Global Outlook

As one expert put it, progress on North Korea will only come once we look at things from its point of view.

At the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2022, the leaders of the small island – or ‘big ocean’ – countries in the Pacific called for a re-focus on the global climate emergency. Using their moral authority, which is grounded in the fact that their countries are the ones most affected by this emergency while contributing hardly anything to its causes, Pacific leaders demanded more decisive climate action and put forward new proposals and initiatives.

In the shadow of the Ukraine war and the extraordinary media attention, the conflict over North Korea's nuclear ambitions is currently receding into the background. For years, the government in Pyongyang has been continuously advancing its program. After numerous missile tests earlier this year, according to the English-language state news agency KCNA, the Supreme People's Assembly passed a law on September 8, "On Policy of the Nuclear Force of DPRK".

As the world marks the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks this weekend, two other events should be remembered. Afghan commander Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated on 9 September 2001 by al-Qaeda agents, two days before the attacks on New York and Washington. Massoud had fought Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s and the Taliban and al-Qaeda alliance in the following decade. The other event in this bleak trio is the Taliban’s reassumption of power in the wake of the US and allied retreat from Afghanistan a year ago. Together they explain the mess that is Afghanistan today.

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (1931–2022) was revered abroad for having ended the Cold War without a shot fired as Warsaw Pact countries regained independence, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down and Germany was reunified in 1989–90. Soviet forces left Afghanistan. He reversed the arms race and dismantled tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.

The Japanese government is calling to prevent nuclear proliferation and reduce nuclear arsenals while maintaining its current nuclear deterrence, while civil society and the Nagasaki municipal government are advocating the ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the establishment of a nuclear-weapons-free zone in Northeast Asia on the grounds that eliminating nuclear weapons is the only way forward. Those represent two conflicting attitudes toward the nuclear issue in Japan today.