Ignore North Korea at your
peril By Brendan Taylor
North Korea's recent missile launches are
the latest in a long series of provocations. The
reputedly "crazy" and "irrational" North Korean
dictator Kim Jong-il has pulled similar stunts on
numerous occasions - most obviously in August 1998
when Pyongyang test-fired a Taepodong ballistic
missile over Japan and in March 2003 on the eve of
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun's
inauguration.
But North Korea's latest
provocation does seem a long way from the euphoric
atmosphere of last September, when the group of six
-
North Korea, the US, China, Japan, South Korea and
Russia - agreed to a "statement of principles" for
resolving the North Korean nuclear stalemate.
In return for abandoning all of its
nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs,
Pyongyang was provided with a security "guarantee"
from Washington, along with desperately needed
economic and energy assistance. Most significant,
the six parties promised to discuss the provision
of a light-water reactor (LWR) to North Korea, at
some "appropriate time" in the future.
The
devil was always going to be in the detail of that
agreement, which was falling apart even before the
ink was starting to dry. The LWR issue remained
the most obvious hurdle, but there are strong
indications that hardliners in Washington were
miffed that the agreement had even been forged in
the first place. These hardline elements have
clearly upped the ante since.
The US
ambassador to South Korea, Alexander Vershbow, for
instance, has recently referred to North Korea as
a "criminal state". The administration of US
President George W Bush has unilaterally applied
financial sanctions targeting Pyongyang's illicit
drug-trafficking and money-laundering activities.
The six-party talks, meanwhile, have
unceremoniously ground to a startling
halt.
The North Korean missile launches
need to be understood against this backdrop. Some
have argued that these are routine tests that
represent a major leap in North Korea's missile
capabilities. Even if that were the case, it is
impossible to detach completely the political
dimension.
Pyongyang is clearly sending a
political message. Frustrated by the stuttering
progress of the six-party talks, it is employing
what in essence amounts to the only leverage it
has at its disposal in an effort to kick-start
this process. The parallels with the 1990s - when
the North Koreans ran a submarine aground in South
Korea, launched a ballistic missile over Japan and
engaged in suspicious tunneling activities, all in
the interests of spurring the United States and
its allies to honor their commitments to it under
the 1994 Agreed Framework - are stark.
The
key difference this time, however, is that
Washington is severely distracted by events in
Iraq and Iran. While this US strategic
preoccupation elsewhere is somewhat advantageous
for Pyongyang, in that it limits the coercive
options at Washington's disposal as it seeks to
shape the security situation on the Korean
Peninsula, the downside is that it may also
encourage Pyongyang to engage in increasingly
hostile and provocative acts in the interests of
capturing Washington's attention.
Those
who speculate that the latest missile launches
were merely "accidental" would dismiss such a
prognosis. But North Korea's growing missile
prowess suggests that their thinking is wishful.
That said, with the "red lines" between what acts
Washington would and would not be prepared to
tolerate from North Korea remaining decidedly
blurred, we should still not dismiss outright the
possibility that the North Korean nuclear crisis,
through some "accident" or serious act of
miscalculation on the part of Pyongyang, could yet
unintentionally spiral into a conflict of epochal
magnitude.
The Korean Peninsula is, after
all, a region where the interests of each of the
great powers intersect. A significant amount of
the cooperation that has occurred between
Washington and Beijing during the five years since
the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, for instance, has been
built upon their common interest in keeping the
Korean Peninsula free from nuclear weapons.
Moreover, a potent combination of Japanese
domestic politics, alliance politics and simple
geography make it virtually impossible to envisage
Japan remaining neutral in any Korean contingency,
with potentially catastrophic results given the
recent spiking in tensions between China and
Japan.
Against that backdrop, it would be
dangerous for analysts and policymakers to
trivialize the latest North Korean missile
launches. Pyongyang, not unlike a neglected child,
is clearly crying out for attention. As the fable
of "the boy who cried wolf" reminds us, it might
be a mistake merely to ignore or neglect those
cries.
Dr Brendan Taylor is a
post-doctoral fellow at the Strategic and Defense
Studies Center, Australian National
University.
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