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North Korea throws the dice,
again
By Stephen Blank
One
has to admire North Korea's creativity. According to its
declaration on Monday it is building nuclear weapons and
will build more because it cannot maintain its army,
which is too expensive, and yet it also needs a
deterrent against the United States.
Although
this ex post facto rationalization may serve to
comfort the credulous and to function as a new
negotiating posture, this argument is no more credible
than were its predecessors. After all, North Korea's
program began in 1997-98 during the US administration of
president Bill Clinton, when there was no threat and
North Korea's economic condition was, if anything, even
more desperate than it is today. Moreover, Kim Jong-il
has steadfastly pursued a "military first" policy,
meaning that it got the first priority in all economic
policy, including state allocations. The nuclear program
was undoubtedly tied to Pyongyang's overall defense
policy and was conducted with the North Korean military
leadership's full knowledge. Therefore it is
inconceivable that it was undertaken to reduce the costs
of an unbearably large military during a time of threat.
Instead, we have to search for this statement's
motives in the ongoing multi-power minuet in and around
the Korean Peninsula. This declaration came immediately
on the heels of the joint US-ROK (Republic of Korea)
declaration that US forces in the South would be
realigned to move them farther out of the reach of any
potential North Korean first strike. This move could be
interpreted as reducing the likelihood that those US
forces could be effective hostages in case of such a
strike taken in retaliation for a possible US attack on
the North's nuclear program. In that case it might seem
that US forces would then be freer to strike back at
North Korea with devastating force. The possibility that
some way of reducing the effectiveness of a North Korean
attack on the South or the threat of it was about to
take place might well have led some in Pyongyang to
rethink their position.
Similarly, the triple
declarations of the ROK, Japan, and the United States
that nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula will not be
tolerated set the stage for these states' collision
course with North Korea. More important, these powers
are not alone, as both Beijing and Moscow have sent
broad and even public hints that nuclearization is
equally intolerable to them. Thus North Korea had
plainly failed to split the alliance or exploit
Russo-Chinese apprehensions about US power. While North
Korea had earlier seemed oblivious to all this and
continued to ratchet up its threats and verbal abuse,
even the most obtuse diplomat or policymaker had to
realize that despite these states' reluctance to impose
tough economic pressure upon North Korea, Pyongyang's
efforts to intimidate Washington and split the alliance
with Seoul have failed quite spectacularly.
Thus
it is entirely possible that this new belligerence is
simultaneously coupled with other recent hints of a
greater willingness to entertain the idea of a
multilateral negotiation. Notably it does not seem tied
to a call for a non-aggression pledge or to direct talks
only with Washington. After all, one hallmark of
Pyongyang's past negotiating behavior has been to become
most abusive and threatening as it prepares to climb
down from an untenable position or back from the brink.
Yet even if North Korea wants to be able simultaneously
to engage and threaten its interlocutors, it seems
likely that this newest admission will not improve its
position. Indeed, since October, when it admitted to its
its nuclear program, North Korea has made mistake after
mistake.
For one thing, North Korea has seemed
intent on provoking everyone and going to the farthest
reaches of the brink of violence imaginable even when
seeking negotiations. Having shredded any reputation it
might have for keeping its agreements and having
repeatedly spit in the face of the powers upon which it
depends for economic sustenance - China, South Korea,
Japan, and the United States - Pyongyang seems driven to
become a nuclear power at all costs. But it dare not
admit this until such time as it crosses the threshold
of actual possession of usable weapons. Hence the
combination of threats and invitations to negotiate. But
it is possible that North Korea's misconceived signals
of a readiness to negotiate might actually provoke the
confrontation it does not want. Seeking security and
power through nuclear weapons, it may instead have set
itself on a collision course with virtually every one of
its interlocutors in Northeast Asia.
If
Pyongyang actually seeks to be a nuclear power for the
sake of having nuclear weapons as such, then it has
ranged itself against the vital interests of all those
neighboring and interested states with whom it must
deal. If North Korea aims to possess nuclear weapons for
their own sake, become independent of every other
power's national-security policy and pursue its own
policy as much as possible free of external constraint,
it also then wants to free itself, if need be, to
threaten or even wage war and to put at risk all of
Northeast Asia. This objective goes beyond deterrence of
US threats, although it encompasses that posture because
it threatens everyone, making everyone else's insecurity
the touchstone of North Korea's security.
Apart
from the incompatibility of this desire with any hope
for that area's security or with the interests of South
Korea, Japan, Russia, or the United States, this posture
threatens China. China cannot tolerate the possibility
of a war involving the United States brought on by North
Korea, for then that country would be destroyed and US
troops would stand guard over a united, even if
devastated, Korea. Beijing certainly does not want to be
dragged into a war on behalf of a North Korean regime
that has spurned every Chinese effort to get it to
pursue a rational and coherent policy of reform to
ensure its longtime survival, China's primary interest.
Nor can Beijing accept with equanimity a situation where
North Korea's nuclearization necessarily stimulates the
revival of Japanese military power, either on its own or
under US leadership.
Japanese talk of preventive
war and of nuclear and theater missile defenses not only
eliminates China's option to threaten Tokyo, it also
virtually ensures the extension of either missile
defense system to Taiwan and the ensuing elimination of
China's ability to threaten that island. Yet there is
nothing much it can do, since no Japanese leader can
tolerate North Korea's nuclearization. Thus all of
China's options are gradually being eliminated by
Pyongyang's refusal to listen to it. Indeed, that
determination not to be subordinated to China may well
be one of the factors driving North Korean policy.
While one can speculate endlessly about how this
crisis will play out, virtually every scenario points to
a lose-lose situation for all concerned unless North
Korea retreats from the brink soon. However, since North
Korea has steadily failed to grasp that its policies
cannot succeed and indeed can only provoke what it most
fears, it increasingly resembles the gambler who keeps
betting double or nothing even though he loses on every
throw of the dice. Possibly North Korea's moves appear
rational from within its system. But surely even someone
there must realize that its actions are leading to a
systemic dead end and an irrationality that could
literally cause the regime to go up in smoke.
If
indeed a collision course is what happens next, it is
highly unlikely that states such as China will sit with
folded arms as North Korea harvests the seeds of its own
recklessness. Indeed, here as anywhere else, one of the
most frightening aspects of any potential military
scenario is its sheer unpredictability. Hitherto North
Korea and Kim Jong-il have thrived on the basis of
having a reputation for unpredictability. But this time
they may have met an immovable object in Washington.
While Washington's response to Korean nuclearization may
be eminently predictable, what happens next cannot be
predicted.
If a collision does occur, the
trajectory of the flying objects thus propelled into
space will be as unpredictable politically as a
collision in nature is physically unpredictable in its
consequences. But there is no doubt that it would lead
to a frightful explosion from which nobody will emerge
unscathed.
Stephen Blank is an analyst
of international security affairs residing in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
(Copyright 2003
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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