OPINION Kerry dead wrong on North
Korea By Marc Erikson
In last
Thursday's first presidential debate focused on foreign
policy, Senator John Kerry charged that the Bush
administration had neglected the North Korean nuclear
threat and said he would resume bilateral talks with
North Korea if elected.
A return to the pre-2001
[former US President Bill] Clinton framework of
bilateral negotiations would be an egregious foreign and
security policy blunder with far-reaching and dangerous
consequences. President George W Bush's reply to Kerry
that, "The minute we have bilateral talks the six-party
talks will unwind. That's what Kim Jong-il wants," were
on the mark. So were remarks by China's foreign minister
Li Zhaoxing the same day that, "the entire international
community agrees that the six-nation approach is the
best way to deal with the problem," and represents "the
only feasible and correct option".
So, what's
wrong with a return to bilateral US - North Korea talks
on the 1993 - 2000 model? Pretty much everything - on
the reasonable assumption, at any rate, that one wants
North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program(s)
without resorting to military force.
The 1994 US
- North Korea "Agreed Framework" (signed October 1994)
provided that Pyongyang would "freeze" and later
dismantle its nuclear facilities in return for being
supplied with proliferation-proof nuclear reactors. It
didn't work. Inspection and enforcement mechanisms
proved inadequate. The US (and South Korea and Japan)
went slow on starting reactor construction (now
abandoned). In October 2002, the US charged that North
Korea had started - and admitted to starting - an
enriched uranium program for a second track of weapons
development circumventing inspection of the Yongbyong
plutonium enrichment plant. Pyongyang has since denied
possession of uranium enrichment facilities. But
testimony by Pakistan's one-time nuclear weapons program
chief AQ Khan that he supplied North Korea with
centrifuge technology for production of highly enriched
uranium (HEU) in return for missile technology certainly
lends plausibility to US charges.
The rest is
(recent) history. North Korea in early 2003 expelled UN
inspectors from Yongbyong, pulled out of the nuclear
non-proliferation treaty (NPT), and started reprocessing
8,000 spent-fuel rods extracted from the Yongbyong
reactor. On September 27, North Korean vice foreign
minister Choe Su Hon told a news conference at the UN,
"We have already made clear that we have already
reprocessed 8,000 wasted fuel rods and transformed them
into arms," adding that, "We declared that we weaponized
this."
Senator Kerry, incidentally, seems to
believe in the veracity of Choe's statement. In the
debate with Bush, he claimed, "There are four to seven
nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korea. That
happened on this president's watch." Note, however, that
while it's true that 8,000 reprocessed fuel rods could
yield enough weapons-grade plutonium for eight nuclear
devices and that North Korea may have been in possession
of enough plutonium prior to the 1994 agreement for two
more, plutonium-based nuclear weapons are much more
difficult to construct than HEU-based ones and certainly
would need to be tested for any assurance they wouldn't
fizzle.
Be that as it may, Kerry is wrong to
call for a return to bilateral talks. Kim Jong-il may
loathe the US and vilify it, but he fears China. When
Bush agreed with then Chinese president Jiang Zemin at a
late October 2002 meeting at Bush's Crawford, Texas,
ranch that, "Both sides will continue to work toward a
nuclear weapons-free Korean Peninsula and a peaceful
resolution of this issue," and Jiang said, "We're
completely in the dark as far as the recent development
[North Korea's US-alleged admission of having a uranium
program], but today President Bush and I agreed that the
problem should be resolved peacefully," a major
diplomatic-strategic breakthrough had been achieved.
Following that, and perceiving the opportunity
for playing a lead role in resolving a crucial regional
and global strategic issue, China went all out in
bringing North Korea into six-way negotiations even as
Kim insisted that only bilateral talks with its main
enemy, the US, could succeed in crisis resolution. A
first round of six-way talks in Beijing in April 2003
(North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia, China, and the
US) made no discernible progress. At that point, China
began to play hard ball. Oil deliveries from China to
North Korea were interrupted as the result of a
"pipeline failure". In mid-August 2003, General Xu
Caihou, head of the People's Liberation Army's general
political department (recently appointed deputy chairman
of the central military commission), was deployed to
Pyongyang on a "goodwill mission" (Xinhua) to meet with
vice marshal Jo Myong-rok and Kim Jong-il, but - in
effect - to read them the riot act, telling them that,
"the six-way talks are not an opportunity to waste."
[Note that Xu is a former political commissar of the
Jinan military region bordering North Korea and that in
the time frame of his Pyongyang visit several added PLA
divisions were deployed to Jinan and replaced border
police units.] The late-August six-way talks were more
productive.
China - and no one else - has the
political, military and economic wherewithal to rein in
North Korea and, over time, the ability to make sure
that progress is made. There is no urgent need to act,
no deadline by which North Korea must be forced to
accept nuclear disarmament as long as China is prepared
to keep the peace. The Bush administration to all
appearances understands that. Kerry, judging by his
debate points and earlier statements, does not. His
chief adviser on the issue, Clinton defense secretary
William Perry, is a hawk on North Korea. Were he to get
back into a position of confronting Kim in the context
of a Kerry-proposed bilateral framework, things could
get very ugly. It's eminently preferable to have a
"friend and comrade" of Kim's like Xu Caihou play that
role.
And there's a broader strategic issue
Kerry either willfully ignores or is ignorant of. At
least since the October 2002 Jiang - Bush summit, the US
and China have enjoyed excellent bilateral relations,
which serve both nations well. In significant part, the
goodwill that now exists has been built as the three
six-way talks developed and proceeded. China feels
reassured that the US is prepared to accord it a measure
of trust in securing the peace in East Asia. For its
help with North Korea, the US has reciprocated by
acknowledging the "one China" doctrine and seriously
cautioned Taiwan's Chen Shui-bian against any moves
toward independence and in violation of the status quo.
On the economic front, China and the US are fast
becoming each others' most important partners.
Occasional tiffs over exchange rates and trade frictions
have been pragmatically resolved or contained. Kerry, by
contrast, playing to US trade union audiences, has
called China's currency regime "predatory". A Kerry
administration, whether in regard to security or
economic policy, could unravel a carefully knit
strategic partnership Clinton merely talked about, but
Bush has promoted in practical terms.
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