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ANALYSIS
Disconnect in Beijing
By Marc
Erikson
"See, they're back to the old blackmail
game," US President George W Bush told NBC-TV anchor Tom
Brokaw late Thursday. That's pretty close to, "I told
you so," and reveals - if revelation were necessary -
that major factions in the Bush administration never
thought much of talking to North Korea about its nuclear
programs in the first place. Even allegedly dovish
Secretary of State Colin Powell weighed in with some
quite heavy artillery, saying: "The North Koreans should
not leave the meetings in Beijing, now that they have
come to a conclusion ... with the slightest impression
that the United States and its partners will be
intimidated by bellicose statements or by threats." He
added that the US was looking for ways to "eliminate"
the threat posed by any North Korean nuclear weapons
program and had "not taken any options off the table" -
diplomatese for not ruling out military action.
Of course, the North Koreans, on their part,
will not exactly have pleased their Chinese hosts, who
had worked long and hard to bring about US-North
Korea-China talks, by telling US chief negotiator James
Kelly that they were in fact in possession of atomic
bombs, were ready to test and even sell them, and had
already reprocessed 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods to
extract weapons-grade plutonium (enough for six to eight
nukes).
Where the Korean nuclear standoff goes
from here is anyone's guess. Understandably, "honest
broker" China wants to put the best possible face on the
outcome of the discussions at Beijing's Diaoyutai State
Guest House, their early conclusion (to avoid the term
"breakdown") notwithstanding. Chinese Foreign Minister
Li Zhaoxing said the meeting "signifies a good
beginning", and his ministry said in a later statement
that all sides "agreed to maintain contacts through
diplomatic channels regarding continuing the process of
talks".
But the course the talks took between
Wednesday and Friday morning was hardly encouraging. In
opening remarks, the United States reiterated that it
wants to see immediate and verifiable dismantling of
North Korea's nuclear programs before talking about
anything else; Pyongyang chief negotiator Li Gun
repeated the Iraq war had proved that nations need a
strong deterrent to protect their sovereignty; China
urged compromise. And that, pretty much, was already the
end of three-way discussions. On Wednesday night, Li
fessed up to Kelly about the North's nukes and
reprocessing. On Thursday, the Chinese and North Korean
and then Chinese and US delegations met separately, but
no US-North Korea meeting took place. According to the
US Embassy in Beijing, it all ended early Friday when
"the US and North Korean delegations had separate
meetings with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing ...
They [the delegations] also had a brief informal
trilateral meeting."
Even optimistic China had
trouble putting a really positive spin on it all. A
Friday People's Daily commentary titled "The DPRK is not
Iraq" read: "With the conclusion of the Iraq war, people
have begun to worry that the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea (DPRK) would become the US's next
target of 'preemptive strike'. But if the United States
launched [a] 'preemptive' military attack on [the] DPRK,
it would not have the moral support from the
international community, and militarily it [would] take
great risks." Obviously, a commentary like that wouldn't
make a whole lot of sense if China didn't believe that
the possibility of military confrontation was quite
acute.
Several questions must now be answered if
any forecast is to be made on the future course of
developments. Does North Korea really have nukes, or was
Li's assertion to that effect just bluff and bluster?
Does the US believe that North Korea has nukes? Has (or
is) reprocessing really taking place? Does the US
believe that added claim?
The most dangerous
combination of answers is that the US - while claiming
that North Korea has enough nuclear materials to build a
couple of bombs - does not believe functional such bombs
exist, and at the same time has or finds evidence of
reprocessing. Only under those circumstances does
military preemption constitute an option. If, on the
other hand, the US believes in the existence of
functional devices, military action - one would hope -
would be precluded by their deterrence value.
Astonishing, though perhaps not to Kim Jong-il and his
generals, that one's hope for a peaceful solution now
may rest with the veracity of Pyongyang's nuclear
declaration.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
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