Deaglán de Bréadún assesses the implications of North Korea's nuclear weapons test
And then there were nine.
Reports that Pyongyang has carried out an underground nuclear weapons test indicate that North Korea is the latest entrant to the nuclear club. The totalitarian Asian state with its bizarre ideology and personality cult now joins the five "official" nuclear powers - Britain, China, France, Russia and the US - along with India, Israel and Pakistan, who are also known to possess nuclear weapons but have not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Indeed, Israel has yet to acknowledge possession of the bomb. Reports suggest that Iran is also on the road to becoming a nuclear power and, of course, the possibility that nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists is a constant nightmare.
The move by the North Koreans marks a dramatic escalation in tension, not just in Asia but internationally. It's a major worry for Japan and South Korea, but also constitutes a threat to the US and whoever else Pyongyang may regard as an enemy.
It's also a major setback for the Bush administration's foreign policy at a time when the US and its allies are embroiled in a seemingly hopeless and unwinnable war in Iraq and a deepening conflict in Afghanistan, not to mention the many challenges posed by the Arab-Israeli conflict.
On the face of it at least, this latest development suggests the hard-cop approach taken by the Bush administration has failed. During the last major crisis 13 years ago, North Korea declared it was withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in order to develop its nuclear weapons capacity. In response, the Clinton administration negotiated a deal - the so-called "Agreed Framework" - whereby Pyongyang received vital supplies of fuel oil in return for putting its nuclear ambitions largely on hold.
This arrangement was effectively binned by the Bush administration which argued that Pyongyang was welshing on the deal by exploring ways of developing a uranium-based bomb rather than the plutonium model explicitly covered by the Agreed Framework.
But if it's a failure for the Bush administration, it could also be seen as an act of desperation by the Pyongyang regime. North Korea is a closed society and reliable information about its internal life is hard to obtain.
But there are convincing reports of widespread and severe food shortages, leading to famine and, apparently, millions of deaths in rural areas. Meanwhile, economic sanctions have exacerbated the difficulties of the regime and Amnesty International lists North Korea as one of the world's chief human rights offenders.
Although the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as it is officially known, has an army estimated at 1.1 million, out of a total population of 23 million, its soldiers are poorly equipped. The size of its armed forces - the DPRK has the fifth-largest army in the world - reflects the insecurity of its leadership.
Arguably, Washington has only itself to blame for Pyongyang's nagging desire to develop nuclear weapons. During the Korean War (1950-53), the US threatened several times to drop the bomb on the North Koreans. The US maintained nuclear weapons in South Korea until 1991 and there are still 29,000 American soldiers stationed there.
Fear of a US nuclear attack both during and after the Korean War may have motivated former North Korean leader Kim Il-sung (1912-1994) to launch his own nuclear weapons programme which has, by all accounts, been continued by his son Kim Jong-il. In the second half of the 1990s, scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, known as the "father" of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, reportedly supplied uranium enrichment equipment and perhaps even warhead designs to North Korea. In 2003, Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker magazine reported US intelligence claims that Khan had visited Pyongyang at least 13 times, the last in June 2002.
The sense of insecurity and even paranoia on the part of the North Koreans was not assuaged when President Bush included them in the "Axis of Evil" along with Iran and Iraq and Condoleezza Rice denounced the DPRK as "an outpost of tyranny". On January 10th, 2003, Pyongyang announced that it would withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty; it is the only country ever to do so.
A series of six-party talks was initiated after the treaty withdrawal, with China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the US seeking to agree a peaceful resolution of the difficulties with North Korea, but little progress was made.
The centre of North Korea's nuclear programme is at Yongbyon, some 60 miles north of Pyongyang and a "reasonable" estimate of the number of assembled North Korean nuclear weapons is up to 10. Potentially, these might be capable of hitting Alaska, parts of Hawaii and perhaps even all of North America.
North Korea also reportedly maintains aircraft with the capacity to strike Seoul within 10 or 20 minutes and possesses bombers and fighter aircraft that had nuclear strike functions in the Soviet Air Force.
A United Nations Security Council resolution adopted in July imposed limited sanctions and demanded that North Korea suspend its ballistic missile programme.
The resolution forbade all member states to sell material or technology for missiles or weapons of mass destruction to North Korea.
Ireland was one of the original authors of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and, like most other countries, has greeted the latest development with dismay.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern yesterday condemned Pyongyang's nuclear test as "a threat to regional security and in direct contravention of the objectives of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation" and he called on the DPRK "to refrain from further dangerous acts and to return immediately and without preconditions to the six-party talks".
Labour's Michael D Higgins said the test was "a deeply distressing act that undermines security in Asia and is provocatively in clear defiance of the United Nations".
North Korea, with its official ideology of Juche (self-reliance), is one of the last existing states to be run along traditional Stalinist lines.
As such, it is a historical anomaly. Even China and Vietnam have opted for a capitalist economy under one-party rule.
How long the ultra-defensive approach adopted by Kim Jong-il and his associates will preserve their anachronistic outpost from destruction is uncertain but the international community must ensure that he does not bring the rest of us down with him.
• Deaglán de Bréadún is Foreign Affairs Correspondent of The Irish Times