revistaieee7

Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies Núm. 7 / 2016
exists. 60 At the same time, the UN body has limited itself to proposing the potential
modification of the sanctions that have been imposed, as well as threatening to adopt
significant measures in the event of new nuclear testing or related launches, yet without
specifying what these measures would be.
The Security Council has thus not considered other intervention options against
this country, despite the fact that North Korea’s constant provocation constitutes a
clear threat to regional and international security that may lead to dire consequences,
such as full-blown war breaking out and the promotion of nuclear proliferation in the
region.
It is true that the United Nations unanimously condemns this state of affairs, yet
the geostrategic interests in this region of the five nuclear powers who are permanent
members of the Security Council limit any form of coordinated international action.
Moreover, the threat of veto among its permanent members –above all China– hampers
any initiative that contemplates armed intervention or any sanction that would
be more direct than those currently in force.
Furthermore, the North Korean withdrawal from the NPT sets a precedent that
obliges the Security Council to adopt measures as a result. The Vienna Convention
on the Law of the Treaties of 1969 safeguards states’ right of denunciation of treaties;
in this case with North Korea, either this is an unmotivated treaty denunciation or
it invokes reasons extrinsic to the treaty as laid down in the aforementioned Vienna
Convention in its Articles 60-62 and 64 (material breach of the treaty, impossibility
of performing a treaty, fundamental change of circumstances or conflict of the treaty
with a new peremptory norm of general international law). Nonetheless, this right to
withdraw from a treaty is subject to a number of rules, such as that of notification of
the withdrawal being made months in advance.
Moreover, the NPT itself affords its states parties the right to withdraw from the
treaty (Art. 10.1):
‘Each Party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw
from the Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of
this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country. It shall give notice of
such withdrawal to all other parties to the Treaty and to the United Nations Security
Council three months in advance. Such notice shall include a statement of the extraordinary
events it regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests’.
On 10 January 2003, North Korea announced that it was to withdraw from the
treaty in a public declaration meaning that its withdrawal was to be effective three
months later on 10 April of the same year. Nevertheless, this denunciation of a treaty
does not comply with the requirements laid down for this purpose and, as a result, it
provoked controversy. The arguments put forward by North Korea do not correspond
60 These negotiations include North Korea, the United States, South Korea, China, Russia and
Japan.
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