North Korea announced on Tuesday that it
"will, in the future, conduct a nuclear weapons
test", promising that it will be done under
conditions where "safety is firmly guaranteed".
While Pyongyang did not say when this test would
occur, it made it clear that it felt compelled to
take such action because of "the US extreme threat
of a nuclear war and sanctions and pressure".
Should we take this threat seriously?
North Korea has threatened such action before,
although only in private. A public threat such
as
this is difficult to ignore (although many will
try to do just that). Some will speculate that
this is merely another attention-getting device
(Iran-envy?), and this may be at least partially
true. It may also be aimed at drawing attention
from an imminent South Korean success story - the
anticipated selection of South Korea's Foreign
Minister Ban Ki-moon to be Kofi Annan's successor
as UN secretary general. Examples of previous
attempts by North Korea to get attention and/or to
upstage the South are too numerous to recount.
Pyongyang may be bluffing, hoping that
this will force Washington to lift its financial
restrictions against North Korea's counterfeiting
and money laundering operations or at least accept
bilateral negotiations on the nuclear issue - to
date, Washington has said it would only meet the
North bilaterally within the context of the
broader six-party talks (also involving South
Korea, China, Japan, and Russia).
Pyongyang may see this as a "win-win"
gambit: either Washington gives in to its demands
for direct negotiations (which is unlikely) or
renewed disputes about Washington's
"inflexibility" will drive deeper wedges between
Washington and its negotiating partners,
especially in Seoul and Beijing, while also
playing into domestic US election year politics.
North Korea's next step may be to do nothing at
all, other than to sit back and watch the rest of
the world argue about what to do next.
It
is also possible that Pyongyang really means what
it says, and that it will soon conduct a nuclear
weapons test, hoping that unlike its July missile
tests - which resulted in a rare instance of
international condemnation (including a
surprisingly tough UN Security Council resolution)
- this time the international community will fail
to speak with one voice and institute even harsher
measures. If we choose to wait and it turns out
that Pyongyang is not bluffing, we will be faced
with nothing but bad choices.
The best way
to deter Pyongyang from taking this next step
would be to send clear signals in advance that
there will be severe consequences if such actions
are taken. While Washington seems prepared to lead
this charge, unfortunately it has the least
leverage over the North (unless it plans to
capitulate to Pyongyang's demands). There is
little that Washington (or Tokyo) can do,
politically or financially, that it has not
already done and military actions are simply not
an option. If North Korea's nuclear test is to be
preempted, it must be done politically, not
militarily.
The real leverage rests with
Seoul and Beijing; no threatened consequences are
credible if not fully backed by these two nations
and, preferably, by Moscow as well. Seoul should
announce that a nuclear test will result in a halt
in all political and economic exchanges between
North and South (other than humanitarian
assistance, which would be funneled exclusively
through the UN).
After all, Seoul has long
stated that it "will not tolerate" a nuclear North
Korea. While it has chosen to dismiss the North's
earlier claims to already be a nuclear weapons
state, the Roh Moo-hyun administration's
international credibility (and perhaps even the
fabric of the US-South Korea alliance) will be
severely tested if it fails to respond to an
actual nuclear test.
China and Russia
should issue similar statements, plainly stating
that the North Korean regime's threatening tactics
must change. Beijing should also set a date
certain for the next round of six-party talks to
discuss the crisis, while making it clear that a
"six-minus-one" session will occur if the North
refuses to come.
Washington should
encourage Seoul and Beijing to take the lead on
this issue and look for other sympathetic Security
Council members (the French come immediately to
mind) to help take the lead in building an
international consensus aimed at sending Pyongyang
a strong message, in advance of a nuclear test, as
to just how severe the consequences of such an
action would be.
There is another option.
Beijing, Seoul and the never-ending (and growing)
legions of Bush administration critics can
continue their internecine arguments and
finger-pointing and hope that Pyongyang is really
bluffing.
Of course, if they guess wrong,
we will then be faced with the near-impossible
task of trying to put the nuclear genie back in
the bottle. At that point, the only options will
be to accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons
state or take the much more difficult (and
potentially dangerous) political, economic and
limited military actions (short of an all-out war)
required to bring about regime change in North
Korea.
Ralph A Cossa
(pacforum@hawaii.rr.com) is president of the
Pacific Forum CSIS.
