Implementing a Korea–Japan Nuclear‐Weapon‐Free Zone: Precedents, Legal Forms, Governance, Scope, Domain, Verification, Compliance and Regional Benefits
To assess the possibility of a future denuclearized Korean peninsula it is important to consider not only US and allied security interests, but also North Korean underlying security concerns. However, beyond the North–South conflict on the Korean peninsula, there is also a longer-term problem of Korean–Japanese relations. Both Japan and South Korea have the capacity to rapidly develop and acquire nuclear weapons. North Korean nuclear acquisition could well provide the rationale for either or both to acquire nuclear weapons. In the Northeast Asian region there is already a lengthy history of denuclearization proposals and even agreements. While the focus of previous proposals had concentrated on the Korean peninsula itself, an alternative way forward would be the initial establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ) between Japan and South Korea, with North Korea encouraged to join at a later date. The negotiation of a Korea–Japan NWFZ would serve to confirm and guarantee the current non-nuclear-weapon status of South Korea and Japan, while acting as an important confidence-building step to address North Korea's underlying security concerns and enable it to subsequently join the NWFZ. Internationally, the commitment of the US Obama administration to a reduced reliance on nuclear weapons, the recent unanimous final document of the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference calling for expansion of NWFZs, and the greater openness of the USA and other nuclear powers to NWFZ establishment in areas of regional conflict, suggest that we now have a new window of opportunity for denuclearization of Northeast Asia.
Something Old, Something New: The 2006 Semipalatinsk Treaty on a Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia
The present article analyses the provisions of the 2006 Semipalatinsk Treaty establishing a nuclear weapon-free zone in Central Asia, explores their different nature and compares them with those contained in the Treaties of Tlatelolco, Rarotonga, Bangkok and Pelindaba. The fundamental question to be answered is whether the Semipalatinsk Treaty will effectively contribute to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. The article concludes that the treaty contains lights and shadows: although some positive innovations have been included in the final text, there are loopholes that might weaken the denuclearization regime. The "Great Game" in Central Asia and the tight relations of the regional States with the Russian Federation might also hamper the efforts to obtain the support of the other nuclear powers.
The World and ‘I’
‘What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world!’ 109 ‘What brings the self into philosophy is the fact that “the world is my world.”’ 110 So wrote Wittgenstein in his Notebooks and the Tractatus , respectively.