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PYONGYANG WATCH
How 'shock and awe' plays in
Pyongyang
By Aidan Foster-Carter
Another image of a toppled statue joins the pile
already stored in our mental DVDs: most from the fall of
communism in Eastern Europe, more than a decade ago. A
potent image indeed, whose immediacy and emotional
symbolism risk jumping to conclusions - or, in a
literally apt metaphor, jumping the gun.
So some
caveats first. Saddam Hussein's statues have fallen, and
surely his regime has too; but the man himself at this
writing remains at large. Even if the war is now largely
won, winning the peace is another matter: just look at
Afghanistan. To destroy is always easier than to
rebuild. Those today hailed (not universally) as
liberators may tomorrow be reviled as imperialist
occupiers. It could be a long haul.
Still, it is
a historic moment - and one pregnant with significance
for a peninsula at the other end of Asia. I had come to
think that North Korea's fate would depend, inversely,
on that of Iraq. A swift US victory would embolden
Washington's hawks: not necessarily to invade elsewhere,
but to play hardball rather than engage with other
members of the "axis of evil". Conversely, a hard slog
or disaster in Iraq - bogged down, high casualties, let
alone any use of those so-far-elusive weapons of mass
destruction - would definitively discredit the hardline
Rumsfelds and Cheneys, and empower the smooth Powells.
Well, unless Saddam has a sting in his tail, it
looks more like the former. But "who's next?" may be too
pat a question. Even victory in Iraq will keep the
United States busy there for a long time. Besides, for
the hawk tendency it is the Middle East that really
matters; hence, after Iraq, it is Iran and Syria who may
feel the heat next. North Korea is a sideshow, a
distraction, an irritant. Basically US President George
W Bush wishes it would go away.
Reinforcing
this, a point not often brought out is that there is no
US constituency for Korea. Whereas Middle East policy is
strongly driven by the Israel lobby, while that on Cuba
has long been hostage to anti-Castro exiles in Miami
(though this is now changing), the 2 million Koreans in
the United States are neither politically united nor
organized. In normal times, Korea is hardly on the radar
screen in Washington.
But these are not normal
times, and North Korea is not about to go away. Kim
Jong-il did go to ground, for a record 50 days before
reemerging in a military university hospital -
inspecting it, not as a patient. Lengthy absences from
public view are not unusual for the Dear Leader. But
this time you can bet he was thinking very hard about
his future options, especially once the war in Iraq
finally got under way.
A nice description (not
mine), in a phrase that Sherlock Holmes fans will
recognize, is of Kim Jong-il as "the dog that didn't
bark" - meaning that once the Iraq war began, Pyongyang
suspended its regular provocations rather than (as might
have been expected) ratcheting them up. To adapt this
analogy, in another sense the North Korean dog has of
course kept barking, hoarsely and shrilly, as it always
does. The bellicose rhetoric from the Korea Central News
Agency (KCNA) and other media went up a notch, if that
were possible. But the bark tends to be worse than the
bite. What did stop, at least for the time being, were
those little nips to the ankles: buzzing a US spy plane,
test-firing small missiles, that sort of thing.
No doubt Kim Jong-il has been glued to the TV
like the rest of us. Watching Saddam's statues being
torn down, danced upon, beaten and dragged around must
have a particular resonance for him. (We'll look at the
domestic implications - could it happen in Pyongyang,
ever? - in another column.) This is an anxious moment
for the Dear Leader, and there are conflicting views on
which way he may jump.
By one account, Kim's
absence included a secret trip to Beijing, where he met
President Hu Jintao and other new leaders and got
assurances that China will "not stand idle" if the US
threatens North Korea militarily. Yet other reports
claim that Beijing had earlier suspended vital oil
supplies, to show its displeasure. China alone has the
power to put pressure on Kim Jong-il, but obviously will
not dance to a US tune: hence it blocked any
condemnation of Pyongyang by the United Nations Security
Council on the nuclear issue. It remains to be seen if
some mixed multilateral-cum-bilateral framework can be
devised, to get the US and North Korea (and others)
around a table at last. Washington, for one, seems in no
hurry.
But even if talks occur, will Pyongyang
now yield? Put yourself in Kim Jong-il's shoes: What
lessons would you draw from Iraq? Faced with the threat
of force, you give in, let UN inspectors walk all over
you - and then the Americans invade you anyway. On March
28 Rodong Sinmun, the daily paper of North Korea's
ruling Korean Workers Party, drew a surely predictable
conclusion. Iraq's "miserable fate" was due to its
accepting "imperialist" demands for nuclear inspection
and disarmament. By contrast, "No one should expect the
DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] to make the
slightest concession or compromise". On the contrary,
the paper pledged that North Korea would increase
defense capacity further as the country's "No 1
lifeline".
So that's how "shock and awe" plays
in Pyongyang. As in Washington, hawks feel vindicated,
while doves urging dialogue are undercut. How will this
affect the nuclear issue? North Korea, remember, is
pursuing two different nuclear programs. The newer one,
via uranium enrichment, is now thought to be within
months rather than years of weaponization. The older one
needs only months once reprocessing resumes at Yongbyon.
That has not yet restarted, but it's not clear whether
Kim Jong-il is deliberately holding off, or if they
simply can't get this antiquated 1950s technology fired
up and running yet.
But either way, what would
you do? It's never been clear exactly why North Korea
wanted the bomb: to trade away in exchange for aid and
security guarantees, or retain as the ultimate
deterrent? My fear is that the second Gulf War may tip
the balance to the latter. Kim Jong-il might now, not
unreasonably, reckon that having and hanging on to
nuclear weapons is the only thing that stands between
him and the fate of Saddam Hussein. Can Hu Jintao or
Russian President Vladimir Putin persuade him otherwise?
We'd better hope so.
Aidan
Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in
sociology and modern Korea, Leeds University,
England.
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