| |
North Korea next? Not
likely
By Jaewoo Choo
SEOUL -
Since the bombardment of Iraq began on March 18,
concerns have been raised about whether North Korea will
be the next target of the US campaign to disarm weapons
of mass destruction (WMD). On the very day the bombing
began, US Secretary of State Colin Powell made a direct
warning to North Korea not to provoke his nation with
such actions as operating its nuclear plants or testing
on its long-ranged missiles. Otherwise, it would have to
face "serious consequences".
The warning had a
much more psychological effect on South Korea than on
North Korea. While the North remained silent until last
Friday, South Korea's new government, inaugurated on
February 25, has been preoccupied with the toughening US
stance on the North Korea nuclear issues. Just a week
prior to the Iraqi bombardment, South Korea's new
government dispatched foreign affairs advisor Ban
Ki-moon to the United States on a mission to explain the
circumstances developing in and around the Korean
Peninsula to US businessmen and governmental officials
as South Korean's sentiment and views toward the nuclear
issue. The mission's main objectives, in other words,
were clearly reflected in the change in the South Korean
government's position on the necessity to maintain the
current Korean-US alliance and to keep the US military
presence in Korea at the current level of 37,000 men and
women.
Three days later, last Friday, South
Korean President Roh Moo-hyun personally hosted a lunch
meeting with 16 foreign chief executive officers,
including the chairman of the America Chamber of
Commerce (AMCHAM), William Oberlin. The meeting was to
reiterate Seoul's official stance on the aforementioned
issues. Roh was quoted as saying that "there is no war
on the peninsula", and that his government will do its
utmost to create better conditions for foreign firms to
do business in Korea, explicitly asking his guests to
relay his personal and official economic and political
guarantees to their corporate headquarters and to ask
for much more investment in South Korea.
But
Roh's personal guarantee does not seem to have countered
warnings from the US government toward the North, as the
concerns of a possible duplication of Iraq's fate were
not totally extinguished. There is still a strong sense
of insecurity prevailing among the South Koreans as well
as foreign observers of the peninsula. They strongly
believe that the next target of the US anti-WMD campaign
will be the North, now that the US words against Iraq
have been put into action. That is, the United States'
supremacy is actually at work. It is unstoppable. There
is no other force that can stop the US from putting its
words into action. US supremacy is on its way to
becoming an irreversible trend in international affairs.
It is going to prevail for some time. Unilateralism is
going to be the political ideology of the 21st century,
replacing both realism and idealism. The time to find an
answer to unilateralism has arrived, and that answer
must be either cooperation with the US (buttering it up)
or willingness to suffer the consequences of not
cooperating with the US.
Either way, the North
Korea nuclear issue is going to be a hot potato for all
nations around the peninsula as well as for the
international community for some time. Whether the US
will rely on military means as the last resort to solve
the issue, as in the Iraqi case, remains to be seen.
However, there are several salient reasons that
distinguish the two cases in nature and characteristics,
thereby making it much more difficult on the US part to
consider employing a similar tactic in disarming the
North's WMD.
First, there is the concept of
"axis of evil" itself. At the inception of the "axis",
North Korea was inserted as a last-minute call. In the
beginning, the "evils" were only Iran and Iraq. But to
liken this grouping to the World War II Axis - German,
Italy and Japan - a third state was needed. Of the seven
states labeled as a rogue state on the blacklist of the
US State Department, one that stood out was North Korea.
Its cultural and political background lent it to
inclusion in the new axis. It was not an Islamic state
and was still a staunchly communist regime that
allegedly possessed WMD in large quantities along with
an "irrational leadership". Insertion of North Korea
into the axis of evil immediately put to rest any idea
that the US campaign against WMD in the hands of
irrational leadership was targeted against one
particular civilization. As if to prove the case, prior
to its campaign against Iraq and North Korea, the US
first made a run at Iran, a case that now has somehow
faded away at the expense of the other two states. If
the true motive of the US war against Iraq were oil and
restructuring the international supply order of oil,
then the next target would logically be Iran, not North
Korea.
Second, the US needs North Korea for its
missile defense (MD) program to achieve its final end,
which is scheduled to be deployed next year after eight
years of investment, research and development. Its
ultimate goal is naturally to keep in check the
potential missile threat from the People's Republic of
China. To date, to the United States' dismay, Iraq's
resistance has been an utter failure. Analysts attribute
this failure to two factors. One is the long period of
economic sanction imposed on Iraq since the end of the
Gulf War in 1991, which has prevented it from keeping up
its military strength. The other is the obsolescence of
its weaponry system, also due to the sanctions. Most of
the missiles fired by Iraq during its war with the
United States failed to meet the target, but ended up
landing in the desert or ocean. If the long sanctions
were effective in making Iraq powerless, especially its
Scud missiles allegedly acquired from North Korea, what
condition must the North Korean military forces be in by
now after more than half a century of isolation and
successive failures of its recent missile tests
beginning in 1998? But the United States MD program will
be deployed to meet the challenge from a state with a
similar weaponry system that is already proved to be
world-class. It is scheduled to be deployed in US
territory first, including Alaska, and then in Northeast
Asia. For this, the Japanese government has applied for
a budget of 20 billion yen for the fiscal year 2005 to
deploy the system in Japan. Taiwan is expected to follow
suit in the near future, with the potential of stirring
up another round of disputes over sales of "modern
weapons" by the US. Without North Korea, the US has no
grounds to build the system in the region.
