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North
Korea's exception makes the NPT
rule
By Wade L Huntley
(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus)
The problems for international security
posed by North Korea's nuclear ambitions
receive abundant attention and analysis. With the 2005 review conference
for the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT) under way, the effect of
North Korean actions on the treaty deserves
specific attention, particularly because
mitigating the impact of those actions and solving
the larger nuclear crisis are not necessarily
convergent goals.
Only through a
comprehensive negotiated settlement can the Korean
peninsula be kept non-nuclear peacefully. However,
if a negotiated settlement provides unique
inducements to North Korea to return to compliance
with NPT obligations as a non-nuclear state, other
states might be tempted to resist compliance in
hopes of wresting similar concessions for
themselves. Should treating North Korea as an
exceptional case be resisted in the interest of
protecting the overall credibility of the NPT,
even if this constrains the scope of a potential
"grand bargain" in Korea?
North Korea
now
North Korea's nuclear aspirations have
been problematic since it first joined the NPT in
1985. By the time the country accepted a
safeguards agreement in 1992, it was already
suspected of having extracted enough plutonium
from its research reactor at Yongbyong to produce
one or two nuclear weapons. Escalating
confrontation over the inability of the United
Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
to verify North Korea's non-nuclear status was
resolved only by direct US intervention,
culminating in the 1994 US-North Korea Agreed
Framework, which froze North Koreas
plutonium-based nuclear power program.
The Agreed Framework held, more or less, until
October 2002, when the administration of President
George W Bush confronted North Korea with charges
that it was undertaking a second, uranium-based
nuclear program. Escalating iterated reactions led
eventually to North Korea ending cooperation with
IAEA safeguards, commencing reprocessing of
plutonium stored at the Yongbyong site, and
withdrawing from the NPT [1]. By early 2005, just
months before the 2005 NPT review conference,
North Korea stated explicitly for the first time
that it possessed nuclear weapons [2].
Several elements of these
developments deserve highlighting:
The collapse of the Agreed
Framework in 2002 was a critical watershed. Many
analysts, whether supporting greater confrontation
or greater engagement, fail to recognize that the
status quo shifted fundamentally when the
agreement disintegrated. Until 2002, North Korea's
nuclear ambitions were mainly contained. The
worrisome spent fuel stockpiles, though still in
the country, were under IAEA safeguards, and the
research reactor was shut down. By most public
accounts, the suspected uranium-based program was
(and remains) not nearly so close to producing
usable fissile material.
Today, there are no direct restraints on North
Korea's plutonium-based program. Moreover, by
withdrawing from the Agreed Framework and the NPT
without being meaningfully sanctioned (in part due
to lack of viable options), North Korea has
successfully moved the "line in the sand"
considerably in its favor. Hence, return to a
1990s-style engagement of North Korea is no longer
enough. Not only does North Korea's strengthened
position make a new deal harder to reach, but even
if Pyongyang wanted an agreement, the advancement
of its nuclear program will make verification of
its compliance much more difficult and now it
makes reaching an accord harder as well.
North Korea is probably pursuing its
nuclear programs as zealously as it can. Although
fabrication of a nuclear explosive device is well
within North Korea抯 technical competence, the rate
of expansion of its fissile material stocks and
its ability to produce a warhead light and durable
enough to ride a missile to a target are more open
to questions [3].
In
advancing its nuclear game plan, North Korea now
faces only two meaningful restraints. The first is
simply technological limitations: time, competence
and resources. The second is China: Beijing holds
several powerful coercive instruments, if it
chooses to wield them. But there are limits to
North Korea's sensitivity to Chinese coercion.
There are also limits to China's willingness to
utilize its influence on behalf of Washington's
priority to deny Pyongyang a nuclear explosive,
when Beijing own priority is probably to prevent
North Korea from exploding one.
