When the stick waves, the hornet
stings By John Feffer
Five years ago, when US President George W
Bush took office, North Korea didn't claim
membership in the nuclear club. Its
plutonium-reprocessing facilities were frozen. It
was even willing to negotiate away its missile
program.
Instead of pursuing the
diplomatic route, the Bush administration tried to
ignore Pyongyang. Then came the schoolyard taunts
such as lumping North Korea together with Iraq and
Iran in an "axis of evil". When indifference and
insult failed to move the isolated
Northeast Asian country,
the administration accused North Korea of
enriching uranium, which led to the unraveling of
the 1994
Agreed Framework
and the reigniting of a major crisis. To top it
off, Washington began to squeeze Pyongyang
economically with sanctions.
Pyongyang has
refused to cry "uncle". Instead, it has replied in
kind. With its missile launches in July and its
recently announced nuclear test, Pyongyang has
demonstrated that it can be as stubborn and as
enamored of military playthings as the Bush
administration.
With such a miserable
track record in inducing behavior change, why has
the United States continued to speak loudly and
wield a big stick against a hornets' nest like
North Korea? It might be, like North Korea's
recent test, a fundamental miscalculation. The
Bush administration, after all, has shown a
pathological inability to learn from its mistakes.
Or there might be a deeper, more malign intent at
work.
Wave stick, hornet stings
At first, the Bush administration followed
the logic of its predecessors. It looked at North
Korea through the prism of Eastern Europe. With a
little nudge, the regime was supposed to topple
just like the communist governments in Warsaw,
Bucharest and East Berlin. But North Korea showed
remarkable resilience, surviving the collapse of
its Soviet trading partner, several years of
extreme famine in the mid-1990s, and then the
containment-plus tactics of the Bush
administration.
In the absence of a
dramatic coup or military putsch in Pyongyang, the
Bush administration had to demonstrate that it was
not just twiddling its thumbs while North Korea
unfroze its plutonium-reprocessing facilities and
moved full speed ahead toward a nuclear arsenal.
The faintest whiff of weapons of mass destruction
had justified US military intervention in Iraq.
And all the United States could do with North
Korea was call it names?
Thus were born
the six-party talks, a multilateral effort
involving the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and
the United States. A remarkable group of diplomats
gathered to talk, but alas, not to negotiate.
Guided by the uncompromising Vice President Dick
Cheney, the Bush administration has viewed any
meaningful negotiations with North Korea - and the
prospect of any serious agreement - as simply
prolonging the life span of Kim Jong-il's regime.
The State Department was on a short leash. The
Bush administration refused to negotiate
bilaterally, North Korea's negotiating process of
choice. In the Bush-Cheney lexicon, compromise
equals appeasement and "Munich" stops all
conversations.
Here's what the problem
with the strategy of pointless talking was: North
Korea was not satisfied with cat-and-mouse
maneuvers. Its economy reeling and its population
malnourished, the North Korean government wanted a
deal. And the only thing worth trading that it
possessed - or that the world thought it possessed
- was a nuclear program.
The recent
reported nuclear test is the logical consequence
of North Korea's policy over the past four years.
It developed a nuclear program to deter US
attacks, but it also needed a bargaining chip to
trade for status, cash and other goodies. It froze
its nuclear program under the 1994 Agreed
Framework, but probably kept some reprocessed
plutonium in reserve just in case and began a
covert uranium-enrichment program as a similar
insurance policy. When the Agreed Framework
collapsed in 2002 and Pyongyang left the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, North Korea changed
tactics, declaring that it did in fact have nukes,
which served to strengthen its deterrent
capabilities and increase its ask at the
negotiating table.
But the Bush
administration wasn't dealing. So North Korea
ended its self-imposed missile moratorium this
July. And when that didn't get the United States
into one-on-one negotiations, it raised the ante
once again with a nuclear test.
Such
tactics should surprise no one. Pyongyang has
begun giving the world advance notice of its
actions. Psychologists call these signals a "cry
for help". North Korea wants to negotiate, wants
to avoid options that are clearly suicidal. But
the global emergency-response facility, staffed by
the inattentive Bush administration, is just not
responding.
External signal, internal
audience The nuclear test is a signal to
the international community that North Korea
refuses to be disrespected, have its sovereignty
abridged, or suffer a full-frontal military
assault. But the test also serves various internal
purposes.
