Just a few days ago in a show of military might, North Korea fired five ballistic missiles into the sea a day after President Biden visited Asia. And this weekend in joint exercise with the United States, South Korea fired eight ballistic missiles into the sea to answer the North Koreans.
The same North Korea has now taken over the United Nations' nuclear disarmament forum. That's right. North Korea has assumed the presidency of the UN's Conference on Disarmament.
The Conference on Disarmament is held three times per year at the UN headquarters in Geneva. Leadership runs on a cycle, changing hands every time they meet, and this isn't the first time they've put a controversial nation in charge. Back in 2013, Iran led the conference.
Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based nongovernmental watchdog agency, said in a statement,
Having the North Korean regime of Kim Jong Un preside over global nuclear weapons disarmament will be like putting a serial rapist in charge of a women's shelter.
To be fair, The Conference on Disarmament has only ever accomplished two things in its 50-year existence: the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1970) and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (1996). The essential premise of the treaties being that signees agree to not seek/and/or test nuclear weapons ever.
North Korea signed the treaties in 1985, but backed out in 2003 when they successfully tested a nuclear weapon.
It only makes sense to put the nation actively seeking to proliferate and maybe even one day use nuclear weapons in charge of The Disarmament Conference!
Even the Biden administration, which normally seems to thrive on incongruent and mostly disastrous positions, responded with guarded disapproval. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said,
It certainly does call [the UN's efficacy] into question when you have a regime like the DPRK in a senior leadership post, a regime that has done as much as any other government around the world to erode the non-proliferation norm.
North Korea's ambassador at the United Nations and current Chair of The Conference on Disarmament, Han Tae Song, said that he noted the criticism and reiterated his nation's need for self defense and militarism until the rest of the world disarms.
Here's to the clowns at the UN!
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