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Pyongyang derails Northeast Asian progress
By Stephen Blank
North Korea
seems intent on brinkmanship with Washington. But its
reckless and misconceived policies have already begun to
undermine the first fragile signs of economic progress
in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and
will also undermine its efforts to secure a
rapprochement with other key Asian states.
By
flagrantly breaking the US-DPRK Framework Agreement,
North Korea provoked Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo to cut
off fuel-oil supplies. The ensuing deprivation has now
led Pyongyang to restart its nuclear reactors to provide
energy. This only fuels the fears that it will use the
energy gained thereby to build nuclear weapons. But
these actions also mean that economic reforms in North
Korea that seemed to have begun this past summer will be
set back and constrained - if not reversed.
Thanks to its needlessly provocative policies
and tactics of constantly escalating pressure on
Washington and its allies, North Korea has brought them
closer together in mutual suspicion of the DPRK and in
determination to prevent Pyongyang from exploiting rifts
among them. It also is quite likely that this pressure
tactic will lead to a new and more hostile South Korean
government after this week's elections, one less
inclined than the present administration of Kim Dae-jung
to subsidize North Korea in the hopes of facilitating
progress toward peace and reconciliation. Therefore it
is hard to understand what North Korea thinks it is
achieving by undermining the Sunshine Policy and the
subsidies attached to it in order to get Washington's
attention. But the miscalculations do not end there.
Once again Pyongyang's determination to strike
out on its own with regard to its nuclear and missile
programs has undermined Chinese objectives and policy.
Despite Chinese support and assistance in the
development of those missiles and North Korea's nuclear
program, Beijing cannot be interested in North Korea
flaunting them, because that ties Japan closer to
Washington's missile defense program, justifies US
arguments as to its necessity, and restricts China's
military freedom of maneuver. Not surprisingly, Beijing
has urged a return to the Framework Agreement and has
refused to host Kim Jong-il in China. China also does
not welcome any action that detracts from North Korea's
economic progress and reforms because that creates
renewed problems with North Korean refugees, an issue
that perpetually embarrasses Beijing.
Similarly,
Japan's readiness to open relations and promote North
Korea's economic development have been set back by this
violation of the 1994 agreement and subsequent military
and nuclear threats. This belligerence builds on
Japanese anger over the admitted abduction of Japanese
citizens to create a climate of suspicion and distrust
of North Korea that will virtually preclude any sizable
Japanese economic assistance, not to mention the opening
of embassies.
And obviously Pyongyang is close
to having burned its bridges with Washington. If the
main aim of this nuclear policy is to compel the United
States to take North Korea seriously and enter into
direct diplomatic discussions, as so many observers seem
to maintain, the DPRK government has grievously misread
the situation. Evidently it thinks it can manipulate the
administration of President George W Bush the way it did
the previous administration of Bill Clinton. Pyongyang
may also believe that the fact the administration
recently had to let its Scud missiles pass through to
Yemen after seizing them on the high seas displays US
weakness. But this is not an administration that will
yield to provocation and armed threats, something that
governments all over the world should have learned by
now.
Finally, Pyongyang has also decisively
weakened Russia's efforts to work with it and support
inter-Korean reconciliation. Even if the reports of
Russian proliferation in North Korea are true, Moscow
too cannot be happy about the possibility of Japan
further aligning itself with Washington or about China
being obliged to build ever more missiles against the
United States' missile defenses.
Furthermore,
the centerpiece of Russian economic policy in Korea, the
project to link together a Trans-Korean railroad with
the Trans-Siberian railroad, has been undermined. Moscow
has long championed this project as a vital aspect of
its policy toward both Korean states. A common
denominator of this project for both Koreas as well as
Russia is also evidently connected with resisting or
countering the implications of China's rising economic
power. This program also offers Russia's and North
Korea's depressed economies prospects for development.
Consequently this project and others tied to it could
link together Korean, Siberian, and Chinese networks as
part of a much larger process that could, if successful,
overcome major obstacles to development, security, and
prosperity in Asia.
In addition, Russia seeks to
use this project and its larger participation in the
Korean agenda to gain leverage upon both Beijing and
Washington, and show that it must be consulted as it
creates a perhaps "special relationship" with Pyongyang,
if not with Seoul. In general, Russia's Korea policy
seeks to leverage its regional status vis-a-vis its
principal challengers and force them to reckon with
Russia in Korea and Asia. Therefore if Russia is to play
a significant role in both Koreas, it must demonstrate
its ability to make projects like this work. However,
Russia and North Korea cannot pay for this railroad from
their own resources. Therefore Moscow has sought foreign
investment to provide for the project's implementation.
Clearly North Korea's unreliability, stalled economic
reforms, and the generally tenser situation on the
peninsula all work to inhibit investors from
contributing to this much-needed project.
This
outcome is hardly a positive record of North Korean
achievements. Indeed, it constitutes a regression from
earlier progress on both security and economic issues in
Korea. It also revives and intensifies the suspicions
concerning North Korea's objectives and policies, thus
making future progress much more difficult. Certainly it
has also revived apprehensions concerning the competence
of North Korea's leadership.
But beyond all
these considerations is the fact that because all the
issues and relationships on the Korean Peninsula are
inter-related, this episode also constitutes a setback
to the policies of many of the key players in Northeast
Asia. The political and economic ground that has been
lost will not easily be regained, if at all. Nor will
any regaining of this lost ground happen soon. And
therefore it will not only be North Korea and its
beleaguered subjects who suffer the consequences of its
leadership's reckless and provocative policies.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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