CINA

The exclusive club of nuclear powers has a new member: North Korea. With his nuclear test, dictator Kim Jong Il has sent a strong message to the international community. American and Chinese efforts to contain his isolated regime have failed.

Early Monday morning in a mine, the North Korean army tested a nuclear warhead with the strength of 550 tons of TNT. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and his generals are sure they have now added the decisive instrument of power to its arsenal. The logic of the regime in Pyongyang? Only the bomb can protect the country from the Americans, who have never before in history attacked a nuclear power.

Kim Jong Il's regime is using this show of strength to force the Americans to the negotiating table. The goal is a peace treaty, followed by the withdrawal of US-troops from the Korean peninsula and a generous economic aid package for the starving rogue state.

China, North Korea's closest ally, seems to have been informed just prior to the detonation. Some 350 members of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee are currently in the capital Beijing for a meeting designed to pave the way for the next party convention. The leadership in Beijing responded immediately to the alarming announcement.

China objected to the test in unusually harsh terms, calling it a "brazen" act of defiance. North Korea has disregarded the international community by undertaking the nuclear test, Beijing said, further warning its neighbor to abstain from any "activities that could worsen the situation." That the paranoid and secretive regime in Pyongyang has acquired the bomb is highly troubling to China. A nuclear-armed North Korea upsets the balance of power in East Asia and beyond.

China is now surrounded by nuclear powers to the west (India and Pakistan) and to the east (North Korea). The Japanese are also expected to become more vocal in their demand for a nuclear arsenal. In fact, the newly-elected Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced on Monday that his country plans to expand its military capacity in cooperation with the United States.

The relationship between the comrades in Beijing and Pyongyang, who in a 1961 treaty swore to each other eternal loyalty, has long since cooled off. Kim Jong Il provoked the Chinese in the fall of 2005 when he decided to boycott the six party talks, which China had organized. The talks were to involve China, North and South Korea, the United States, Russia and Japan.

China has summoned Kim back to the negotiating table, but it is questionable whether the six-party talks even make sense any more. The talks were originally designed to dissuade North Korea's leadership from pursuing its nuclear ambitions. With the bomb in hand, North Korea's military would hardly allow it to be negotiated back out of its arsenal.

Admittedly, testing a nuclear warhead is not the same as mounting it onto a missile and launching it over the ocean. The North Koreans still appear to be far from that capability.

China loses face, America has failed

But politically, the Chinese have lost face. All diplomatic, financial and rhetorical attempts to dissuade North Korean from pursuing its nuclear ambitions have utterly failed.

The Americans, too, stand before the ruins of their failed strategy. They have rejected direct talks with Kim because they don't trust him. The six party talks were supposed to help integrate North Korea into the international community, alas to no avail. As a result, Washington's rhetoric is becoming more bellicose: "The United States condemns this provocative act," US President George Bush said on Monday. "The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States and we would hold North Korea fully accountable for consequences of such action."

Despite the harsh reprisals, one cannot help but wonder what trump card the Americans still have up their sleeve that could bring Pyongyang to reason. Perhaps North Korea's nuclear armament could have been avoided had Washington engaged in direct talks with Kim Jong Il's people, thereby granting them the international recognition they crave.

The international community will most likely react to North Korea's provocation with economic sanctions. It is unlikely that this will help: China will only participate in the sanctions for a little while, if at all, only to then continue its support of North Korea.

Beijing is simply not interested in toppling Kim's regime. Especially not when it is sitting on an atomic bomb.