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Suspect
quiet on the northern front
By Marc Erikson
Not much has been heard from North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jong-il since one of
his charges told the US-China-North Korea meeting in Beijing last month that
Pyongyang had nuclear weapons and had completed plutonium reprocessing of 8,000
spent fuel rods from the Yongbyon reactor. Kim hasn't disappeared from public
view (gone into hiding?) as was the case in the run-up to and for the duration
of the Iraq war. But other than some of the usual Korean Central News Agency
(KCNA) barbs directed at the United States, calm has prevailed.
I am not surprised, but - Seoul officials' pathetic purposive optimism and
financial markets' renewed complacency notwithstanding - certainly not
persuaded that all's well and no need to worry. Were I the cunning Mr Kim, I'd
do no different than he - shut up, sit on my stated position, wait for my
undecided and disunited opponents to play their next card, and meanwhile build
my assets.
There are, in effect, only two longer-term stable outcomes of the nuclear
standoff: acceptance by the US and its reluctant allies of North Korea as a
declared nuclear power or regime change in Pyongyang and reunification of the
two Koreas. Kim knows it and his advantage is the simplicity of his position.
Regime change is obviously unacceptable. Enhancement of his nuclear and overall
military threat posture, perhaps to the point of testing one of the nukes some
still believe he doesn't have, strengthens his negotiating position and allows
for extraction of maximum concessions.
I believe that Kim has fundamentally made the decision to go nuclear all the
way - for the fairly obvious and cogent reason that he can trust the US no more
than the US can trust him with any negotiated settlement (security guarantees
etc) and that only cold, hard facts count in the end.
In face of this, what are the US and Chinese positions? (Forget about South
Korea, Japan, and Russia; they either don't matter at all - Russia - or will do
what they are told.) Both the United States and China have said they want a
verifiably nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. Both probably know that, short of war
and/or regime change, they won't get that. But that's where the similarities
end.
China, based on its own historical experience with developing nuclear weapons
at a time of dire economic crisis (Great Leap Forward), does not believe that
economic sanctions or some sort of blockade to interdict North Korean
weapons/narcotics shipments will dissuade Pyongyang from building (more) nukes.
It probably doesn't believe that deals of one kind or another will accomplish
that either. But it will try hard to reach some kind of deal, mainly to keep
Japan from rearming and assuming a more prominent regional military role. The
point is to gain time and preserve the status quo.
The wild card is the shifting and ill-defined US position. The administration
of President George W Bush has said it wants verifiable dismantlement of North
Korea's nuclear programs. But it hasn't come up with any credible strategy to
achieve that. For months, prior to and during the Iraq war, it didn't want to
deal with the issue at all - in part because Democrats and Europeans wanted it
to and made a big deal about it to create a distraction. Then it tried to push
China into the lead role - with a certain measure of success based on the Japan
card. Then, after the failure of the Beijing talks, Bush got South Korean
President Roh Moo-hyun and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to put
some spine in their backs and extract promises of a harder line on Pyongyang.
But what's the strategy?
There is advice left, right, and center. The New York Council on Foreign
Relations on May 19 published the report of a task force headed by James Laney,
US ambassador to Seoul from 1993-97, and Morton Abramowitz, a former president
of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. Titled "Meeting the North Korean Nuclear
Challenge", the report calls for serious negotiations and, should such
negotiations fail, for serious consequences. Great!
Then there are those inside and outside the Bush administration who counsel
precision military strikes on North Korea's nuclear facilities, backed up by
precision strikes on artillery positions north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)
poised to obliterate Seoul. Problem is, no one really knows where all of
Pyongyang's nuclear facilities are.
Finally, there are those (Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is leaning in that
direction) who don't think Korea is strategically particularly important to the
US now that the Cold War is over and would rather just walk away from it all.
That, of course, won't really do either. After all, North Korea is a certified
proliferator of weapons of all kinds and suspected of having aided Iran with
its nuclear program.
Out of this con/profusion, what we'll likely get is something resembling the
Council on Foreign Relations proposal: more talk, then sanctions ... and then
what? That's where the problem lies and why I am worried. Talks, then
sanctions, and then no clear idea of what next, defines an escalation sequence
in which accidents can happen.
My own modest proposal is simple and mirrors the simplicity of Kim's: the
United States and its various allies and semi-allies should accept a nuclear
North Korea, as they are not very likely to be able to prevent it anyway. Then
get non-proliferation guarantees from Pyongyang in return for economic
assistance - and strictly enforce them, with China in a prominent role. It's
nothing great. It's basically the status quo. But it avoids hysterical
escalation. My main concern with the notion is that Japan may not be prepared
to buy it.
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