Comparing Asia to either Africa or South America will reveal that religious, tribal, cultural, and ethnic differences may provoke conflicts in all three continents. Remote areas and colonial legacies may make boundaries uncertain and contentious. However, neither South America nor Africa faces the complications of the threat of a nuclear arms race that hangs over Asia.
Both South America and Africa are largely nuclear-free zones with no countries publicly possessing nuclear weapons and with only a few having any potential nuclear capacity. A number of Asian countries either have detonated nuclear test devices or are technologically sophisticated enough to be able to produce such weapons in a very short time.
Russia, China, India, and Pakistan have already detonated nuclear test devices. North Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Japan all fall into the class of nations with the wealth and technological capability to produce such devices in a relatively short time. Conflicts in Asia—unlike those in Africa or South America—have the potential to escalate into nuclear war. Further, Asia is one of the most complex areas in the world and one of the most likely areas for future conflicts and confrontations. Cultural, ethnic, religious, economic, and political differences and boundary disputes take on a whole new significance when the nuclear dimension is added.
India became a country capable of developing a nuclear device long before it first detonated one in 1998. Tensions with Pakistan and internal domestic pressures to show everyone how strong India was apparently led the country to become a public member of the nuclear club. In turn, Pakistan, fearing an Indian nuclear threat, prepared its own unofficial nuclear program. After the Indians detonated their device, the Pakistanis felt very threatened and announced they would test a nuclear device as well. The United States announced it was imposing economic sanctions on India and would do so on Pakistan. This threat could not overcome the tremendous domestic pressure the Pakistanis felt, and they continued with their tests. After the United States intervened in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, the need for allies in the region led it to drop sanctions against both Pakistan and India. However, the possibility of a nuclear war between the two South Asian nations continued to threaten the region and the world.
The North Korean decision to pursue an independent nuclear weapons program is a threat to both South Korea and Japan. The interest of the United States and other countries in maintaining peace and resisting nuclear proliferation further complicates Asian problems. The United States, fearful that an unstable regime with nuclear capability in North Korea might be a threat throughout the region, has become involved in this dispute. Even after North Korea, under the pressure of economic hardship, began to attempt to improve its relations with South Korea and Japan in the early years of the twenty-first century, many international observers still regarded it as an unpredictable and potentially dangerous nation. By the beginning of 2003, the danger that North Korea would develop nuclear weapons became a matter of serious international concern.
Richard L. Wilson Updated by the Editors
World History
