syria is the limit of the country’s proliferation. Previously, coal was considered to be its largest export, at some point in the future I think it will become clear that WMD was. The matter of North Korea is today’s equivalent of the
Schleswig Holstein question in the 19th century, of which the then British prime minister, Lord Palmerston said: “only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, who is dead. The second was a German professor who became mad. I am the third and I have forgotten all about it.” That particular conundrum had been about two
European duchies and whether they belonged to the Danes or the Germans. Now it is about the growing relationship between countries that possess WMD and those that want
/2012749789382198030766.pdf 3
to. Despite the urgent need for a solution to the North Korean problem it seems as far away as ever. The elephant in the room is Syria’s biological weapons.
When I interviewed Ake Sellstrom in February 2014, I asked him about them and his response was: “It is not politically possible. There are some talks coming up in Geneva and people are so happy that they don’t want a breach in the process. People are so happy that there has been some kind of progress and that the US and Russian governments are working together.” How quickly some things change, but also how little. Despite the rapprochement between Russia and America collapsing over foreign policy, there is still little interest in talking about whatever Assad’s bio institutes are working on. While there have been some individuals who have been , in reality there has been no serious
attempt to deal with his chemical weapons, let alone his biological armoury. With suspected collusion between Russia and DPRK over the various shipments to Syria, the question has to be asked: what elements of a bio programme have gone the same way? Zilinskas and Mauger’s new book, Biosecurity in Putin’s Russia, goes into some depth on the likely improvements in Russia’s BW programme. The question is, how much of that has moved from the Moskva to the Barada? Lost in the debate over how many red lines Syria has
crossed and what this means for the Chemical Weapon Convention, is the fact that non-proliferation in general is being flouted. It seems that not only can AQ Khan get away with it, but so can any state that wants to. It is hard to find yourself doing anything other than admiring the problem. Arms control requires both a national dedication to getting rid of CBW and an international one as well, both are lacking in the Middle and Far East. By the time you read this the 87th session of the
technical secretariat of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will have begun (or, depending on the speed of your postal service, ended), and it is unlikely that there will be anything other than a strong statement on Syria. Far from the 21st century being the end of CBRN weapons it promises to be as bad as the last.
1
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/world/asia/north-
korea-syria-chemical-weapons-sanctions.html 2
https://www.iaea.org/safeguards/symposium/ 2010/Documents/PapersRepository
http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/syrias-real- threat-biological-weapons-9093
www.cbrneworld.com CBRNe Convergence, Orlando, USA, 6-8 November 2018
www.cbrneworld.com/convergence2018
February 2018 CBRNe WORLD
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