NORTH ASIA is the place where the term "ground zero" was born. It described the smoking ruins of the Japanese city of Hiroshima after a US Air Force plane dropped the first atomic bomb, killing 200,000 people. The mayor of Nagasaki, a city similarly incinerated three days later, called the attacks "a preview of the Apocalypse".
For 50 years, the nuclear horror experienced in 1945 held the world hostage as the US and the Soviet Union eyeballed each other, threatening mutually assured destruction with arsenals of ever increasing power. With the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991, and end of the Cold War, the world dared to dream of a future free from the threat of Armageddon.
In the hills of North Korea this week, the spectre of man-made oblivion raised its head once again. A rudimentary underground nuclear explosion - modest by today's standards, a few kilotons at best - killed off more than a decade of difficult negotiations aimed at preventing such an outcome.
For most of the Cold War, North Korea's "legendary hero for all ages", the late Kim Il-sung, was content to shelter under Moscow's nuclear umbrella, just as the South enjoys security guarantees from the US. But as the Soviet Union staggered towards collapse, pressure on the North Koreans to look after their own security grew. By the late 1980s they are believed to have built a crude atomic device, a version of which was tested this week.
In the turbulent history of North Korea's recent relations with the West, the enemy is always mad. This week John Howard called the regime "seriously crazy".
In May 1998, Howard used similar language to describe India and Pakistan, after they tested nuclear weapons but has since eaten his words. Then, as now, Canberra made a lot of noise, cutting non-humanitarian aid and defence ties. All such measures have been rescinded. They were all for show and achieved nothing.
This year, following Washington's lead, Howard has begun preparing the ground for the sale of Australian uranium to India, even though New Delhi has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, nor reduced its nuclear arsenal. What's changed? Nothing except Canberra's policy.
Like North Korea, India is working on missiles that could, theoretically, reach Australia. If anything, India's missiles are more likely to make the distance. Of course, India is a democracy and its thriving economy a magnet for global corporations.
But what about Pakistan, our nuclear-armed "ally" in the war on terrorism? It was Pakistan's chief scientist, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, who stole nuclear secrets from European countries to make his country's "Islamic" bomb, then passed on the technology to North Korea. It's difficult to imagine a North Korean or Iraqi scientist doing that and still being a free man - as Khan is - with barely a whisper of Western protest.
Khan worked safe in the knowledge that the US would not call him to account because Pakistan was helping its covert war to oust Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Today, the same logic buys Pakistan immunity from pressure over its nuclear program and ambiguous relationship with various Islamic militant groups.
Turning a blind eye to proliferators just because it suits some regional power play may be useful in the short term, but it has proven to be a disaster for global security. The Bush Administration's well-known loathing for multilateral institutions, particularly the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency, hasn't helped. The Bush Administration has no intention of asking Congress to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, but you won't hear a peep about that from Australia.
Such double-dealing is difficult to justify to a sceptical and increasingly well-informed world. When India's high commissioner, Gopalapuram Parthasarathy, was called in for a dressing down by the Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, after India's 1998 tests, he pointed out that Australia enjoyed the protection of the US nuclear deterrent but that India was on its own.
Iran could make the same argument, but no one in Canberra or Washington is listening. Could it be that there is more than one rogue state behind this week's nuclear debacle?
In the past decade the urgency that once drove nuclear non-proliferation efforts has evaporated as globalised economies boomed and terrorism dominated the agenda.
The existing nuclear powers have acted as if weapons of mass destruction were their birthright. In doing so, they have broken the legal compact at the heart of the treaty - the undertaking by nuclear haves to move towards elimination of such weapons in return for restraint on the part of nuclear wannabes. One by one, outsiders have lined up to acquire the technology. India, Pakistan, North Korea, probably Iran. Every time another nation dares to detonate, countries such as Australia form a conga line of condemnation, our brazen hypocrisy the perfect counterpoint to their brazen defiance.
In an article published last year in the respected journal Foreign Policy, the former US defence secretary Robert McNamara pointed out that the US maintains 2000 warheads on hair-trigger alert, ready to be launched at 15 minutes' notice, and its 2002 Nuclear Posture Review assumes that a modernised nuclear arsenal consisting of thousands of warheads will remain a core element in US military posture for decades. In other words, America is in breach of its commitment under the treaty to work towards the elimination of all nuclear arsenals.
Describing US nuclear doctrine as "immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous", McNamara wrote, "If the United States continues its current nuclear stance, over time, substantial proliferation of nuclear weapons will almost surely follow. Some, or all, of such nations as Egypt, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Taiwan will very likely initiate nuclear weapons programs, increasing both the risk of use of the weapons and the diversion of weapons and fissile materials into the hands of rogue states or terrorists."
Nor has the US ever endorsed the policy of "no first use". Bizarrely, Pyongyang is willing to make such a pledge, but not Washington.
The danger of another Hiroshima lingers.
Christopher Kremmer is the author of several books about modern Asia. He reported on India and Pakistan's 1998 nuclear tests, and writes and lectures on global security issues.