WASHINGTON - Monday's underground nuclear test by North Korea immediately drew
strong condemnation from United States President Barack Obama, who suggested
that Washington would seek strong international sanctions by the United Nations
Security Council and possibly impose tough unilateral measures of its own.
According to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization in Vienna,
the blast slightly exceeded the force of Pyongyang's first nuclear test in
2006. Analysts here said the test was likely to pose an especially difficult
policy challenge for China, which also condemned it.
Theoretically, China enjoys enormous leverage over Pyongyang due to the North's
dependence on Beijing for the delivery of
essential food and fuel supplies. At the same time, however, China has long
worried that withholding those supplies could precipitate the collapse of the
communist regime, sending hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees across
the border into China and possibly inviting South Korean and US intervention.
On Monday, the 15-member Security Council held an emergency meeting that ended
in a unanimous condemnation of the nuclear test. The council said it would
begin work on a new resolution in response to Pyongyang's "clear violation" of
international law.
"The big issue going ahead now is what will happen in the way of further
sanctions that will actually bite, and that really depends on what China is
prepared to do," said Alan Romberg, a former senior Asia specialist at the US
State Department, who is now based at the Henry L Stimson Center, a Washington
think-tank. "It faces very difficult decisions."
Noting that the test was quickly followed by the launch of two short-range
missiles, Romberg and other analysts predicted that the events of the past 24
hours were likely to be followed by additional provocative actions on
Pyongyang's part, including the possible launch of one or more ballistic
missiles and the staging of hostile naval incidents directed against South
Korea.
North Korea's latest actions took place amid rising tensions with the US,
despite recent offers by the Obama administration to send its special envoy,
retired ambassador Stephen Bosworth, to Pyongyang to discuss terms that would
persuade the North to re-join the six-party talks - which also include South
Korea, China, Russia, and Japan - to de-nuclearize the Korean Peninsula.
The latest escalation in tensions began on April 5, when Pyongyang launched a
long-range missile which it said was designed to put a communications satellite
into orbit but which, according to the US and its Western allies, violated a
2006 Security Council resolution that "demanded" that the North not "launch ...
a ballistic missile ... [and] suspend all activities related to its ballistic
missile program."
While China and Russia rejected a Western-backed draft resolution imposing new
sanctions on Pyongyang for the test, the two powers agreed to the issuance on
April 13 by the council's president of both a formal condemnation of the launch
and a request to the UN sanctions committee to develop a list of North Korean
companies involved in missile and nuclear technology that could be subject to
additional sanctions.
Pyongyang reacted by announcing its permanent withdrawal from the six-party
talks and ordering inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) to remove surveillance devices and other equipment at its mostly
disabled Yongbyon nuclear plant and leave the country.
Spurning calls by Washington and others to return to the talks, Pyongyang
announced at the end of April that, barring a reversal by the council, it would
start a uranium enrichment program - in addition to rebuilding Yongbyon - and
conduct new nuclear and ballistic-missile tests.
Thus, the only surprise about Monday's test, the force of which was roughly the
equivalent of the US bombs that devastated most of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
1945, was that it took place so soon after Pyongyang had issued the threat.
Most analysts in Washington believed it would take more time for the North to
prepare.
In a written statement issued by the White House well before dawn on Monday,
Obama noted that both the test and the missile launches were "not a surprise"
but were nevertheless "of grave concern to all nations" and "constitute a
threat to international peace and security".
"North Korea is not only deepening its own isolation, it's also inviting
stronger international pressure," Obama himself told reporters just before
noon. "That's evident overnight, as Russia and China, as well as our
traditional allies of South Korea and Japan, have all come to the same
conclusion: North Korea will not find security and respect through threats and
illegal weapons."
"We will work with our friends and allies to stand up to this behavior, and we
will redouble our efforts toward a more robust international non-proliferation
regime that all countries have responsibilities to meet," he added.
Pyongyang's increasingly aggressive behavior has been subject to a number of
different interpretations by analysts here, some of whom insist that it is
mostly tied to an internal succession struggle that has intensified since the
country's leader, Kim Jong-il, apparently suffered a stroke last summer. In
this view, Kim is both trying to reassure hardliners who dominate the military
and gain their support for his preferred line of succession.
While not ruling out the domestic motivation, other analysts have argued that
Pyongyang's actions are motivated, at least in major part, by the belief - most
recently sustained by Bush's decision to relax his terms for engaging Pyongyang
after the 2006 nuclear test - that brinkmanship will make Washington more
responsive to its basic concerns.
These include humanitarian and economic assistance and security guarantees, as
well as formal recognition as a nuclear-weapons state and even an eventual
arrangement similar to that which the administration of US president George W
Bush worked out with India.
But virtually all analysts in Washington agree that Obama is very unlikely to
respond in the ways that Pyongyang hopes, particularly regarding US recognition
of North Korea as a nuclear-weapons state. That "would create a crisis of
confidence in the alliance with Japan as well as with [South Korea]", according
to a recent article in the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo by Victor Cha, a
North Korea specialist at Georgetown University who served on Bush's National
Security Council staff.
"They may have miscalculated in believing that the United States will in fact
accept their nuclear status and will negotiate bilaterally with them on
normalization in these circumstances," said Romberg, who also noted that
Pyongyang also may have miscalculated about the willingness of Russia and China
to go along with the April 13 Security Council statement.
Indeed, much attention is now being focused on China's response to the test.
Initially, Beijing reacted relatively mildly, denouncing the test but calling
for calm. Two hours later, however, the Foreign Ministry issued a more pointed
statement, "demand[ing] that the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea]
live up to its commitment to non-nuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, stop
any activity that might worsen the situation and return to the track of the
six-party talks."
The statements, according to the latest edition of The Nelson Report, a private
newsletter considered a must-read for Asia specialists, "seem to indicate that
Beijing may be approaching a level of exasperation and concern which will - for
the first time in real terms since 1994 - force China to accept and implement a
real sanctions regime against the DPRK".
Meanwhile, administration officials suggested that Washington may be preparing
to re-impose Bush-era financial sanctions against banks and companies suspected
of conducting illicit transactions on behalf of Pyongyang.
At the same time, the administration's response may be tempered by concern over
the fate of two young Asian-American film-makers arrested by Pyongyang along
the Chinese-North Korean border in March. They are due to go on trial for
"hostile acts" against the government on June 4.
Jim Lobe's blog on US foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.
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