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Fearful symmetry: Washington and
Pyongyang
By John Feffer
(Posted with permission of Foreign
Policy In Focus)
The streets of the
capital are broad and the buildings monumental. Inside
the grand state offices, a power struggle rages among
the political elite, and the side that seems to have the
upper hand is insulated, single-minded, and shamelessly
belligerent. This clique supports a military-first
policy that doesn't shrink from the first use of nuclear
weapons, a stance that strikes fear into allies and
adversaries alike. Nor are these fears soothed by the
actions or rhetoric of the leader, a former playboy who
owes his position to an irregular political process and
the legacy of a more statesmanlike father.
Choose your capital: Pyongyang or Washington?
In the fun-house of mirrors in which
contemporary global politics is enacted, a strange
resemblance has developed between George W Bush and Kim
Jong-il and between their respective war parties. That
North Korea is one of the poorest and most desperate
countries in the world and the United States is the
undisputed economic and military leader makes this
folie a deux all the more poignant and
ridiculous.
The weaker side has exited the
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is rushing to develop
a nuclear deterrent; the stronger side is after nothing
less than regime change. This summer Washington is
confronting Pyongyang with a policy of naval
interdiction and a tightening chokehold of economic
isolation. North Korea is perilously close to treating
these encroachments on its sovereignty as tantamount to
war. Neither side trusts the other; both refuse to
blink.
Such a convergence of opposites is not
unheard of in international relations. During the Cold
War, for instance, the US and the Soviet Union both
indulged in a terrifying symmetry of nuclear deterrence,
Third World interventions, and mistaken budget
priorities. But even during the darkest days, US
president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev displayed a personal rapport. In contrast,
George W Bush has called Kim Jong-il a "pygmy" and a
"spoiled child" and has confessed to journalist Bob
Woodward that he wants to topple the regime in Pyongyang
regardless of the consequences. North Korea has
repeatedly warned of turning Washington (or Seoul or
Tokyo) into a "sea of fire". The extraordinary gap in
military and economic capabilities, like a difference in
electric potential, has already produced sparks that may
yet lead to a conflagration.
In East Asia, the
Cold War is not over, and the conflict between Pyongyang
and Washington, with its dance of dependency and
reciprocity, threatens to spiral out of control in ways
that Afghanistan and Iraq (so far) have not. War on the
Korean Peninsula would be catastrophic enough. But by
encouraging Japan toward a military renaissance and
pressuring South Korea to back a policy of isolating
North Korea, the Bush administration is pushing all of
East Asia to the brink.
Policy
shift
In the autumn of 2000, when the presidency
of George W Bush was just a glint in the eye of
Florida's secretary of state, the United States and
North Korea nearly ended their 50-year war. US secretary
of state Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang in October
and found Kim Jong-il "very decisive and practical and
serious". President Bill Clinton was slated to meet the
North Korean leader to conclude a grand deal that would
have traded economic incentives and security assurances
for an end to North Korea's missile programs. This deal
would have built on the 1994 Agreed Framework, also
negotiated by the Clinton administration, which froze
the country's nuclear program in exchange for two
light-water reactors, shipments of heavy fuel oil, and
steps toward diplomatic normalization.
Clinton
didn't go to Pyongyang, and the grand deal didn't
materialize. Instead, the Bush administration took over
with a determination to upend what it considered
Clinton's policy of "appeasement". It was aided in this
quest by a piece of intelligence inherited from its
predecessor, namely that North Korea had taken out a
nuclear insurance policy. Although its
plutonium-processing facility remained frozen, North
Korea was exploring a second route to the bomb through
uranium enrichment. The Bush team thus had the perfect
weapon to attack US-North Korean reconciliation: the
perfidy of the North Koreans themselves.
But the
US had also backtracked on promises. It never fully
lifted economic sanctions against North Korea and didn't
take other steps toward the normalization of diplomatic
relations suggested by the Agreed Framework. The Clinton
administration persuaded Congress to accept the
construction of two light-water reactors in North Korea
by arguing, quietly, that the regime in Pyongyang would
not likely be around in 2003 when the reactors were
supposed to go online. Instead, the regime is still
around, and the reactors are only one-third complete.
