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No more pandering to
Pyongyang
By Stephen Blank
Japan's decision to bring North Korea's nuclear
proliferation to the United Nations for debate and
resolution marks another significant development in the
saga of Pyongyang's nuclearization. Not only does it
signify Japan's final loss of patience with North
Korea's brinkmanship and nuclear threats, it also
represents in more prosaic terms a Japanese effort, no
doubt supported by at least some of the other states
involved, to call North Korea's bluff.
This,
frankly, is unprecedented in the record of crises
stemming from North Korean nuclearization. Normally it
is North Korea that has pushed its interlocutors to the
brink, not the other way around. Whether or not North
Korea actually has nuclear weapons or is close enough to
be undeterred from producing and subsequently deploying
them, Pyongyang has repeatedly shown that it will not
abide by any agreements to stop it from achieving its
nuclear desire. Moreover, past actions show that it will
continue to threaten and bluster while practicing
brinkmanship in the service of its ends.
As was
recently pointed out by Nicholas Eberstadt, who holds
the Henry Wendt chair in political economy at the
American Enterprise Institute and is senior adviser to
the National Bureau of Asian Research, only concerted
multilateral pressure has gotten Pyongyang even to talk
about curtailing its program. But despite all the
agreements and treaties North Korea signed, whether
under pressure or not, it steadfastly refused to obey
their terms. Thus we take for granted the tenacity of
North Korea's desire to have a functioning nuclear
weapon or weapons. Therefore, only the most resolute and
unbending foreign pressure will induce it to cease and
desist from further nuclearization.
In the
meantime, North Korea's earlier and present tenacity has
triggered and continues to stimulate an anxious
speculation abroad as to how we may pay Pyongyang off
lest North Korea actually obtain these weapons.
Accordingly, throughout the current crisis a veritable
cottage industry of analysts has speculated as to why
North Korea persists in its supposed folly. Some believe
it feels threatened by the administration of US
President George W Bush and the United States' menacing
and moralistic rhetoric. Yet the program long antedates
Bush's ascension to the presidency. Others believe it
feels threatened by the US in general, or that it seeks
legitimacy, along with guarantees of economic assistance
and non-aggression. While all this may well be true,
more prosaic explanations also suggest themselves.
Certainly the record would suggest to any North
Korean leader that nuclear threats are profitable. In
1992-94 North Korea's threats induced Washington to sign
the Agreed Framework and to promise food aid and provide
energy to the country. Japan and South Korea also
pledged aid to North Korea under the terms of this
agreement and subsequently, South Korea clandestinely
forked over hundreds of million of dollars to the North
Korean government in order to jump start negotiations.
China continued to ship the materials needed to complete
the program, and Pyongyang's relations with Russia
improved considerably after 1994. Even Israel at one
point offered assistance in return for a cessation of
nuclear exports, which, of course, never stopped.
Under the circumstances, any North Korean
government would have to believe that such brinkmanship
pays and that, moreover, it need not actually pay the
price of stopping the nuclear and military-first
programs that further impoverish the population.
However, this time, the Bush administration has rightly
called its bluff and refused to pay blackmail, thereby
demonstrating that North Korea has systematically
miscalculated and overreached throughout this crisis.
Those miscalculations have led both Russia and China to
undertake demonstrative military actions to show North
Korea their displeasure and to communicate it along with
Washington, Tokyo and Seoul at the Beijing meetings from
August 27-29. North Korea nevertheless persists in
refusing to negotiate in good faith or to submit to the
treaties it signed.
Therefore we need to
understand that Pyongyang's desire for nuclear weapons
is evidently unshakable unless crushing and unremitting
pressure is brought to bear upon it. Pyongyang's nuclear
policies cast North Korea as a rogue state or, more
precisely, an outlaw state. It is not merely that North
Korea has broken every agreement it has signed regarding
its nuclear program. The very desire to have nuclear
weapons in order to threaten everyone else with
unspeakable havoc while its own people starve is also
not the main political issue, though it certainly is a
huge moral one. Rather, as Sir Lawrence Freedman,
professor of war studies at Kings College in London, has
written, "acquiring a nuclear capability is a statement
of a lack of confidence in alternative security
arrangements". And while increasing other neighboring
states' security problems, it also establishes limits to
any regional system of collective security.
North Korea's acquisition of nuclear weapons is
not only a vote of no confidence in the international
security system, but it also represents a determination
to frustrate any collective security system in Northeast
Asia and to act as if it is above the law or any
external political pressure. Thus its nuclear program
threatens China and Russia as much as it does the United
States and its Asian allies. Indeed, proliferators of
nuclear or other mass-destruction weapons seek to
immunize themselves from most, if not all, foreign
supervision or control over their defense programs. They
consciously place themselves outside the law (hors la
loi in the famous French revolutionary phrase) in
order to introduce or extend a state of siege in world
politics. Hence the appellation of being a rogue or
outlaw state.
It is this situation that has led
Tokyo, no doubt with other states' support, to the UN
and has placed this dilemma squarely in its lap. North
Korea's earlier threats to regard mere discussion of its
nuclear program at the UN as equivalent to an act of war
is the most telling indicator of its outlaw tendencies,
a statement for which it has received little of the
censure it deserves. Thus Japan, like the Bush
administration before it, has called North Korea's
bluff. While to this writer it apparently is even money
or better that North Korea might again raise the ante or
try another round of double or nothing or of nuclear
blackmail, like a gambler who no longer recognizes
reality, the cumulative pressure of its isolation and
the fact that those who might support it are hoisted on
their own petard of earlier rhetoric about the UN's
supremacy in world politics, offers at least some hope
that Japan's recent action may actually bring about some
positive results.
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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