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SPEAKING
FREELY
Pyongyang sustains the
unsustainable
By Paul Nash
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click here if you are
interested in contributing.
North Korea
last week celebrated the 55th anniversary of its
transformation into a communist state. To mark the
occasion, it put on a mass celebration in Kim Il-song
Square, with vast civilian crowds wielding red and blue
flags and flower bouquets, dancing and singing patriotic
songs.
While column after column of soldiers
also marched, it had been widely speculated that the
parade would feature a huge procession of tanks,
artillery and missiles - a show of defiance to the world
over the mounting calls for Kim Jong-il to abandon his
fledgling nuclear program. Unexpectedly however,
Pyongyang did not roll out its heavy military hardware,
probably not wishing to increase tensions on the
peninsula. But this concession is unlikely to have been
made, as some have suggested, to signal North Korea's
willingness to back away from its nuclear ambitions.
In a speech delivered at the parade, Kim
Yong-chun, chief of the Korean People's Army general
staff, once again laid out Pyongyang's case for
developing nuclear weapons. A nuclear deterrent, he
contended, is warranted by the security threat posed by
the United States' military presence in the region. His
comments were largely dismissed in Washington, written
off as a gust of military bravado meant to bolster North
Korea's negotiating position ahead of the next round of
multinational talks in China.
China, which
helped broker the first round of talks in Beijing aimed
at resolving the standoff, sent a congratulatory letter
to Kim Jong-il on the communist anniversary, pledging
its continued support for peace and stability in the
region.
There has been much debate in the United
States and around the globe about the true nuclear
intentions of Pyongyang. Is North Korea playing a game
of military brinksmanship as a way of forcing the United
States to the economic bargaining table? Or is Pyongyang
serious about pursuing its nuclear ambitions, regardless
of world opinion or what happens during talks in
Beijing?
In order to understand better the
current tensions between Pyongyang and Washington, I
recently spoke to Dr Kurt Campbell. Campbell previously
served as the US deputy assistant secretary of defense
for Asia and the Pacific at the Pentagon, as well as
director on the National Security Council staff in the
White House. Campbell was also associate professor of
public policy and international relations at the John F
Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and
an officer in the US Navy serving on the Joint Chiefs of
Staff.
He is currently senior vice president and
director of the International Security Program at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington, DC, where he also holds the Henry A
Kissinger chair in National Security. He received his
bachelor's degree from the University of California at
San Diego, a certificate in music and politics from the
University of Erevan in the Soviet Union, and a
doctorate in international relations from Oxford
University.
Paul Nash: Dr Campbell, in
your view does North Korea have legitimate security
concerns to justify the development of nuclear weapons
as a deterrent to regional threats?
Kurt
Campbell: Ultimately, yes - but I think there are
larger questions that are more troubling and difficult
to answer. Recent revelations and other reports suggest
that the North Korean regime is even more brutal than we
had anticipated, with enormous gulags, vast misery. The
harder question is not whether the North Korean regime
is threatened, but how threatening is North Korea both
to its people and the region? It is at the nub of this
conundrum that US policy finds itself. On the one hand,
there is a strong desire to prevent North Korea from
acquiring and developing nuclear weapons - that is
obvious. But at the same time, there is, in some
quarters, a reluctance to take the kinds of steps that
could both secure and sustain the current leadership in
North Korea and, in exchange, remove the potential
threat of the spread of nuclear weapons. I think that in
the final analysis the US administration will decide
that the threat of nuclear weapons is so overriding that
it will consider doing business with an odious regime in
North Korea. But, as we have seen over the last many
months, getting to that point is much more painful than
any of us would have anticipated many months ago.
Nash: There seems to be a widespread
feeling that this regime in Pyongyang is so brutal, so
repressive because it is so vulnerable. What is your
assessment of the current health of Kim Jong-il's
regime?
Campbell: When I was in the
Pentagon in the mid-1990s, we were involved in very
detailed efforts to try to determine what was
transpiring in North Korea. At the time there was a very
substantial famine in North Korea and very real concerns
about the potential for internal implosion. I think many
thought at that time that the North Korean regime might
not last very long. Of course, if you look back
periodically in history, there have been many who have
overestimated the vulnerability of North Korea. Today,
in 2003, the regime shows no current signs of faltering.
That being said, however, the very nature of the current
North Korean regime will probably be that we will not
see very many signs even on the eve of its collapse.
Ultimately, it is so fundamentally out of tune with
others in the region, including its primary patron
China, that it is very difficult to imagine it
sustaining itself indefinitely. Indeed, I find it hard
to believe, as I look from a perspective of 1997/6, that
it is still around today, six or seven years later.
Nevertheless, there we are. I think we have to plan for
the prospect of change in North Korea, perhaps even
sudden change, and at the same time recognize that
fulfilling that promise may be years or even decades
away.
Nash: Do you believe that North
Korea possesses the nuclear capabilities that it is
apparently claiming?
Campbell: I think it
is likely that North Korea probably has a small arsenal
- one or two weapons. I don't think it is unlikely. I
can't say much more about that. The reality is that at a
fundamental level we know very little about North Korea.
I think that its claims for having anything more
substantial than that are likely to be exaggerated. The
larger question is: under any circumstances is North
Korea prepared to relinquish its fledgling nuclear
capabilities? The answer I am coming to is,
unfortunately, no. North Korea will continue to hold out
the internal option of building nuclear weapons even
while pursuing international diplomacy, largely because
on some level they have determined that nuclear status
provides them a sort of regime guarantee - which I do
not think is the case - and a belief that the only way
to remove themselves from the danger they feel that the
United States poses to them is by developing that
nuclear capability.