Although North Korea pursued its
enriched-uranium program in the latter days of the
Clinton administration, analysts Joel Wit and James
Laney suggest that the program accelerated only when the
Bush administration cranked up its hostile rhetoric -
suspending diplomatic contact, criticizing South Korean
president Kim Dae-jung's engagement policy, and
ultimately including Pyongyang in its infamous "axis of
evil". Whatever doubts remained in Pyongyang about US
intentions were dispelled by the war in Iraq, which led
North Korean leaders to draw three conclusions. A
non-aggression agreement with the United States was
pointless. No inspections regime would ever be good
enough for Washington. And only a nuclear weapon would
deter a US intervention.
North Korean
threat?
This spring North Korea declared that it
had acquired this ultimate deterrent. Beyond the
declaration, however, the evidence is scant. Even if
North Korea had enough fissionable uranium or plutonium,
the material would need to be weaponized, which requires
miniaturization technology that North Korean scientists
do not likely possess. A US Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) report recently leaked to the New York Times
suggests that North Korea has an advanced nuclear
testing site in Yongdok, but there is still no evidence
that Pyongyang has yet developed any warheads to test.
As for delivering such a weapon, North Korea has tested
only one rocket with the potential to reach parts of
Alaska - the Taepodong in 1998 - and the launch fell far
short in terms of both distance and accuracy. Nor does
North Korea likely have the heat-shield technology that
would prevent its warheads from burning up on re-entry
from the atmosphere.
Pyongyang believes that it
needs a nuclear weapon - or the much cheaper illusion of
one - because its conventional forces are a mess. Though
superior to the South Korean army on the eve of the
Korean War, North Korean forces have fallen on hard
times. The South Korean army spends US$163,000 per
soldier for food, clothes, and armaments. North Korea
spends less than one-tenth that amount. North Korea's
entire government budget is several billion dollars
smaller than South Korea's military budget alone.
Underfunded and no longer aided by cheap Soviet imports,
North Korean military technology is out of date. In a
naval battle in 1999, South Korean forces easily
outgunned the North Koreans. A South Korean officer told
the Korea Herald, "You could see many North Korean
sailors exposed on the deck, because they had to handle
the guns manually, while our sailors were inside
watching radar screens and computer monitors." Without
fuel or spare parts, North Korean pilots are limited to
13 hours of training missions a year. After five years
of food shortages, soldiers are malnourished, and many
have been rebuilding crumbling civilian infrastructure
rather than training in military exercises.
Even
so, Pyongyang is not entirely a paper tiger. Its stocks
of short-range missiles and long-range artillery could
do a great deal of damage, particularly to South Korea.
To beef up this retaliatory capability, Pyongyang
continues to finance its military sector, thus diverting
precious funds away from stabilizing its economy. The
worst of the famine that plagued the country after 1995
is over, but the North Korean economy remains fragile.
And the Bush administration wants to cripple North
Korea's economy further still.
Economic
noose
It has never been easy to get from Japan to
North Korea. Most visitors have to fly to Beijing before
boarding a biweekly North Korean jetliner to Pyongyang.
By sea, however, several cargo ships and a weekly ferry
have until recently carried people and goods between the
two countries. Most of this trade has been overseen by
Chosen Soren, an association of Koreans affiliated with
Pyongyang but living in Japan.
In early June,
nearly 2,000 Japanese government inspectors descended on
the docks of Niigata, a port on the west coast of Japan,
in preparation to search the incoming North Korean ferry
for safety violations, infectious diseases, and
immigration irregularities. Pyongyang responded by
canceling the ferry run. Urged on by Washington, the
Japanese authorities also detained two North Korean
cargo ships as part of an effort to shut down trade
relations between Chosen Soren and Pyongyang.
As
summer approached, Washington and Tokyo shifted into
high gear to turn the economic screws on North Korea.
