Nuclear North Korea

"Seldom before has there been such consensus among North Korea's Asian-Pacific neighbors and Pyongyang's strategic rivals: This state represents a massive threat to regional stability," wrote the Süddeutsche Zeitung from Munich on Tuesday. "Japan perceives itself to be in the greatest military danger, and as a result Tokyo will rethink its approach to national security. One possible consequence is the development of nuclear weapons throughout the entire region. That can only be prevented if the United States concentrates its arsenal of deterrence on the Pacific and offers both South Korea and Japan explicit assurances of its support in case of a nuclear conflict."

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also focused on the US' possible response to the crisis. "China and above all the United States have it in their power to bring Pyongyang back to the bargaining table," the paper wrote. "The North Korean regime has often let it be known via its news service KCNA that it is primarily interested in direct negotiations with Washington. But the prospects are now worse than they were in 1994. North Korea has proclaimed itself to be a nuclear power, and it's going to take some true initiative to keep Pyongyang, where the regime likely sees this as a struggle for survival, from engaging in further escalations."

"Only a harsh reaction, which will unfortunately also affect North Korea's already suffering population will send the necessary signals to other nuclear aspirants and prevent the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty from collapsing entirely," wrote Berlin's daily Der Tagesspiegel on Tuesday. "But severity alone won't convince North Korea's dictator to change his mind. The international community and the Bush government, which has been indecisive on this issue, will have to offer rewards in return for a verifiable abandonment of the nuclear option.

And the Hamburger Abendblatt commented in its Tuesday edition: "Strongly worded declarations and even threats of sanctions won't deter a country like North Korea, which is already largely isolated as the poorhouse of Southeast Asia. Conversely, offers of rewards, in which North Korea has nothing to lose and everything to gain, presuppose that ruling elites are capable of a certain degree of rationalism. What remains is the unsettling prospect that North Korea's 'Dr. Strangelove' now only lacks mid-range missiles. A danger is growing, whose implications for world peace cannot at present be predicted: that there will be a ratcheting up of the arms race in Southeast Asia."