Third, the US has to be conscious of China if it
is to take a similar approach to North Korea as it did
to Iraq. This is mainly because the "Treaty of
Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance" that
remains effective as the backbone of the alliance
relationship between North Korea and China. The treaty
was signed by the two nations on July 11, 1961. It
remains in effect, unlike the one between North Korea
and the Soviet Union. The importance of the treaty lies
in the second article, which guarantees the assistance
and support from one of the partners when the other
comes under a military threat or is invaded by a third
party. Unless China nullifies the treaty, it has the
obligation to support and assist North Korea when it is
attacked by a third party or threatened with attack. As
long as the treaty stands, the US would have to beware
of China if it were to employ military action to disarm
North Korea. China at this stage of its economic
development obviously does not want to engage itself in
military action as it did once with North Korea during
the Korean War in the early 1950s, nor does it desire to
see such a situation developing in its neighboring
state. Thus for China, it would boil down to a
last-minute decision call.
Fourth, if the US is
to abide by its announced intention to solve the North
Korea problem in the context of multilateral
cooperation, it has to show more respect for
multilateralism. Otherwise, if it were to neglect it as
it did with the United Nations in the case of Iraq, the
question would naturally become an economic one.
Insecurity and instability in the Northeast Asian region
would have devastating economic consequences. The
slowdown of China's growth and another economic blow to
Japan would make it much more difficult for the US to
rearrange international order in the region. As proposed
by Powell at the World Economic Forum on January 25 (see
North Korea: What's on the table,
February 4), the US wants the five permanent members of
the UN as well as the European Union, Australia and
Japan to be involved in the solving the North Korea
issue. This is for various reasons, but one salient
reason is to reduce its own economic burden that it
would have to pay for Pyongyang's cooperation. With a
bad precedent already in practice, the US has to double
its effort in convincing the international community,
not North Korea. In addition, even if North Korea
remains uncooperative, another use of military force
would put the US in a very disadvantageous position to
sustain its supremacy, not to mention to maintain
unilateralism in constructing a new international order.
Fifth, if the US were to conduct a similar
bombardment of North Korea even for the sake of peace
and stability of the Korean Peninsula, it would face
strong opposition from the South Korean people for
nationalist reasons. With an irrational leader such as
Kim Jong-il in power, it is much more difficult to write
up a scenario of his possible reactions. If he is really
that irrational, would he take into consideration the
well-being of the South Korean people? As claimed by the
neo-liberal school of thought, those living in
democratic nations do not want to engage in war because
they are well aware of the consequences. It is for this
reason that peace perpetuates among the democratic
nations, and they tend to stay away from fighting. South
Korea is a democratic nation. Its people are already
enjoying a great deal of the generous consequences of
being democratic. They do not want to experience another
tragedy with their brothers and sisters as they did
during the Korean War. They do not want to see their
hard-earned democracy go down the drain, with their
economy suffering an unimaginable blow, due to a US
strike against the North. South Koreans have worked hard
for half a century to build their nation economically to
where it stands now in the world, 13th in trade volume,
13th in gross domestic product, and with income per
capita surpassing US$10,000 per year.
Sixth, and
last, US military action against North Korea would mean
the end of international governing bodies. Regardless of
the methods of a peaceful approach to the North Korea
problem, be it bilateral or multilateral, such an
approach would have to undergo a similar process as it
did with Iraq. And the ultimate goal would also be
similar, removal of an irrational regime. During the
course of this process, another inspection team would be
organized and dispatched by an international governing
body. Whether it were the United Nations or the
International Atomic Energy Agency, if the US were to be
unsatisfied with their inspection results, as it was
with the Iraq case despite the lack of concrete evidence
or solid reasoning, it would again rely on unilateralism
in its decision for action. If this were to reoccur,
trust and confidence in these international
organizations would absolutely be lost, inevitably
leading other nations to act on their own will and
desire. Nations would then be preoccupied with
realigning their positions, allying with those sharing
common interests and standing against those that do not.
This raises again a question once seriously debated in
the academic community of international relations at the
end of the Cold War: Has history ended? Didn't the world
experience two major wars caused by lack of trust and
confidence among states?
Even if the United
States' next target after Iraq must be North Korea, all
these variables must be taken into account before any
action. Given the differences in nature, characteristics
and international settings of the North Korea nuclear
crisis, the US would have to undergo some serious and
hard thinking before it could adopt a similar action as
what it is doing to Iraq. If it were to strike North
Korea, the consequences the US would have to face would
be much more serious than those faced by either Iraq or
North Korea. Before adopting any measures, it would be
wise for Americans to reread George Orwell's Nineteen
Eighty-Four.
Jaewoo Choo, PhD, is
a research fellow with the Trade Research Institute,
Seoul. The opinions expressed in this article are his
own.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
