Feisty Aphrodite Archives
U.N. smacks sanctions on North Korea
On Saturday the United Nations voted unanimously to impose sanctions on North Korea as a reaction to its claims of conducting an underground nuclear weapons test on October 9th. North Korea carried out the test to honor its threat to do so in the face of growing U.S. hostilities from previous weeks. Despite offers for the two countries to hold talks as stated by North Korea's U.N. envoy Choe Hu-Son, the U.S. has made very little efforts in bringing themselves to the table for peaceful negotiations. The U.N. passed the resolution that will not only require that North Korea eliminate all of its nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, but also forbids any other country to provide military support, whether through financial assistance or selling them arms. The sanctions also ban any luxury goods to be exported from the country, and calls on the allowance of other nations to inspect cargo moving to and from North Korea. The latter of the resolution was accepted despite hesitance from Russia and China due to concerns of naval confrontations, but they both agreed to the sanctions only after the U.S. removed its threat of imminent military action.
The BBC has put together an extensive map of global nuclear powers from the past, present, and possible future.
Every country who has sought out nuclear capabilities at some point in their history is marked, and you can click on each country to learn about its specific program. According to the map, the U.S. has the leading number of nuclear weapons by a 2:1 margin over its closest competitors. Israel is listed as possessing at least an estimated 200 nuclear weapons despite never admitting or denying its participation in the nuclear arms race. Russia has the second highest number of nuclear weapons behind the U.S., while very interestingly enough, Iraq is listed as never developing a single nuclear weapon. The U.S. remains to be the only country in the world to ever launch a nuclear weapon against another country; in 1945 it dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese civilian cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, wiping out 140,000 Japanese instantly and killing at least another 100,000 people from radiation poisoning afterwards.