The central question bedeviling
many policymakers is whether North Korea is
prepared to reach an agreement entailing surrender
of its nuclear capability. Engagement advocates
tend to think it is and feel that North Korean
belligerence is mainly maneuvering for a better
bargaining position. Confrontation advocates
usually think it is not and contend that North
Korean accommodation is merely a tactic to assuage
neighbors and buy time.
But
this is the wrong
question, because its answer is essentially unknowable.
Given Pyongyang's opacity, both camps base
their assertions more on conjecture than evidence.
It may actually be the case (as is true for
any government facing a complex decision) that North
Korea's leadership has not made up its mind. Indeed,
Kim Jong-il himself may not have decided exactly
what agreement terms he would accept, and he
may not come to decide unless and until, like Ronald
Reagan at Reykjavik, the choice is at hand.
Hence, assumptions of any specificity
concerning the inclinations of Pyongyang officials
are a poor basis for making crucial policy
decisions. Instead, policy should be premised on
shaping the international environmental conditions
within which North Korea must promulgate its
actions. Engagement (or confrontation, for that
matter) should be supported not with the
expectation that North Korea will respond
predictably but rather with the aim of producing
the best (or least worst) outcome regardless of
Pyongyang's disposition of the day.
The
importance of generating policy on the basis of
prospective outcomes rather than conjectured mind
reading brings the issue of North Korea's impact
on the NPT squarely to the forefront.
North Korea and the
NPT
North Korea's ongoing
intractability underscores the limits of the NPT's
existing verification and compliance mechanisms
(technically and politically). At the same time, a
political accommodation absolving past NPT
non-compliance in order to gain North Korean
re-accession would also undermine those mechanisms
- ie letting North Korea off the hook may
encourage other NPT states to flout their
obligations. This diplomacy tension pits resolving
North Korea's nuclear challenges against
preserving and strengthening the credibility of
the NPT.
But this Gordian knot should be
reckoned in its broadest context. North Korea's
proliferation activities also threaten the NPT
treaty in a number of less direct ways. The
problem of North Korean exceptionalism bears on
the wider issue of norms and expectations
surrounding the treaty, which has become as
important to global arms control and
non-proliferation as the treaty itself.
Broadly, three areas of
consequence to consider:
Consequence 1:
Regional repercussions
North Korea's nuclear
ambitions already fuel palpable regional dangers
and uncertainties. A steadily (if slowly) growing
arsenal of nuclear weapons in North Korea would
aggravate these tensions, in some cases
potentially past breaking points. If North Korea's
actions trigger a nuclear proliferation domino
effect in East Asia, the viability of the NPT
would be shaken at its foundation.
The
weightiest concern is that North Korea's ambitions
would spur Japan to produce nuclear weapons. Japan
has a peaceful nuclear power program that
generates enriched plutonium, a space launch
capacity sustaining advanced ballistic missile
capabilities, and the technical expertise to
reorient these activities into a sophisticated
nuclear weapons development effort, if it chose to
do so.
In reality, Japan is less likely to
pursue nuclear weapons acquisition than many
assert. Although Japan would perceive North
Korea's development of an overt nuclear weapons
capability as specifically threatening, it is not
at all clear how, strategically, a Japanese
nuclear capability would counter this threat. So
long as US nuclear-girded security guarantees to
Japan are considered credible, a Japanese nuclear
capability would add little to deter a North
Korean nuclear attack. Moreover, nuclear
acquisition by Japan would not only fuel North
Korea's nuclear motivations, making any future
nonproliferation accord that much harder to reach,
but would also aggravate Japan's relations with
South Korea, China, and other states that have not
forgotten World War II.
This logic is
apparent to many Japanese strategists. Hence, it
is easy to envision that even a North Korean
nuclear test might not push Japan over the
proliferation edge. On the other hand, a collapse
of confidence in US security guarantees,
especially if consequential to developments in
Korea, might prove to be the crucial tipping
point, convincing key Japanese defense planners to
take the nuclear plunge.
