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Double or nothing, Pyongyang
style
By Stephen Blank
While
it is supremely unfashionable to entertain this
proposition, let us assume, even if only for the sake of
argument, that the Bush administration is right on North
Korea. Nobody would doubt that once again North Korea is
trying to play nuclear blackmail to compel the United
States to engage with it on its terms by breaking
earlier agreements and constantly raising the ante on
what it threatens to do if Washington refuses to accept
its terms. North Korea's latest gambit is to threaten to
abandon the 1953 armistice and thus remove all legal
obstacles to the resumption of hostilities. Yet at the
same time South Korean officials, who have more than a
sporting interest in the outcome of this game, report no
sign of any unusual activity on the other side of the
Demilitarized Zone.
North Korea has steadily
raised the ante, claiming it has a right to nuclear
weapons, walking out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty,
and breaking its agreements with the International
Atomic Energy Agency. It also habitually threatens to
destroy South Korea in its proverbial "sea of fire" and
has consistently refused multilateral discussions to the
point of saying it would not abide by any United Nations
resolution. And if any organization such as the UN or
any power such as the United States were to threaten it
with sanctions, a not unjustified response to the
deliberate flouting of multilateral and international
accords, North Korea has said that sanctions mean war.
Thus it has admitted that it is a state existing
"outside of the law", ie, an outlaw or rogue state.
Yet none of this has moved Washington. The
administration of President George W Bush reaffirms it
will not negotiate unilaterally with Pyongyang, insists
that nuclear programs be discontinued, and consistently
proposes that the UN and the international community,
especially the powers most vitally interested in a
Korean settlement - Russia, China, Japan, itself and the
two Koreas - help find a solution.
In other
words, while North Korea frantically raises the ante
indicating that it wants nuclear weapons and will not
brook anything that stands in the way of that objective,
Washington refuses to give in to an attack of nerves.
Just as recent Central Intelligence Agency reports
confirm the findings of the 1998 Rumsfeld Commission as
to the nature and time of arrival of threats to the
continental United States from rogue states armed with
both missiles and weapons of mass destruction,
Pyongyang, more than Washington, is rashly brandishing
those weapons to try to blackmail the United States into
surrendering to its agenda.
Yet there has been
no surrender. Nor is one likely any time soon. Instead,
the United States has begun taking prudent deterrent
steps in conjunction with Japan, and presumably South
Korea, to deter any North Korean attack on the South. At
the same time Washington has reaffirmed several times
that it has no plans to attack North Korea and that a
negotiated settlement can lead to several lucrative
benefits to Pyongyang.
Washington's refusal to
panic, unlike the situation in 1993-94, has led North
Korea to keep trying to up the ante to the point of
ever-increasing rashness that can only isolate Pyongyang
still further from its potential supporters. In this
respect its behavior resembles nothing so much as that
of the gambler who, having lost consistently, keeps
rolling the dice, saying double or nothing, only to turn
up empty.
While everyone must take threats of
renewed hostilities on the Korean Peninsula with utmost
seriousness, that is not tantamount to caving in to
Pyongyang's efforts at nuclear blackmail. Surely, as
even those who label North Korea a "crazy state" know,
any effort to resume military operations there means the
certain end of the regime in its own "sea of fire".
Nothing we have seen indicates a suicidal disposition on
the part of Kim Jong-il or his subordinates; quite the
opposite. It may well be the case that this nuclear
program is a kind of payoff to the military, without
whom his power might be rather tenuous and to whose
preferences he has sacrificed chances of economic
progress. Studies of the "military first" program in
North Korea reveal just how far the country has gone to
replicate the notion stated years ago by Oskar Lange
that a Soviet economy is a sui generis war
economy. Nevertheless the last thing these leaders want
is a war they know they will lose. So here supposedly is
a clue to their nuclear desires, ie, the desire to
escape from any threats to their homeland and their
survival in power by retaining the ability to deter war
and threaten all their neighbors.
However,
Washington will not play, and rightly so. For to do so
would not only undermine its credibility in Seoul and
Tokyo, it would probably encourage those states to
proceed with military programs of self-defense that
would further inflame the Northeast Asian balance.
Foreign observers recognized this possibility during the
1993-94 crisis, and it remains a real option today and
in any future crises.
Yet Pyongyang keeps up the
game, and Washington, to its credit, refuses to be
cowed. Although it is true that time is running out
before North Korea obtains usable nuclear weapons and
perhaps begins to offer them abroad as well, it is worth
asking what combination of forces might have dissuaded
Pyongyang from following this gambler's course. Clearly
the answer lies in the old maxim that pacts must be
obeyed, a course of action that would have been much
more profitable to North Korea and more certain to
ensure its stability and survival. Yet that would not
have given them the ability to defy everyone inherent in
the possession of nuclear weapons. Today Pyongyang says
to the world, "Stop me before I commit suicide," and
Washington's response, infuriating as it is to North
Korea, is simply to keep calling its bluff. The danger,
of course, is that Pyongyang might soon come to believe
its own self-induced hysteria. But the absence of
unusual activity on the other side of the border
suggests that we have not reached this point yet.
And perhaps we will not reach it. For North Korea's
reckless efforts to keep playing double or nothing
suggest a mounting sense of frustration at not getting
its way and of not being taken seriously. Washington
keeps saying it will "not reward bad behavior". While
the tone is undoubtedly patronizing, can one call North
Korea's behavior anything other than bad or
self-defeating, not to mention reckless? And can one
doubt that a different course of behavior might obtain
more rewards than the hopeless and dangerous course it
has adopted since last October? And finally, can we
simply assume a priori that North Korea's leaders
are too blinkered and unskilled to recognize that they
have blundered into a dead end from which the only exit
is the path of multilateral negotiation and genuine
economic reinvigoration?
Stephen Blank
is an analyst of international security affairs residing
in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
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