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Japan's wrong-headed Korea move
By Purnendra Jain
ADELAIDE - Late last week
Japan's decision to deploy one of its Aegis-equipped
destroyers, a high-tech surveillance battleship, in the
Sea of Japan is a misguided response to a US report that
North Korea was preparing for a ballistic missile test.
Once again this shows how much does Japan blindly follow
the United States' strategic view rather than making its
own independent response and assuming a leadership role
on key regional issues. Japan's action will only result
in flaring up the situation instead of facilitating
peace on the Korean Peninsula, a goal that Japan must
pursue with all diplomatic skills at its command.
With its renewed nuclear programs and sporadic
missile launches, North Korea has once again caused
great regional security concern and has been rightly
regarded as one of the major destabilizing factors in
the Northeast Asian region. Recent reports suggest that
Pyongyang is even preparing to produce nuclear bombs -
one with plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel
rods and the other from highly enriched uranium.
Japan has reasons for concern and would
undoubtedly feel vulnerable if Pyongyang does test its
Rodong missile, with its 1,300-kilometer range - capable
of reaching all parts of Japan. It is of course not the
first time that Japan has faced a security challenge
from North Korea. In 1998, North Korea reportedly
launched a Tepodong ballistic missile that flew over
Japan. It also test-launched a short-range missile early
last week and another at the time of the inauguration of
South Korea's new president in late February.
Many have argued that any missile testing by
North Korea is in violation of the 1999 accord that it
signed with the United States and also directly
contravenes the Pyongyang Declaration issued last
September at the time of Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi's visit to North Korea.
Not only has
Tokyo responded via mobilizing its destroyer ship, but
it has also indicated to take measures against Pyongyang
together with the United States that could include
economic sanctions and even the freezing of the Korean
Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO)
project, designed to build two light-water nuclear
reactors in North Korea. The Japanese government is also
considering revising the Self-Defense Forces Law
enabling the SDF to shoot down incoming missiles and not
wait for an order from the Prime Minister, as required
under the current law.
While North Korea's
politics of brinkmanship cannot be condoned and its
missile programs must be halted in the interest of
maintaining peace in the region, very little has been
said about the factors responsible for North Korea's
recent behavior.
The effort to engage North
Korea since 1994 through the Agreed Framework, put in
place through the good offices of Nobel laureate and
former US president Jimmy Carter under which North Korea
would receive energy assistance including installation
of KEDO, was progressing slowly but steadily until the
administration of President George W Bush took charge in
Washington.
Although the much-awaited visit to
Pyongyang by president Bill Clinton did not materialize,
after the historic trip to North Korea by US secretary
of state Madeleine Albright in October 2000, many world
leaders, including those from Russia, China and Japan,
visited Pyongyang, and some, including Australia, even
normalized their relations with North Korea. North Korea
pledged to all of them its withdrawal of nuclear
programs and its intention to stop producing, testing
deploying and selling its long and medium-range missiles
in lieu of economic assistance and security guarantees
from the United States and regional powers.
The
Agreed Framework, however, has unilaterally been
breached by the Bush administration. Not only has the US
administration stopped supportive activities to North
Korea, it also choked some of Pyongyang's vital sources
of foreign-currency earnings. For example, the US
pressured Israel to withdraw payment of some US$3
billion to Pyongyang that it had earlier agreed as part
of stopping North Korea's exports of missiles and
technologies to Arab nations. Further, North Korea has
been pushed to the wall by declaring it as part of the
"axis of evil" and not producing any new evidence that
North Korea was in breach of any international
obligation.
North Korea's recent brinkmanship is
nothing but a desperate reaction to the Bush
administration's sudden policy shift, which has made the
impoverished nation economically crippled and
internationally isolated. With the prospect of an
imminent war in Iraq, North Korea regards itself as the
next target of US unilateralism and its agenda of
"regime change". For now, the North Korean leadership
insists that nothing short of bilateral talks with the
US is acceptable for a new non-aggression pact. But the
US has categorically rejected the North Korean proposal
of one-on-one talks; instead it insists that North Korea
is a regional problem - of concern to Japan, China,
South Korea, Russia and the rest of the world, not just
a bilateral problem.
An opportunity has
presented itself for Japan to demonstrate its leadership
skills in the region. Japan should pursue multilateral
action in concert with other nations such as South
Korea, Russia and China to put up proposals that are
acceptable to all parties. If that fails, it must
persuade the United States to open negotiation with
North Korea. It is in Japan's short- and long-term
interest to maintain peace in the region and engage
North Korea rather than isolate it, use diplomacy rather
than going down the road of preemptive strike.
Instead of using this opportunity and making
serious efforts to defuse the crisis before it gets out
of hand, the Japanese leadership has decided to play
once again in the hands of the United States and
increasingly now in the hands of its Defense Agency
personnel who want to see the agency move up the ladder
in the overall political and foreign-policy structure of
contemporary Japan.
Purnendra Jain is
a professor in the Centre for Asian Studies at
Australia's Adelaide University.
(©2003 Asia
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