In South Korea
and Taiwan, nuclear programs are less advanced
than in Japan. However, both Seoul and Taipei have
demonstrated nuclear ambitions in the past, and
both might be more directly motivated than Japan
to respond to North Korean achievements.
In sum, although there are impediments to
the nuclear proliferation domino effect that North
Korea might trigger in the region, the impending
threat of proliferation is bad news for the NPT.
And if the arms race impediments weaken, and East
Asian nuclear dominos begin falling, that's even
worse news for the NPT.
Luckily, this very
black cloud has a small silver lining. Today, the
North Korea situation is spurring greater
cooperation on nonproliferation in the region,
especially between the United States and China. If
this collaboration were linked more tangibly to
the NPT rather than emerging as an independent
alternative process, it could serve to strengthen
the NPT globally. This could occur even if the
collaborative effort fails to restore a
non-nuclear North Korea, if it is at least
successful in strengthening the regional
commitment and mechanisms to suppress the nuclear
contagion.
Conversely, a regional
multilateral non-proliferation process constituted
on a more ad hoc basis and increasingly
independent of the NPT will tend to marginalize
the treaty. This could occur (and might even be
precipitated) if such an ad hoc process, against
current odds, successfully produces a peaceful
nonproliferation outcome on the Korean peninsula.
Thus, the relevance of the NPT is
linked to the manner in which the current North
Korea crisis is ultimately handled. However, this
linkage is secondary to the outcome of the crisis.
The worst case - an accelerating nuclear arms race
eroding all semblances of regional security
cooperation- could spark nuclear proliferation
worldwide, completely undermining the NPT [4]. The
only sure way to prevent that outcome is to
somehow achieve a non-nuclear North Korea.
Consequence 2:
Proliferation
North Korea's reinvigorated nuclear
program provides Pyongyang with the capability to
fuel proliferation fires worldwide by exporting
fissile materials, nuclear weapons development
technologies and expertise, or even completed
operational weapons. This potential, highlighted
by recent questions as to whether uranium
discovered in Libya might have originated in North
Korea constitutes probably the greatest direct
threat that a nuclear North Korea poses to the NPT
and to global nuclear stability.
This
proliferation potential is also the consequence of
a nuclear North Korea that the Bush administration
takes most seriously. In response, the White House
launched the Proliferation Security Initiative
(PSI), a coalition of countries aiming to combat
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation
through preventive interdiction of suspicious
shipments traveling by land, sea, or air [8].
The PSI can impede, but cannot with
certainty prevent, North Korea from smuggling
small containers of fissile materials onto the
global black market if it is determined to do so.
Because Pyongyang perceives the PSI as
unnecessary, coercive, and illegal, this effort to
prevent North Korean direct proliferation may
actually aggravate the overarching problem.
As an ad hoc :coalition of the willing",
the PSI also lacks international accountability
and legitimacy. Here is where an association with
the NPT could enhance PSI's arms control
effectiveness. If initiatives such as the PSI can
be linked to the NPT and to other efforts to curb
WMDs, such linkage could provide those initiatives
with both the oversight and the authority that
they need to be genuinely effective and generally
accepted. A linkage like this could and should be
a two-way street, tapping the responsiveness and
flexibility of ad hoc initiatives to prioritize
substantive achievement over procedural details in
multilateral compliance mechanisms.
Such
synergistic linkage would have two positive
impacts. Practically, it would strengthen the
world's available tools to keep proliferation
problems from growing. Politically, it would
enhance the NPT's role as the locus for
international nuclear nonproliferation
cooperation.
Absent such a linkage,
different prospects follow. If the PSI gains
widespread participation and effectiveness
independent of the NPT, it could marginalize the
NPT as the collaborative venue for
non-proliferation compliance. If, on the other
hand, horizontal nuclear transfers accelerate
regardless of the PSI and other efforts, the
credibility of all compliance mechanisms could be
blemished, including pressure points employed by
the NPT. So the stakes for the NPT are very high
not only in stemming the proliferation activities
that North Korea is now primed to undertake but
also regarding how the regional and world
communities choose to address this problem.
