The headline ‘Defying World, North Korea’s Isolated Dictator blasts into Nuclear Club’ (IE, October 10) encapsulated a stark reality: despite all its pretensions and posturing, humankind is only a whisker away from total annihilation.

In the second week of August 1945, the dangers of a nuclear war were flashed on the conscience of the world with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Arthur Koestler was press correspondent in Palestine when he read the news. His first comment was: “This is the end of the World War”. His second comment was: “It is also the beginning of the end of the world.” Last Monday’s nuclear blast in North Korea is the second milestone in that beginning. By an act of supreme impudence North Korea has shown that nuclear scientific intelligence is not a closed shop — confined to the Great Nuclear Powers. The only way to stop non-proliferation is not by sanctions or reprisal alone, but by stopping the arms race.

The build-up of nuclear arsenals is professedly in the interest of national security. But national security beyond a point is a will-o’-the-wisp: it always has been so. The illusion of absolute national security was one of the principal causes of the Second World War, to prevent the recurrence of which the United Nations was founded. After more than 55 years, the illusion remains despite the warnings of contemporary historians. One of them, Sir Herbert Butterfield, wrote: “This universe was always unsafe and those who demand a water-tight security are always a danger in any period of history. I wonder if it could not be formulated as a law that no state can ever achieve the security it desires without so tipping the balance that it becomes a menace to its neighbours.”

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