|
|
|
|
Bush bereft of good options in
North Korea
By Yoel Sano
Despite the neo-conservative clamor for
regime change in North Korea and toppling
Pyongyang leader Kim Jong-il, US options are
extremely limited, with potentially risky, or
devastating implications and consequences for
Northeast Asia and for the US position in the
world.
As US President George W Bush
prepares for his second term, the ongoing dispute
over North Korea's nuclear-weapons program looms
as a major security challenge for his
administration. Voices in Washington urging a
tougher policy toward Pyongyang are growing
louder, with the influential Project for a New
American Century (PNAC) think-tank calling for
regime change in North Korea. Nonetheless, the US
domestic political priorities and international
considerations necessitate continuing the "war on
terror" over the next few years. Additionally, the
geopolitical situation in the Middle East,
especially Iraq, will continue to dominate US
foreign policy objectives. Furthermore, even if
Bush eventually were able to focus more attention
on the Korean Peninsula, he would find there are
few good options available, and all of them carry
considerable risks to the United States' standing
in Asia and the world.
'War on terror',
Iraq still priorities
Bush's November
presidential election victory showed that homeland
security and the "war on terror" remain uppermost
in US voter considerations, especially with Osama
bin Laden himself appearing on television just
days before the vote. Democratic Party challenger
John Kerry's failure to make a campaign issue out
of Bush's own failure to bring about complete,
verifiable, and irreversible dismantling (CVID) of
North Korea's nuclear weapons program - the
administration's stated goal - underscores the low
priority with which the US electorate rates events
on the Korean Peninsula.
Instead, the "war
on terror" and instability in Iraq and the wider
Middle East, will constitute more pressing
challenges for Bush in his second term. The
situation in Iraq is still volatile, with the US
troop presence there being increased temporarily
from 138,000 to 150,000, ahead of Iraq's first
elections on January 30. Saudi Arabia also remains
a concern, with fears that the pro-US royal family
is losing control of the country, and by extension
oil supplies vital to the United States.
Furthermore, the US administration
has been ratcheting up the pressure on Iran
with regard to the latter's suspected
nuclear-weapons program. In essence, the US wishes to
nip the Iranian nuke threat in the bud,
before Tehran manages to acquire nuclear-weapons
capabilities, which North Korea has been using so
successfully to deter Washington from taking a
more aggressive stance toward Pyongyang.
All these factors will give North Korean
leader Kim Jong-il some breathing space from
America's wrath. Meanwhile, Bush will find that
his options with regard to Pyongyang are very
limited, and all of them carry key dangers, which,
if unleashed, could leave the US in a position
worse off than before.
Option 1: Do
nothing
First, the administration could
leave the Korean Peninsula alone while it deals
with the Middle East. This policy of "benign
neglect" was apparent during late 2002 and much of
2003, when Bush was preoccupied with the buildup
to the war in Iraq, the conflict itself, and its
aftermath. The key dangers of this policy are that
it makes the US seem weak and allows Pyongyang
both to openly defy Washington and increase its
nuclear capability at the same time. The more
nuclear weapons Pyongyang comes to possess, the
more threatening it becomes to the US and its
allies in the region, Japan and South Korea - even
if the nuclear ratio is overwhelmingly skewed in
America's favor.
Furthermore, inaction
sends the message to America's two main Asian
allies that Washington is disinterested in their
security concerns. That situation, if left
unattended, could persuade Tokyo and Seoul to
develop their own nuclear weapons. This in turn
would undermine US strategic influence in
Northeast Asia, since one of Washington's unstated
reasons for disarming North Korea is to ensure
that Japan and South Korea have no reasons to
develop their own nuclear weapons and remain
non-nuclear powers.
If the two nations
went nuclear, they could quickly develop more
independent strategic postures, which would not
necessarily dovetail with the United States' grand
strategy of remaining the world's sole superpower.
Option 2: Restart the six-way
talks
During the second half of 2003 and
for much of 2004, the US attempted to forge a
multilateral solution to its dispute with North
Korea by bringing South Korea, Japan, China, and
Russia onboard the six-way talks. Washington's
idea was to build a united front to pressure
Pyongyang into giving up its nukes. However,
Beijing's and Moscow's traditionally pro-Pyongyang
leanings (though not without misgivings, and
compounded by misgivings about US intentions)
meant that North Korea could rely on disagreements
and divisions between the larger powers to delay
and stall the negotiation process. Once the US
election campaign was underway, Pyongyang
abandoned the talks, apparently hoping that
Democratic nominee John Kerry would offer it a
better deal if he won.
Kerry lost, but
Bush still has the option of re-starting the
six-way talks. The trouble with this approach is
that Pyongyang will still be able to delay and
stall any meaningful concessions to the US. It is
conceivable that North Korea could even stretch
the discussions over the course of the next four
years, perhaps counting on continued instability
in the Middle East, and the possibility of a
(potentially more moderate) Democratic Party
candidate winning the 2008 US presidential
election, while building up its nuclear
capabilities and negotiating from a position of
even greater strength when it eventually feels
ready. As with Option 1 (do nothing: benign
neglect), if Japan and South Korea see no
progress, they may quietly prepare to go nuclear
themselves.