Consequence 3: NPT
withdrawal
North Korea is the first state to withdraw
from the NPT. Pyongyang also reneged on both the
1992 agreement with South Korea to keep the Korean
peninsula nuclear free and on the 1994 Agreed
Framework. Thus, there currently exist no formal
international legal constraints on North Korea's
nuclear activities.
Interestingly, the Bush
administration rarely expresses worries over the impact of North
Korea's NPT withdrawal on the viability of the
treaty. This is hardly surprising, given the
administration's lack of faith in either
non-proliferation or international treaties and its
discomfort with US obligations under the NPT's
Article VI - Washington's only international legal
commitment to complete nuclear disarmament. Both
the indifference of the Bush administration toward
North Korea's NPT withdrawal and its antipathy for
the NPT in general underscore the significance of
North Korea's NPT withdrawal for those concerned
about the vitality of the NPT.
North
Korea is fully within its international legal rights
to leave the treaty, which stipulates that any
party may withdraw on 90-days notice in the event
that "extraordinary events" have jeopardized the
supreme interests of its country, [7] Some NPT
countries refuse to acknowledge North Korea's
withdrawal, and thus far NPT meetings have
"sidestepped" the issue - presiding officials have
diplomatically "placed in their pockets" the
placard in front of North Korea's - empty chair -
in order not to interfere with the six-party
talks. Whether the 2005 NPT review conference
will similarly avoid the withdrawal problem, in
light of the apparent stalling of the six-party
talks, is an open question [8].
A more
complex matter is whether North Korea remains
responsible for NPT noncompliance prior to its
withdrawal. The NPT itself contains no provisions
addressing this issue. The United Nations Security
Council could take up the question of North
Korea's NPT noncompliance as a "threat to the
peace", [9] but it could have done so just as
easily before North Korea's NPT withdrawal.
The UN
secretary general's recent high-level report on
global security recommends that any state's
notification of NPT withdrawal prompt "immediate verification
of its compliance" with the treaty, but
it recommends no sanctions other than cessation
of IAEA support. [10] Even if it were not too late for
"immediate" application of this provision to North
Korea, the sanction would have been irrelevant
insofar as North Korea ejected the IAEA when it
withdrew from the NPT.
While
North Korea's withdrawal was within the legal stipulations
of the NPT, its prior NPT non-compliance leaves
its withdrawal far short of the "good faith"
criterion that is a general principle of international
law. [11] But ultimately, this issue is also
something of a red herring; as a practical matter,
whether or not North Korea will be pressed on its
prior NPT non-compliance through formal mechanisms
such as the UN Security Council will be a
political rather than a legal determination.
Hence, the significance of North Korea's
NPT withdrawal is more political and symbolic.
Perhaps the greatest concern is that, if North
Korea's withdrawal is not reversed and the country
suffers no significant detrimental consequences,
Pyongyang's action will set a precedent eroding
current NPT compliance norms. Other NPT
non-nuclear states in similar situations may
calculate that the political costs of their own
potential withdrawal have been reduced by North
Korea's precedent. And unless some multilateral
body challenges the viewpoint that North Korea's
NPT withdrawal has rendered its prior NPT
non-compliance moot (de facto if not de jure), NPT
compliance norms will be even further compromised.
Iran is currently the top concern in this
regard. North Korea's NPT withdrawal is unlikely
to induce Iran to act in kind. However, if North
Korea continues to elude significant penalties for
its withdrawal and prior non-compliance, Iranian
leaders will learn important lessons about what
consequences Iran might (or might not) incur by
following suit, and how the repercussions might be
managed.
At the same time, there is a real
concern that making major allowances to gain North
Korea's re-accession to the NPT, especially if
they entail any form of amnesty for past
non-compliance, would also set a precedent that
could induce other non-nuclear NPT parties to
similarly try to bend the rules in their favor.
