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3 The paradox of East Asian
peace By John Feffer
At
the center of East Asia lies the demilitarized
zone (DMZ) on the Korean peninsula. The DMZ has
been called the most dangerous place on Earth.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers face one another
across this divide. And yet, the DMZ is also the
lifeline between North and South Korea. It
connects the two countries by way of the Kaesong
Industrial Complex. Electricity, transportation,
and communications lines connect the two sides
across this dangerous rift.
Perhaps most
paradoxically, the DMZ itself is a quiet, largely
undisturbed zone that is home
to perhaps the greatest biological diversity on
the peninsula. Unification is, of course, a
life-and-death issue for Koreans. It is therefore
fitting that the DMZ is a life-and-death zone.
A similar paradox lies at the center of
the regional peace and security structure that the
six countries negotiating the nuclear impasse with
North Korea are considering for Northeast Asia.
The proposal, which is still very much at the idea
stage, occupies the attention of one of the five
working groups in the six-party talks. Will the
two Koreas, Japan, China, Russia and the United
States create a kind of organization for security
and cooperation in Asia? There are many reasons
why such a peace regime is an impossibility.
Neither the United States nor North Korea, for
different but related reasons, is keen about such
a system (despite much rhetoric to the contrary).
At the same time, such a peace regime is
inevitable. South Korea, China, and Russia, again
for different but related reasons, support this
outcome.
The easy solution to this seeming
paradox is to distinguish between short-term and
long-term perspectives. Given the different
motivations and interests of the negotiating
parties in the six-party talks, a regional
security system is nearly impossible in the short
term. Over the long term, however, the logic of
negotiations and the compelling economic and
geopolitical interests of the different parties
make a regional stability system inevitable.
Shifting the optic is useful but does not
offer a sufficient resolution to the paradox of
impossibility/inevitability. We are left in the
dark as to when short-term considerations segue
into long-term realities. After all, the
impossibility of a peace regime has been with us
for over nearly six decades, which is quite a long
time. And the inevitability of a peace regime
could, with the implementation of the working
groups of the six-party talks, be borne out as
early as next year, which is quite short term.
To understand which will triumph -
impossibility or inevitability - we must look at a
different set of criteria. Ultimately, after an
assessment of the different push-pull factors, the
discussion will zero in on the critical role
played by Japan. The country in the region with
the worst record on peace and security in the 20th
century may well play the decisive role in
establishing a regional peace and security order
in the 21st century.
If the inevitable
indeed happens, it still may turn out to be
impossible, and this will be the final paradox. If
all the stars align and the six countries
establish a peace and security mechanism for
Northeast Asia, their continued high levels of
military spending will make such a mechanism
largely ineffectual.
An impossible
dream Before any peace agreement can
replace the current armistice on the Korean
Peninsula, before any peace regime can be
constructed on the foundation of a peninsular
peace agreement, North Korea must give up its
nuclear weapons.
The George W Bush
administration has predicated any substantive
steps toward a peace regime on complete,
verifiable, irreversible dismantlement of North
Korea's nuclear program. Let's assume for the
moment that this is a non-negotiable demand.
Although the Bush administration reversed other
demands - on bilateral discussions and the
sequencing of incentives - North Korea's nuclear
disarmament is the ultimate goal of the
administration.
It's the primary factor
that distinguishes the agreement that the Bush
administration is aiming for in the six-party
talks from the much-maligned (by Republicans)
Agreed Framework of 1994.
North Korea has
agreed in principle to give up its nuclear weapons
program. But there are very good reasons to
believe that it will not do so, at least not under
the current circumstances. The nuclear weapons
program has functioned largely as a bargaining
chip to trade with the United States and other
major powers for a big package of economic and
security measures. But the nuclear program has
served other purposes, too.
Most
importantly, North Korea's nuclear program has two
chief military purposes. It acts as a deterrent
against those who would use military force to
trigger regime change in Pyongyang (a la
Afghanistan and Iraq). It also compensates for a
conventional force posture that has suffered from
a decade of food shortages, nearly two decades of
post-Cold War isolation, and approximately three
decades of economic decline. Such a nuclear
insurance policy cannot be easily bought out. Take
away North Korea's nuclear program and it is
reduced to the status of a heavily guarded but
essentially vulnerable garrison state.
As
such, Pyongyang has demanded security guarantees
before it gives up its deterrent. But will North
Korea truly throw down its weapon on the force of
a promise from its East Asian neighbors and the
United States? A regional peace and security
system can in theory provide an institutional
guarantee that North Korea won't be attacked. But
such a system, while it is being constructed, is
like a house without a roof and without proper
walls. Will anyone give up the security of a
bunker, no matter how ugly and uncomfortable, to
take shelter in such a flimsy structure? Because
of its essential vulnerability - the tyranny of
the weak - North Korea craves regional stability
in the abstract but clings to its nuclear
protection in the here and now.
There are
other reasons why North Korea is leery of such
regional structures. For instance, North Korea is
worried about China. While anti-Japanese sentiment
formed the backbone of the original state, the
country's ruling philosophy of juche
(self-reliance) was formed as a counterpoint to
the traditional sadae (tributary or, more
colloquially, flunky) relationship with China
during the Sinocentric period. North Korea's
ambivalence toward China is measured in many ways
- the lack of mention (much less gratitude) for
China's assistance during the Korean War, the
refusal to listen to Chinese experts on economic
reform, the explosion of a nuclear device in
defiance of Chinese warnings.
Most
recently, at the North-South summit, Kim Jong-il
insisted on the formulation of "three or four"
participants in a conference to negotiate a peace
treaty to replace an armistice, a clear reference
to the possibility of cutting China out of the
process. China, of course, exerts influence over
North Korea - less than Washington believes, more
than North Korea wants. Any significant increase
in Chinese influence through a regional structure
would be intolerable to Pyongyang. North Korea
would be very wary of any regional structure that,
at a time when the United States remains fixated
on the Middle East, would allow China to build a
neo-tributary regime in the region.
The
other chief obstacle to a regional peace and
security order in Northeast Asia is the United
States. Washington does not look at East Asia
multilaterally, however much US officials, like
former secretary of state Colin Powell in a 2004
article in Foreign Affairs, have tried to argue
otherwise. The United States is anchored in the
region through bilateral alliances - with Japan,
South Korea, and to a certain extent Taiwan. This
bilateralism allows the United States, much the
larger partner in all these cases, to control the
security equation more easily.
Washington
can also do what it often accuses Pyongyang of:
playing one country off another, as it has done to
some degree with Japan and South Korea. These
bilateral alliances are perfectly suited to the US
new approach of strategic flexibility: that is,
rapid response with new technologies to crises
throughout the region. Strategic flexibility
requires lightening-fast decisions concluded at
the highest level with one or two governments, not
the deliberative consultations of multilateral
bodies.
Nevertheless, there is support
across the political spectrum in the United States
for some kind of regional security structure.
Influential US figures such political scientist
Francis Fukuyama have backed a permanent forum for
addressing security issues in the region. In his
new book Failed Diplomacy, former Bush
administration point person on North Korea,
Charles Pritchard, devotes an entire chapter to
enumerating what such a forum
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