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BY JED JALECO DEL ROSARIO
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Sunday, November 5, 2017
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IMAGINE, if you will, a fictional neighborhood where only one or two families own guns. Those families that do own weapons donât bother the rest of the neighborhood, and so for a long while, it wasnât really an important issue.
Now, enter a new, unhinged family, and unlike the other gun-owning families, they like to fire their guns all the time. When people tell them to stop, they threaten to shoot them. The neighborhoodâs other gun owners try to talk to the unhinged family about their behavior but they refuse to listen and say that they can use their guns however they like.
Seeing how talk and diplomacy have failed, the remaining unarmed, non-gun owning families decide that maybe itâs time for them to buy their own guns⌠You know, for self-defense.  Because even though the unhinged family hasnât harmed anyone yet, thereâs a very good chance that they might do so in the future.
Iâve talked about the real threat of North Korea before, but it is worth revisiting.
The greatest threat posed by North Korea is not its nuclear weapons capabilities (although thatâs certainly dangerous), but what it inspires other countries to do, and that is to get their own nukes.
According to a recent New York Times article, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Myanmar, Taiwan, and Vietnam are thinking about getting some nukes of their own, and I believe Malaysia and Indonesia as well. These countries have thought about getting nukes before, but North Korea offers them both the perfect excuse as well as the ideal incentive to do so.
Japan and South Korea have the technology and the resources to build their own stockpile in a relatively short amount of time. So can Taiwan, and some of the wealthier and more developed Southeast Asian countries, and if our neighbors get nukes then the Philippines will need them sooner or later.
Weaponized nuclear technology is very old. Iâm no expert but from what Iâve learned itâs relatively easy to produce. The only limitations are delivery systems, and even thatâs not a problem with a little money and some black market connections.
As North Korea continues to rattle its saber, more and more countries are thinking about getting their own nukes, and if they get nukes then many others will follow until everybody has them. Such a situation will change the geopolitical dimensions of the world forever, and world politics will become even more dangerous.
This trend may sadden or more likely scare some people, but weapons proliferation is as old as humanity. âThe strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,â as the saying goes, and thatâs a fact of man and nature. When your neighbors have a nuke then your country will need nukes as well, because wars are a constant phenomenon, and you donât want your country to have its pants down in the event that it is attacked.
This is a lesson that the modern world has forgotten after decades of relative peace and economic growth: âYou donât want to be the only house without a gun in a neighborhood of gun owners.â (jdr456@gmail.com/PN)
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