Nash: Since 1994 we
have heard so much talk of a "red line", a trigger-point
beyond which the US feels it will have no alternative to
exercising some form of military action against North
Korea. I first had the impression that North Korea would
cross this line if it actually began to harvest
weapons-grade plutonium and build nuclear bombs. This
now seems to be the case, yet the US response has
appeared almost nonchalant. It leaves me wondering where
exactly this "red line" lies, if indeed there can be a
single, clearly defined line in such complex and
delicate circumstances. Indeed, some people have
suggested that ultimately the United States will be
forced to accept a nuclear North Korea and try to limit
what Pyongyang does with its nuclear material.
In the end, do you believe that the United
States will wage war on North Korea if this issue is not
settled?
Campbell: My goodness, I hope
not. The reality, of course, is that extraordinarily
skillful and creative people on both sides have spent
decades - almost half a century - devising ingenious
ways to go to war on the Korean Peninsula. I fear that
if there were a conflict, overnight tens of thousands,
perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians
would die, and it would devastate the Korean Peninsula.
Now, there is a small group in the Pentagon that
believes that it is possible to anticipate a more
sophisticated military campaign, using some of the
things that we have learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, and
prosecuting a "cleaner" war. I still think that such an
endeavor is deeply unlikely. First of all, it would
trigger the very kind of consequences in North Korea
that we fear. There is a massive militarization across
the DMZ [Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas] -
huge numbers of men under arms, large amounts of
mechanized and long range artillery forces - that are
poised basically to destroy Seoul, which is one of the
largest cities in the world. War really needs to be
avoided at virtually all costs.
Unfortunately,
the difficulty that we have is deep unpredictability in
terms of our interactions with North Korea. On top of
that, the only successful diplomacy that the
international community has experienced in the past has
involved some degree of threatening and brinksmanship
with North Korea. It only takes one miscommunication or
one missed signal to lead to a real crisis. That is the
issue that we worry about now. With the deep lack of
trust and heightening anxiety on both sides, as you ramp
up tensions and threats, then the real risks of
escalation or miscalculation are apparent.
Nash: I recently spoke to retired US
Lieutenant-Colonel James Zumwalt, who strongly advocates
a regime change in Pyongyang (see Why Kim Jong-il must go, August 23).
In your view, is forcing such a regime change a viable
alternative?
Campbell: I don't think it
is viable. The only viable recourse to a new regime in
North Korea is for China to take a more dramatic role.
China right now really wants to avoid two things. On the
one hand it wants to avoid a nuclear North Korea, and on
the other hand it also wants to avoid a rupturing regime
change in North Korea. Choosing between two things you
do not want, if you are forced to choose, is obviously
the challenge of national policymaking. It is a Sophie's
Choice in a sense for the leadership in Beijing. In the
end, the prospect of a regime change that is unplanned
and that is messy, involving enormous numbers of
refugees and other issues, is something that I think
China feels it cannot take right now.
Nash: Many people feel that Pyongyang has
tried to drive a wedge between the US and South Korea on
security issues. Do you think that North Korea is also
attempting to drive a similar wedge between the US and
China?
Campbell: I think that the United
States and South Korea have done very well, thank you
very much, in driving our own wedges into our
relationship. There is intensity in the dialogue between
Beijing and Washington about what is transpiring in the
talks, but I think that ultimately it is very healthy.
It is very healthy to see China playing such a robust
role in these discussions. China is in a sense playing
the role that the United States normally plays - it is
the convenor, it is the cajoler, both going to North
Korea and the United States asking for greater
flexibility. It is ironic that the [George W] Bush
administration, during the [US presidential election]
campaign, talked about the worries or the threats
associated with a constructive strategic partnership
with China, and thought of China as a strategic
competitor. Now, however, we find ourselves in a
situation where the Bush administration has actually
built a constructive strategic partnership, and US-China
relations are probably the best they have been in a
generation, perhaps ever. I think China appreciates that
and probably the Bush administration does as well. I
think it is beyond North Korea to drive too large a
wedge into that relationship.
Nash:
September 11, 2001, and this dispute have clearly
offered some common ground on which the US and China
have been able to come together and cooperate in matters
of regional security in Asia. China has good reason to
cooperate: North Korea serves as a buffer zone between
its borders and US bases in South Korea, and a war on
the peninsula would upset regional stability and
jeopardize the remarkable economic and social reform
efforts that have been taking place in China. But at the
same time, there are some sharply differing viewpoints
in Beijing with respect to China's strategic regional
security, as well as the nature of its relationship with
North Korea and the level of support it ought to give.
How much cooperation can the United States expect from
China, and in your view what are the implications for
China domestically?
Campbell: I think we
can expect China to weigh in very, very heavily behind
the scenes with North Korea on its nuclear ambitions,
and I think that is ongoing now. I would not put it past
Pyongyang to extract a quid pro quo in the
process, but I would expect China to be involved in that
- that might be painful and difficult, but I think it is
ongoing. In terms of domestic problems and politics for
China, remember they face enormous domestic issues, with
unemployment and a leadership transition. This is still
an external problem that, even with the potential influx
of refugees, is relatively modest.
It will be
interesting to see, over the next several months, how
this process, that has been undertaken between the
United States and its regional allies concerning North
Korea, plays out.
Speaking Freely is an
Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to
have their say. Please click here if you are
interested in contributing.
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