Graham Allison is
director of the Belfer Center for Science and
International Affairs at Harvard's John F Kennedy
School of Government and author of Nuclear
Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe
(2004). He talks with National Interest Online
editor Ximena Ortiz about this week's
agreement on North Korea's nuclear program.
National Interest Online:
What does the agreement represent, both in
terms of the non-proliferation regime and the
overall foreign-policy posturing of both
Washington and Pyongyang? In terms of
non-proliferation, how significant is the step
North Korea
has
agreed to take and, on foreign policy, does the
agreement demonstrate on the Bush administration's
part a willingness to depart from what you and
Dimitri K Simes have described as an absolutist
and shortsighted stance in your essay "Churchill,
Not Quite"? And on Pyongyang's part, does it
demonstrate a willingness to depart from its
defiance of the past?
Graham
Allison: This is a significant step for
the [George W] Bush administration into the
reality zone, a strong departure from its previous
failed approach and a good first step. So that's
the good news. The bad news is that this is four
years, eight bombs' worth of plutonium, and one
nuclear test after the Bush administration
departed from this point that it had inherited
essentially from the [Bill] Clinton
administration.
For North Korea, this
represents a small step, I would say, not a big
step, in that it essentially reiterates the
position that it had agreed to and which it had
complied with in the 1994 agreement reached by the
Clinton administration that froze the Yongbyon
reactor. But it does so for a country that has now
conducted a nuclear test. It has 10 bombs' worth
of plutonium and it may or may not have a second
alternative: a highly enriched uranium route for
producing materials for nuclear bombs.
In
non-proliferation terms, this is positive, in that
it is a step beyond the joint statement of
September 2005 in which North Korea committed
itself to eliminating all nuclear activity in
North Korea. But North Korean words and
commitments are of limited value, and so most of
what's to be delivered here in terms of
non-proliferation remain to be negotiated and, if
history is any guide, it's going to be a long path
from where we now stand to the actual elimination
of all North Korean nuclear-weapons material and
nuclear weapons.
NIO: Under
the agreement, North Korea will eventually be
required to list all aspects of its nuclear
program, an exercise that could test the Bush
administration's assertions that North Korea had
been developing a uranium nuclear device, an
assertion which prompted the Bush administration
to back away from the Agreed Framework in November
2002. This agreement, should it actually produce
this list by North Korea, could test that Bush
administration assertion on a North Korean
uranium-bomb program. Is it likely, in your view,
that the administration will be validated or that
it could suffer another embarrassing illustration
of miscalculating on a major non-proliferation and
intelligence matter?
GA:
Information about North Korea's uranium-enrichment
program that could also produce materials for
bombs is uncertain because the facility, if it
exists, has not been discovered. The basis for
believing that there is such a facility comes from
what is known about what Abdul Qadeer Khan, the
Pakistani nuclear bomb-maker, sold to the North
Koreans. On the basis of that information, it's a
reasonable inference that North Korea has been
working on an enriched-uranium facility, but where
the facility is and the current status of the
facility remain uncertain. In 2002, the Senate got
from the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] an
assessment that by the middle of 2005, such a
facility might be up and running. So it's
conceivable that there's such a facility running
today, but unknown.
In the current
agreement, as described, North Korea is committed
to providing a list of all of its nuclear
facilities and materials, but whether and when it
will do so remains uncertain. And if it were to
provide an inadequate account of this
enriched-uranium facility, that's one of the 100
ways in which between where we now stand and the
goal line - which the Bush administration
announced of complete verifiable, irreversible
dismantlement, CVID - [the accord] could again go
off the rails.
NIO: Do you
believe that the agreement could give global
non-proliferation efforts, which lately have been
notably unfruitful, some positive momentum, and
how do you see it resonating in Iran?
GA: What we have here is a
positive step - in stopping a reactor that's
producing two bombs' worth of plutonium a year and
has been doing so since the 1994 agreement broke
down because of the Bush administration's approach
to North Korea back in 2002. So at least we're
stopping more bleeding from this reactor. And I
think in that sense, this is a positive step for
the non-proliferation regime. But it's a freeze at
this point for a state that has 10 bombs' worth of
plutonium and has conducted a nuclear-weapons
test.
So it's moving in the right
direction, but it's moving in that direction now
having bomb material and having tested a bomb. I
think the impact on Iran therefore will be
negligible.
NIO: Is there
anything you would like to add?
GA: This represents a
significant departure from the Bush
administration's previously failed policy. And in
that respect, I agree entirely with the statement
John Bolton made yesterday [Tuesday] in
criticizing this agreement, which, he said,
"contradicts fundamental premises of the
president's policy". So I agree with Bolton, that
this contradicts the fundamental premises of the
failed policy followed by the administration and
supported by people like Mr Bolton and Vice
President [Dick] Cheney.
That approach had
several key elements. First it demanded CVID -
complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement -
as a precondition for anything else. Disarm first.
Effectively, they decided there would be no
carrots for good behavior and actually - though it
didn't say so - it demonstrated no sticks for bad
behavior. Thirdly, it insisted that there would be
no bilateral negotiations. I think that what we
should learn from this is that it is a plausible
but actually failed approach to problems. And I
think maybe there are some lessons that could be
learned that are relevant for the Iranian case.
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