Questions About North Korean Nuke; Sanctions Proposed

While there continues to be no confirmation of the composition of the North Korean explosion, the inside word is that the test could not have been a chemical weapon because nothing was seen to support that from satelites. But there is disagreement about the actual strength of the tested weapon. Estimates vary from as much as 15 kilotons from the Russians to less than a kiloton from unnamed US sources. The Chinese reported that they expected a 4 kiloton blast.
If so, the test may have been a partial success or failure. There is wide agreement that North Korean is a long way from have an weaponized system much less a delivery means.
New York Times

The North Korean test appears to have been a nuclear detonation but was fairly small by traditional standards, and possibly a failure or a partial success, federal and private analysts said yesterday. Throughout history, the first detonations of aspiring nuclear powers have tended to pack the destructive power of 10,000 to 60,000 tons — 10 to 60 kilotons — of conventional high explosives.


But the strength of the North Korean test appears to have been a small fraction of that: around a kiloton or less, according to scientists monitoring the global arrays of seismometers that detect faint trembles in the earth from distant blasts.


“It’s pretty remarkable that such a small explosion was promptly apparent on seismometers all over the world,” said Paul Richards, a seismologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y. “The detection of this was really good. You can’t hide these kinds of things, even very small tests.”


A senior Bush administration official said he had learned through Asian contacts that the North Koreans had expected the detonation to have a force of about four kilotons. Because classified information was involved and there was lingering uncertainty, he would not let his name be used.


Philip E. Coyle III, a former director of weapons testing at the Pentagon and former director of nuclear testing for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a weapons design center in California, said the small size of the test signaled the possibility of what might be described as a partial success or a partial failure. “As first tests go, this is smaller and less successful than those of the other nuclear powers,” he said. Perhaps the North Koreans wanted to keep it small, he added. “But if it turns out to be a kiloton or less,” Dr. Coyle said, “that would suggest that they hoped for more than that and didn’t get it.”


The United States Geological Survey said it had detected a tremor on the Korean Peninsula of 4.2 magnitude, which translates into an explosive force of roughly 1,000 tons. The agency listed 20 seismic stations as having initially picked up the blast’s shockwave, including nearby ones in China, Japan and South Korea as well as distant ones in Ukraine, Australia, Nevada and Wyoming.


The Russian defense minister, Sergei B. Ivanov, told the Itar-Tass news agency that the Russian government believed the strength of the blast to have been 5 to 15 kilotons. The basis for his claim was not immediately clear.


In Washington, intelligence officials said they were still in the early stages of evaluating the North Korean blast. But one said analysts had estimated its force at less than a kiloton. “We have assessed that the explosion in North Korea was a sub-kiloton explosion,” said the intelligence official, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing classified information.

With elections looming, Bush is talking tough in hopes of capturing the security vote. But the US is nearly impotent with regard to North Korea. They are already sanctioned by most means available. Bush talks about a virtual blockade of North Korean ports. It would seem to be a futiile effort given the option of importing everything through China. The real question is what will China and Russians do with this. My guess is very little.
New York Times

At an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, the United States pressed for international inspections of all cargo moving into and out of North Korea to detect weapons-related material, and a ban on all trading in military goods and services with the country.


At the White House, President Bush called the North Korean test “a threat to international peace and security” and condemned it as a “provocative act.”


But Russia and China, which have veto power and have consistently opposed tough sanctions, did not signal that they were ready to go along with the American proposal. Britain, France and Japan said they were also pressing for strong sanctions, which the Council is expected to debate in the coming days.
Coming just a month before the November elections, North Korea’s reported test on Monday morning had immediate political ramifications. Democrats were already using their campaigns to argue that the Iraq war had made the United States less secure by diverting attention away from threats like North Korea; now they are using the North’s claim to hammer away at their theme.