Hence, concerning the NPT's effectiveness as an
international legal instrument, each potential
course of action - whether accepting compromises
to elicit North Korean re-accession to the NPT or
accepting that North Korea's NPT withdrawal may
eventually render its past non-compliance moot -
poses risks.
However, the notion of North Korea's
exceptionalism takes on a different significance
when considering the NPT as the symbolic
centerpiece of a now much wider global
effort oriented toward stemming proliferation and
advancing disarmament. Although North Korea was
formally a signatory to the NPT just like other
non-nuclear parties, on a less formal but more
real level, North Korea has always been an
exception.
The NPT entered into force in
1970, but North Korea did not accede to the treaty
until 1985. Although required to reach a
safeguards agreement with the IAEA within 18
months, North Korea did not do so until 1992. The
IAEA inspections that then commenced quickly
produced evidence that North Korea had reprocessed
much more plutonium than the tiny amount it had
acknowledged, most likely in a series of
activities dating from 1989. Ongoing interaction
failed to resolve the discrepancies, and in
February 1993, the IAEA, for the first time ever,
officially requested a "special inspection" of two
key nuclear waste sites. North Korea refused the
inspection and submitted its withdrawal from the
NPT.
Although it agreed to "suspend" this
withdrawal one day short of the 90-day notice
period, it did so asserting that it was no longer
a full NPT party and denying the IAEA's right to
conduct even routine safeguards inspections. The
crisis continued to escalate into mid-1994, by
which time the United States circulated a plan for
sanctions at the UN Security Council and began
considering military action. Tensions began to
ease only after president Jimmy Carter met with
North Korean President Kim Il-sung in June,
initiating the negotiations that produced the
US-North Korea Agreed Framework in August of that
year. [12] in 2002.
The 1994 Agreed
Framework, though designed to eventually bring
North Korea back into full compliance with IAEA
safeguards, was a bilateral arrangement (not a
formal treaty) reached outside of the NPT's
established verification and compliance processes.
Although the Korean Energy Development
Organization (KEDO), devised to implement many of
the Agreed Framework's provisions, incorporating
South Korean, Japanese and eventually European
Union participation, the ongoing progress
regarding Pyongyang's defiance remained primarily
a function of the US-North Korea bilateral
relationship. From 1994 until the collapse of the
Agreed Framework at the end of 2002, progress was
fitful. In the end, the Agreed Framework did
successfully freeze North Korea's plutonium-based
nuclear program, but it never succeeded in
resolving discrepancies regarding past North
Korean activities.
Thus, North Korea's
relationship to the NPT has always been
exceptional. The country has never been in full
compliance with its NPT obligations; its nuclear
ambitions have been a known and persistent
challenge. Treating North Korea uniquely in the
current impasse hardly diverges from practices
prevailing for the past 20 years.
Conclusion
A de facto nuclear North Korea increases
pressures and prospects for other East Asian
states to acquire nuclear weapons as well. Growing
North Korean nuclear weapons resources could also
directly fuel proliferation ambitions elsewhere in
the world. And North Korean success in avoiding
meaningful repercussions for either its NPT
non-compliance or its subsequent NPT withdrawal
would set a negative example (if not a precedent)
for other nations and would erode future arms
control compliance.
These three
consequences, taken together, suggest that North
Korea's nuclear weapons acquisition poses a far
greater threat to the NPT than the legal and
symbolic precedents that might be set by making
exceptions for Pyongyang in order to reverse that
acquisition. However unseeming those precedents
might be, the priority is to find a way to a
peaceful non-proliferation solution in Korea.
North Korea's nuclear activities would
pose these problems to global peace and security
whether it had signed the NPT or not. If the world
community allows complications from the fact that
North Korea did sign the NPT to interfere with
solving the basic problems of North Korea's
nuclear ambitions, it would be cutting off its
nose to spite its face.