Option 3: Engage in direct
talks with North Korea
This was the
strategy suggested by Kerry, and was one that
Pyongyang also favored, but which Bush rejected.
Bush did not want to be seen as "rewarding" North
Korea for its deceit, and also did not want to be
seen as excluding allies Japan and South Korea, or
regional powers China and Russia from the nuclear
dispute. If Bush were suddenly to engage North
Korea directly, he would be seen as flip-flopping
(something which his supporters constantly accused
Kerry of doing), and at the same time, this could
raise fears in Tokyo (and to a lesser extent,
Seoul) that its security interests were being
excluded from US-North Korea negotiations.
The bigger danger with
Washington-Pyongyang talks stems from the
possibility that the US and North Korea might be
unable to agree to each other's demands at all.
This would leave them back where they started. Or,
Pyongyang could appear to accept Washington's
terms and sign an agreement, only for the US to
discover years later (or sooner) that North Korea
had deceived it yet again, as has been the case in
the past. Under such a scenario, the US might be
tempted to force regime change in Pyongyang or
attack North Korea militarily in order to bring
about a final solution to its nuclear-weapons
program.
Option 4: Pursue peaceful
regime change in Pyongyang
If the US
cannot force a change of behavior by North Korea's
leaders, it can attempt to bring about regime
change in Pyongyang itself. This would not require
the collapse of the country as a whole, but would
require new and more moderate figures to take
charge in Pyongyang.
The main obstacle to
this strategy is that the United States has very
limited means by which to change the government in
Pyongyang. North Korea has long been considered an
"intelligence black hole" by US officials. By
contrast, intelligence services in China, Russia,
South Korea, and Japan are thought to have a
better understanding of the regime and greater
contacts with officials there, either through
diplomatic representation or through underground
organizations. Therefore, the road to regime
change lies with persuading China - North Korea's
main patron - to bring this about. However,
Beijing is more keen to preserve stability on the
Sino-North Korean border, for fear of triggering
an influx of hungry North Korean refugees into
northeastern China. Beijing leaders are unlikely to
engage in any moves that could destabilize its
neighbor, though it has tried to demonstrate the
benefits of economic reform and greater openness
to Pyongyang.
South Korean leaders have
the same concerns. Seoul needs to delay the
collapse of North Korea as long as possible,
preferably until the North has attained a higher
level of economic development, so that eventual
reunification costs will be lower - it dreads an
East Germany/West Germany scenario, extremely
costly to the west, after the Berlin Wall came
down.
There is a possibility that an
aggressive and anti-Pyongyang South Korean
president would be elected in December 2007 and
take office in February 2008, but by that time he
would have only a limited time to work with Bush
against the North before the US president would
leave office.
The US does have the option
of seeking to trigger a coup in North Korea by
conducting aggressive military exercises designed
to panic Pyongyang's leaders and sow confusion in
their minds. The existence of this plan, known as
OPLAN 5030, was revealed in July 2003, but would
likely require the cooperation of South Korea's
leaders, who oppose such moves as they seek to
implement their own policy of brotherhood and
appeasement with the North.
Option 5: A
military strike against North Korea
This is
by far the most dangerous option, and as such,
should be considered only as a last resort, or
preferably not at all. In theory, the US could
carry out heavy air strikes against suspected
North Korean nuclear and related facilities (a
"surgical strike"), or aim for a wider
shock-and-awe-style campaign to capture Pyongyang
and take over North Korea. The US military has for
decades possessed contingency plans for repelling
a Northern invasion of the South, and in 1998
details leaked of a plan (OPLAN 5027) to
militarily conquer and occupy the North once its
forces had been driven back.
The main
obstacle to an Iraq-style US attack on North Korea
- apart from the fact that US forces are already
stretched thin in Iraq and Afghanistan - is the
high probability that Pyongyang would unleash a
devastating retaliation against South Korea and
even Japan, using its 12,500-strong artillery
pieces against the former, and shorter-range (and
possibly chemical or nuclear-tipped) missiles
against the latter. One US study at the time of
the 1994 nuclear crisis suggested that 52,000
American and 490,000 South Korean military
personnel could be killed or injured during the
first 90 days in a new Korean conflict, which
could cost at least US$61 billion. General Gary
Luck, the US commander in Korea at the time,
estimated that up to one million people could die,
including 80,000-100,000 Americans, and the war
could cost $100 billion in damages. The total
damage to property and disruption to business and
economic activity in the region was reckoned at $1
trillion.
With this in mind, while Seoul
and Tokyo fear Pyongyang's possession of nuclear
weapons, they will oppose any US moves toward a
military solution to the dispute, since they fear
the fallout from a regional war. Han Tae-kyu, the
head of South Korea's Institute of Foreign Affairs
and National Security, was recently quoted by the
South's Yonhap News Agency as saying that "without
consent from neighboring countries, it is
impossible for the US to take military action on
the Korean Peninsula and neighboring countries do
not want it".