The military option remains on the Pentagon's table, but
Washington is also testing the possibility of toppling
the regime in Pyongyang by spending it into the ground.
This economic strategy has several components.
The Bush administration has cut back on food aid,
arguing that monitoring should be improved and no doubt
hoping that fewer high-calorie biscuits will incite
children, pregnant and nursing mothers, and the elderly
to rebel against the regime. There has also been an
attempt to cut off the drug trafficking and arms exports
that North Korea has increasingly relied on, in part
because Pyongyang's attempt to expand legitimate
enterprises has been thwarted by the US and its allies.
Toward that end, Washington last month developed the
"Madrid initiative" by convening another coalition of
the willing to explore how to bend international law to
the US objective of boarding every suspicious vessel
heading into and out of North Korea.
And the
otherwise-multilateralism-averse Bush administration is
rejecting North Korea's demand for bilateral
negotiations in favor of including more countries in the
discussion. This strategy serves to underscore North
Korea's isolation. But the hardliners in the
administration - John Bolton in the State Department,
Paul Wolfowitz in the Pentagon - are also not interested
in the give-and-take of negotiations. This "just say no"
faction has repeatedly rebuffed various North Korean
offers, not bothering to pursue the negotiable items
beneath the bluff and bluster in an effort to achieve a
diplomatic solution to the escalating crisis.
Military shell game
In the autumn and
winter of 2002, hundreds of thousands of South Koreans
poured into the streets to protest the acquittal of two
US soldiers whose vehicle accidentally struck and killed
a pair of young Korean girls. Many of the protesters
also wanted a reduction of the 37,000 troops stationed
in South Korea, nearly half of whom are positioned as a
tripwire near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) across from
North Korea.
Imagine South Korea's surprise when
the US military responded last month by announcing the
withdrawal of the 2nd Infantry Division from the DMZ to
positions south of Seoul. The protesters should have
been delighted. They weren't.
Although the
transformation of US forces in South Korea to a more
mobile rapid-reaction force has been under way for
several years, the withdrawal of the troops from the DMZ
has been widely interpreted as pulling US soldiers out
of harm's way to prepare for a military strike on North
Korea. The Pentagon has long been concerned with the
"tyranny of proximity" that hampers its maneuverability
on the Korean Peninsula.
New South Korean
President Roh Moo-hyun pleaded with Washington to put
off this relocation until the current nuclear crisis is
resolved. He was ignored. Instead, the Bush
administration threw money at the problem, offering $11
billion to upgrade US forces in South Korea over the
next four years.
This latest offer is part of a
joint US and South Korean effort to beef up the latter's
military capabilities. Seoul has set out to acquire at
least three Aegis-class destroyers and to upgrade its
air force with cutting-edge US reconnaissance planes and
F-15 fighters. At South Korea's urging, the US reversed
a 1979 agreement and extended the range of South Korean
tactical missiles to 300 kilometers, which brought them
within striking distance of all of North Korea. For
2003, the Seoul government will spend $14.5 billion on
the military, a 6.4 percent increase over 2002 and the
highest defense budget in its history.
South
Korea is not the only country in the region to use the
current crisis as a rationale for military muscle
flexing. Last February, for the first time since World
War II, a top Japanese official threatened another
country with attack. Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba
argued that Japan had the right to prevent a North
Korean ballistic-missile attack. What Ishiba failed to
explain was how Japan was going to accomplish this
preemptive strike. Still governed by a peace
constitution that restricts its military to a defensive
posture, Japan has no offensive missiles of its own. And
without an in-air refueling capacity, Japanese bombers
can only make one-way trips.
All of that is
changing. Under the leadership of Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi and with support from Washington,
Japan is shrugging off the constraints of its peace
constitution. It is aggressively pursuing missile
defense, has launched its first military satellites, has
promised to provide backup to any US military action in
the region, and is set to acquire an in-air refueling
capacity to make its threats of preemptive strikes a
great deal more credible. Some Japanese and US
politicians have even called on Tokyo to develop its own
nuclear deterrent.