This conclusion
does not justify exceptionalism willy-nilly. The
concern over setting legal and symbolic precedents
that could weaken prospects for future NPT
compliance is real. Any unique treatment of North
Korea should stem from a shared global goal of
curbing nuclear proliferation. If this goal is
kept paramount, and because the North Korean case
has always been exceptional, detrimental
precedent-setting can be mitigated.
The
NPT has successfully prevented proliferation
around the world and provides the strongest legal
mechanism to compel disarmament by its five
nuclear weapons signatories. However, it is under
pressure today for not achieving enough on both
counts. The stakes on keeping the NPT viable, if
not vibrant, are very high.
In certain
ways, the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula
offers opportunities for enhancing global
non-proliferation and disarmament efforts, as well
as challenges. Some of those opportunities can be
realized even without a near-term or complete
cessation of North Korea's nuclear weapons
ambitions. These opportunities should be the focus
of all those concerned about the long-term
survival and vitality of the NPT. Sometimes, it is
the exception that makes the rule.
End
Notes
[1] For this
author''s own assessment of the breakdown of the
Agreed Framework, see Ostrich Engagement: The Bush
Administration and the North Korea Nuclear Crisis,
The Nonproliferation Review, vol 11, No. 2, Summer
2004.
[2] James Brooke,
"North Korea Says It Has Nuclear Weapons and
Rejects Talks,? New York Times, February 10, 2005.
[3] (Jon Brook
Wolfsthal, "No Good Choices - Ye Implications of a
Nuclear North Korea", Testimony before the US
House of Representatives International Relations
Committee Subcommittees on Asia and the Pacific and on International
Terrorism and Nonproliferation,
February 17, 2005.
[4] Although specific
national nuclear ambitions may be driven
principally by immediate regional concerns,
global-level factors (eg, treaty and superpower
circumspection) can induce restraint; the absence
of these factors then becomes a permissive cause
of proliferation.
[5] Following initial
reports, controversy emerged concerning how
honestly US officials had informed allies that the
uranium had come to Libya through Pakistan, and
whether North Korea was aware of its final
destination. Moreover, the evidence was
circumstantial that the uranium had originated in
North Korea in the first place. See Dafna Linzer,
"US Misled Allies About Nuclear Export,"
Washington Post, March 20, 2005; David E Sanger
and William J Broad, "Using Clues from Libya to
Study a Nuclear Mystery," The New York Times,
March 31, 2005.
[6]
"Proliferation
Security Initiative: Statement of Interdiction
Principles', Fact Sheet, Office of the Press
Secretary, The White House, Washington, September
4, 2003, at: http://www.state.gov/t/np/rls/fs/23764.htm.
[7] The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation
of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), Article X, Paragraph 1,
at http://disarmament2.un.org/wmd/npt/npttext.html.
[8] "Walking the Nonproliferation
Tightrope: An Interview with Ambassador Sergio de
Queiroz Duarte, president of the 2005 Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference,? Arms
Control Today, December 2004, at
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_12/Duarte_ACTversion.asp;
Shinya Ajima, "Plan to Check Pullout of Nuclear
Nonproliferation Pact Eyed," Kyodo News, February
7, 2005, at http://home.kyodo.co.jp/all/display.jsp?an=20050207193.
[9]
Charter of the United Nations, Article
VII, at http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/index.html.
[10]A More Secure World: Our Shared
Responsibility, Report of the High-level Panel on
Threats, Challenges and Change, United
Nations, 2004, p 45.
[11] Christer
Ahlstrom, "Withdrawal from Arms Control Treaties,"
SIPRI Yearbook 2004:Armaments, Disarmament and
International Security (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004), chapter 19.
[12] Joseph
Cirincione, Jon Wolfsthal, and Miriam Rajkumar,
Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass
Destruction (Washington: Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, 2002), pp244-9.
Wade L
Huntley is the director of the
Simons Center for Disarmament and
Non-Proliferation Research and is a frequent
contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus.
(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in
Focus) |