Although the US military
could counter Pyongyang's retaliation by using
tactical nuclear weapons against North Korea, the
international outcry would further undermine the
United States' global standing, at a time when it
is already under fire because of the Iraq war and
President Bush's foreign policies. According to
declassified US documents recently obtained by the
Japanese news agency Kyodo, the Pentagon has a
plan to use 30 nuclear warheads against North
Korea, in the event of a new crisis on the
peninsula. While this would ensure that Pyongyang
was disarmed, it would be tantamount to "creating
a wasteland, and calling it peace", in the words
of the Roman historian Tacitus.
Even if
the US were to march into Pyongyang and topple
statues of North Korea's founder and late Great
Leader Kim Il-sung, and those of his son Kim
Jong-il, there would be the likelihood that
die-hard elements of the old regime would fight
on, if not out of love for the Kim dynasty, then
out of sheer patriotism honed by decades of
anti-US propaganda. While some doubt whether North
Korea's 1.2 million-strong armed forces are up to
the fight, Pyongyang also possesses the world's
largest special forces, which number over 100,000.
Even if a small fraction of them were to wage a
guerrilla warfare, it would tie down the US in a
costly war and occupation, on top of the one
already bogging US forces down in Iraq.
These diehard elements could receive
official or unofficial support from China. As well
as opposition to a military solution from South
Korea and Japan, Beijing also would dread any US
military activity right on its doorstep, fearing
that this would lead to a semi-permanent US
military presence there, which could be aimed
eventually against China. As such, a key factor in
any US war calculations is whether China would
send troops to defend North Korea from any
American attack. An audit of South Korea's Defense
Ministry in the country's National Assembly in
October 2004 reckoned that China would deploy as
many as 400,000 troops in support of the North, if
it came to war. Any new Korean conflict would
therefore severely strain Sino-US ties.
In
essence, the choice for Washington in
terms of attacking North Korea or not attacking
may be one of disarming North Korea and risking
the destruction of both Koreas and war with China
on the one hand, or leaving America vulnerable to
North Korean threats, but keeping both Koreas
physically intact, and relations with China
normal.
Given that a new Korean war could
become a quasi-world war, Bush has every reason to
avoid this.
New policy: 'Regime
transformation'
The Bush
administration recognizes the dangers involved, and appears to
be backing away from a confrontational stance
with North Korea. Bush's incoming national
security adviser, Stephen Hadley, recently suggested
that the US would not seek to overthrow the regime
in Pyongyang, but would instead seek
"regime transformation" by means of encouraging
economic reform in the North. These remarks were echoed
by US assistant secretary of state James Kelly
to Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper in late
December.
If this is indeed the case,
the Bush administration may well have chosen
Option 4 "lite" (Pursue peaceful regime change in
Pyongyang), albeit without precluding other
options, while at the same time seeking to
restart the six-way talks (Option 2). As such,
given Washington's preference for a gradual
approach, it seems that Bush is willing to take
the risk that the nuclear dispute may not
necessarily be concluded before he leaves office
in January 2009. However, this policy has already
drawn criticism. Nicholas Eberstadt of the
American Enterprise Institute wrote in the
conservative Weekly Standard magazine last
November, "Most people in the present
administration judge the [former president Bill]
Clinton administration harshly for bequeathing to
posterity a more serious international terrorist
threat than it inherited - and rightly so. If
North Korea's threat to America is greater four
years from now than today, that will be a Bush
administration legacy. And history is unlikely to
judge such a legacy kindly."
A new 'red
line'
Nonetheless, the real question now
facing the Bush administration is whether it can
tolerate a nuclear North Korea. In the past, the
US feared that Pyongyang's possession of nukes
would allow it to deter the United States from intervening
to save South Korea from a Northern invasion. But
North Korea in 2005 is far more preoccupied with
regime survival than conquering the South. To this
end, it seeks to possess nuclear weapons as the
ultimate guarantee that the US does not mount an
Iraq-style invasion of the country. So long as
both Pyongyang and Washington understand this,
they could probably coexist, albeit uneasily.
For the US, the ultimate nightmare is that
Pyongyang will sell a nuclear device to al-Qaeda,
thereby "posing an imminent danger of nuclear
weapons being detonated in American cities", in
the words of former US defense secretary William
Perry. Therefore, it appears that the Bush
administration has unofficially imposed a "red
line", which if crossed, could trigger war. This
red line would be any action by Pyongyang to
transfer nuclear weapons or elements of such a
device outside the country, to groups such as
al-Qaeda. Although Pyongyang has denounced any
moves to set a "red line", it is unlikely to cross
such limits. This would directly tie Pyongyang
with the "war on terror" and bring North Korea
immediately to the forefront of US priorities,
even ahead of the Middle East.
So long as the
"war on terror" is still under way and Iraq -
and the wider Middle East - is still unstable, and
Pyongyang keeps a reasonably low profile, North
Korea will have a degree of breathing space. No
one should be surprised if the US-North Korea
nuclear dispute is still unresolved by the time
the next American president takes office.
Yoel Sano has worked for
publishing houses in London, providing political
and economic analysis, and has been following
Northeast Asia for many years yoelsano@lycos.com
.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
for information on
sales,
syndication and republishing.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2004 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
Asian Sex Gazette Korean Sex News
|
|
|