Disturbing
parallels
By bolstering allied forces in South
Korea and encouraging Japan to flex some newfound
offensive muscles, the United States is following
through on its own military-first policy. The parallel
with Pyongyang is disturbing. Until recently, North
Korea pursued a strategy of kangsong taeguk,
seeking strong economic and military power. Building up
the military was important, but so too were the critical
economic reforms that the government had been slowly
unveiling in preparation for the big bang of lifting
wage and price controls last summer. This March,
however, Pyongyang shifted to a military-first policy in
response to the current crisis.
The hardliners
in both capitals have developed a reckless
co-dependency. The North Korean threat serves as a
useful rationale for missile defense and the expansion
of US military influence in East Asia. And obstinate
leaders in Pyongyang, who blame US policies for the
problems that assail the country, now have ample
ammunition for their argument that negotiations with
Washington are a waste of time.
It is difficult
to know what kind of opposition to this inflexible
position exists in Pyongyang. In Washington, though,
bipartisan support for a diplomatic solution is growing.
Conservative Republican Representative Curt Weldon
visited Pyongyang last month and came back with a
10-point proposal that would start with a one-year
non-aggression pact signed by Washington and Pyongyang.
Within the administration, it is rumored that the
relatively moderate Secretary of State Colin Powell and
his allies in the State Department continue to push for
the more traditional carrot-and-stick policies of the
Clinton era. Scholars and activists are also mounting
pressure from the outside.
A bipartisan
consensus has formed around a revised "grand bargain"
between the United States and North Korea that would
freeze the latter's nuclear and missile programs in
exchange for political and economic incentives.
According to this new consensus, promoted for instance
by Selig Harrison and the Task Force on US Korea Policy,
North Korea would freeze both its plutonium-reprocessing
and uranium-enrichment facilities in exchange for
guaranteed supplies of energy (such as natural gas from
Russia), and it would freeze its missile-testing program
in exchange for US or European launches of North Korean
satellites. In addition, the United States would finally
lift all remaining sanctions against North Korea,
support that country's applications to international
financial institutions, and provide economic support for
the rehabilitation of its energy and extraction
industries. The US would also eventually "lower its
military profile" on the peninsula in exchange for
comparable confidence-building moves by North Korea.
Considered in isolation, many of the elements of
this grand bargain are certainly within reach. Last
October, North Korea offered to shut down its nuclear
program in exchange for a non-aggression pact, and it
has indicated on numerous occasions that its missile
program is negotiable. In 2000, North Korea made an
opening bid to end its missile program in return for $3
billion over three years, no doubt a negotiable figure.
It also wouldn't take much to remove North Korea from
the State Department's terrorism list and to lift the
remaining economic sanctions. North Korea has hinted
that it would compromise on the single remaining
obstacle - several Japanese Red Army hijackers holed up
in North Korea for the past 30 years.
Before the
current crisis broke, such a grand bargain with North
Korea seemed conceivable. Other countries - South Korea,
Taiwan, South Africa, Kazakhstan - have been persuaded
to stop nuclear programs through diplomatic means, and
the right combination of incentives no doubt could have
been found for North Korea. Now, however, an Agreed
Framework Plus that could provide such a magical mix of
carrots seems almost chimerical owing to the twin
obsessions of the principals - Washington's push for
regime change and Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear
deterrence.
We are entering a crushing new era
of geopolitics. In the absence of well-enforced
international laws and treaties, countries will fall
back on their own mechanisms for preventing outside
intervention. In geopolitics, as in geometry, parallel
tracks do not meet. Until the United States and North
Korea undo their fearful symmetry by getting serious at
the negotiating table, East Asia will remain on the
precipice.
John Feffer (johnfeffer@aol.com), editor
of Power Trip: US Unilateralism and Global Strategy
after September 11 (Seven Stories Press), writes
regularly for Foreign Policy in Focus. He is the author
of the forthcoming North Korea, South Korea: US
Policy at a Time of Crisis (Seven Stories Press).
This article is posted with permission of Foreign
Policy In Focus.
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