revistaieee7

Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies Núm. 7 / 2016
The government of Pyongyang opted for the first time to utilise a nuclear weapon as
an instrument for blackmail, by boasting that it possessed this weapon, voluntarily
placing itself in an unlawful position with respect to its commitments to international
organisations and demanding trade-offs in exchange for respecting international treaties
in the area of armaments control.
In February 2005, North Korea announced that it possessed nuclear weapons, and
in July of the same year it carried out tests with various missiles: in 2006 and 2009
respectively it undertook subterranean nuclear tests. North Korea therefore recognised
that it was a state that possessed nuclear armaments and it thus became a de facto ‘nuclear
power’. 52
Yet, in spite of the clear threat posed by the North Korean nuclear programme to
international peace and security, and despite it having breached the provisions of the
NPT with the covert development of its military nuclear programme over the period
in which it was a state party to this treaty (between 1985 and 2003) according to
the IAEA reports, the Security Council has been, in our view, less active in this case
than with Iraq. To put it another way, the Security Council has not been as diligent
as it should have been, despite the repeated reports submitted by the IAEA Board of
Governors to the Security Council from 1993 onwards, according to which the government
in Pyongyang had violated its Safeguards Agreement.
It was in 2006 onwards that the Security Council adopted the first measures against
North Korea via its Resolution 1695 (2006), on ballistic missile proliferation. 53 This resolution
was not based on Article 41 of the Charter of the United Nations –relating
to enforcement measures not involving the use of armed force–, but the Security
Council instead restricted itself then to calling on member states to exercise maximum
vigilance and to prevent the transfer of missiles and weapons of mass destruction technology
to North Korea.
Later on, on 14 October of the same year, and following the nuclear test announced
by North Korea on 9 October 2006, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1718
(2006) by virtue of Chapter VII of the Charter –and in particular in accordance with
Article 41 thereof- 54 in which it condemned this nuclear test –which it considered to
be a clear threat to international peace and security-, and called on North Korea to
refrain from undertaking further tests, to suspend its ballistic missile programme and
52 CANOVAS SÁNCHEZ, Bartolomé. Pyongyang crisis permanente, Madrid: Spanish Institute
for Strategic Studies, Opinion Paper 24/2013, March 2013, pp. 5-13.
53 Resolution 1695 (2006) of the Security Council, of 15 July 2006. See the letter of 4 July 2006
addressed to the President of the Security Council from the Permanent Representative of Japan to the
United Nations (document S/2006/481).
54 Resolution 1718 (2006) of the Security Council, of 14 October 2006, in which it sanctions North
Korea after it undertook a nuclear test.
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