The staff of the country's
nuclear complex - scientists, military officials
and government representatives - have an important
stake in seeing their project through to
completion. As George Perkovich perceptively
argued in his book India's Nuclear Bomb,
the team developing nuclear weapons is not simply
a group of technicians that can be turned on or
off depending on government whim. The nuclear
complex develops political power within the
overall government system. Tasked to create a
bomb, it must demonstrate its success or it will
lose that power. A nuclear test translates into
bonuses and promotions, and consolidated political
power within the system.
Another internal
rationale is provided by the date of the test:
October 9. North Korean leader Kim Jong-il
formally took the helm of the Korean Workers Party
on that date in 1997. There have been only two
leaders in North Korean history. Kim Il-sung
founded the country and, despite often horrendous
policies, enjoyed the adulation of the population.
With the famine that took place on his watch and
the near-collapse of the country, Kim Jong-il has
squandered his father's legacy.
The
nuclear test is, in other words, a rather large
example of overcompensation. Economic news out of
North Korea hasn't been very positive. Heavy rains
and flooding over the summer damaged the country's
capacity to feed itself. Financial sanctions
applied by the United States have helped stall any
economic reforms. Even China, outraged over the
July missile launches, has begun to put a gentle
squeeze on its neighbor. There's not a lot of
bread in North Korea and, though the Pyongyang
Circus is quite good, such performances will not
distract the population. Kim Jong-il might have as
much charisma as a chunk of anthracite, but only a
handful of world leaders have pushed their
countries past the well-guarded gates of the
nuclear club.
But did North Korea really
test the bomb? The verdict isn't yet in. The
recent test might have been just a lot of TNT or
it could have been a very small weapon tested
unsuccessfully. However, from North Korea's point
of view, the perception of deterrence is more
important than the reality. It wants to prevent an
attack. If the United States and others are scared
off by empty underground caverns - like
Kumchang-ri in 1999 - or by a whole lot of
dynamite, so much the cheaper.
To
strike or not to strike Will an attack on
North Korea be the Bush administration's October
surprise? The rally-around-the-flag effect of
bombing North Korea would be overwhelmed by the
sheer scope of the immediate consequences, not to
mention the longer-term blowback. The
administration has insisted on keeping all options
on the table, even though the Pentagon has made it
clear that a military strike against North Korea
would lead to retaliatory attacks that would kill
tens of thousands of US and South Korean soldiers
and civilians. The Pentagon has also confessed
that it would have great difficulty eliminating
the dispersed nuclear facilities in North Korea.
For military, economic and electoral
reasons, it doesn't make sense for the Bush
administration to launch an attack against any
country at this moment. Alas, the administration
seems to be singing only one tune these days, that
old Talking Heads favorite "Stop Making Sense".
The administration ignored the top-level Pentagon
advice on Iraq. It could do so again with North
Korea.
If the military option is not
really on the table, the Bush administration is
running out of choices. It is unveiling a new set
of financial sanctions and wants inspections on
all cargo going in and out of North Korea. But
Pyongyang, while not exactly reveling in its
isolation of late, is accustomed to being the odd
man out. Kim's regime endured several famine
years; perhaps it calculates that two more
cold-shoulder years from the Bush administration
are survivable.
For some in the Bush
administration, the nuclear test is cause for
celebration. The coterie around Cheney rejoices at
the growing divide between North Korea and China,
the more aggressive military and foreign policy of
Japan, and the compromised efforts of South Korea
to engage the North. The nuclear test is the most
effective argument the Cheney crowd can use to
defeat calls for diplomacy. An amplified North
Korean threat works wonders on Capitol Hill and
with US allies to push missile defense, more
military spending, and the like.
But the
recent test has not destroyed the diplomatic
option. Pyongyang has reiterated its willingness
to negotiate. It doesn't have much choice. A
nuclear weapon can't feed its people or rebuild
its factories.
The international
community, through the United Nations, should by
all means register its outrage at North Korea's
act and translate that outrage into some concrete
actions. But many years of sanctions haven't
brought North Korea to its knees or back to the
negotiating table. It's time for the Bush
administration to make up for a half-decade of
failed policies by talking seriously with
Pyongyang, both bilaterally and multilaterally.
Just inside the door, North Korea can still be
persuaded to back out of the nuclear club.
John Feffer is the co-director
of Foreign Policy In Focus for the International
Relations Center and the editor of The Future
of US-Korean Relations (Routledge, 2006).
