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Iran, North
Korea: The multilateral path
By Ehsan
Ahrari
The United States is emphasizing a
multilateral approach to put pressure on North Korea and
Iran regarding their nuclear programs. This is a welcome
change, but one wonders whether it will last. By the
same token, it is also important to consider why the
administration of President George W Bush is having a
change of heart.
Despite the commonality of the
issue involved, North Korea and Iran have entirely
different nuclear programs. A general understanding is
that the former has already developed a few nuclear
weapons, while the latter has been categorically denying
that it even has any intention of developing such
weapons. The United States envisages that Iran's nuclear
capabilities today are where North Korea's were a decade
or so ago, and is determined not to have Pyongyang's
example be repeated down the road.
Even though
North Korea signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT) in 1985, it has been suspected of having an active
nuclear weapons program. In 1993, Pyongyang blocked an
inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) and threatened to withdraw from the NPT, causing
a near-crisis. In October 1994, it finally concluded an
"Agreed Framework" whereby it agreed to cease all
activities that were aimed at developing nuclear weapons
at the Yongbyon reprocessing plant, and to ship the
spent fuel out of the country. A noteworthy point about
the framework is that it accepted the possibility that
North Korea possesses one or more nuclear devices.
The greatest achievement of the Agreed Framework
is that it postponed a military crisis between
Washington and Pyongyang, since the former considered
carrying out military strikes against North Korea's
nuclear facilities. But there is little doubt that North
Korean leader Kim Jong-il really wanted to foreswear the
nuclear option without getting sufficient guarantees
from the United States that his country would not be
attacked. North Korea has also known that, unless the
conflict between the two Koreas were settled, the United
States would consider the use of nuclear weapons against
it, if or when conflict on the peninsula flares up. As
these feelings persisted on the part of North Korea, the
development of nuclear weapons as an option remained
very much alive.
That might have been one reason
North Korea also maintained a highly vigorous
missile-production program. For instance, the Nodong
missile (range 1,250-1,500 kilometers) is designed to
carry a nuclear warhead. It is capable of hitting the US
bases in Okinawa, Japan. About 100 of these missiles
were deployed in the mid-1990s, and about 50 of them
were sold to countries such as Pakistan and Iran. The
Taepodong-2 long-range missile (range 3,600-6,000km) may
be ready for testing. With an adjusted payload, it is
capable of hitting parts of Alaska and Hawaii, thereby
providing North Korea the much-desired striking
capabilities against the United States. However, before
testing Taepodong-2, North Korea must perfect the
technological capabilities to launch Taepodong-1 (range
1,500-2,500km). This three-staged missile was launched
in August 1998. And, even though its flight over Japan
caused much dismay in that country, the third stage of
this missile was a failure.
As North Korea
clandestinely developed its nuclear capabilities and not
so clandestinely improved its missile capabilities, it
also sought pledges from the United States against the
use of nuclear weapons. On this issue, both sides
remained adamant: North Korea was not willing to give up
its nuclear option while the United States continued "to
hold a nuclear sword over it". According to the
information obtained by the Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists under the Freedom of Information Act, the US
Strategic Command carried out a simulated nuclear strike
against North Korea in 1998. That fact did not escape
the attention of the rulers of that country.
When Bush entered office, the United States was
no longer in a mood to negotiate with North Korea
regarding what it perceived as a much-violated Agreed
Framework. North Korea, on its part, stopped the
pretense of not developing the nuclear option. Bush's
January 2002 "axis of evil" speech clearly signaled to
North Korea that the alternative of abandoning the
nuclear option was a potential strike from the United
States. North Korea, on its part, made it quite clear by
October 2002 that it was reactivating its nuclear
facilities at Yongbyon.
The toppling of Saddam
Hussein further convinced North Korea that its only
reliable assurance against any future US aspirations to
bring about regime change was to develop nuclear
weapons. Even though Bush has stated that the United
States has no intention of invading North Korea, Kim
wants much more than mere verbal assurance. This is
where the necessity of multilateralism, and reliance on
diplomacy and the United Nations, becomes of utmost
importance to the nuclear issue involving North Korea
and Iran.
Iran's motivations to pursue the
nuclear option were based on the fact that Iraq, under
Saddam Hussein, was a very dangerous neighbor. The
chemical and missile attacks on its territory during the
Iran-Iraq war of 1981-88 convinced the Iranian
leadership that it should never again be caught
unprepared for such a ghastly eventuality. However, the
removal of Saddam was carried out by the United States,
which is viewed by Iran as even more dangerous than the
former Iraqi dictator. As the rulers of Iran see it,
here is a county that has maintained a high level of
hostility toward their country. Under the administration
of US president Bill Clinton, Iran was one of the
targets of the dual containment policy. Under Bush, the
United States' level of hostility and the attendant
acrimony toward Iran went up by several decibels,
despite the fact that Tehran promised to cooperate with
Washington in search-and-rescue operations during the US
military campaign to dismantle Afghanistan's Taliban
regime in 2001.
After the toppling of Saddam
Hussein, Iran's threat perceptions related to the
heightened US militaristic foreign policy continued to
escalate. The United States has a large military
presence on the eastern and western borders of Iran.
Bush has already lumped Iran in the category of the
"axis of evil". Since the United States had declared
that it would not allow nations in that category to
develop weapons of mass destruction, Iran's nuclear
program - which had been a constant source of irritation
between Washington and Moscow since the early 1990s -
was to come under heightened pressure and scrutiny.
It did not escape the attention of the United
States that Iran has followed a policy that was quite
similar to North Korea in the realms of nuclear and
missile development, except that Iran's programs in both
categories are a decade or so behind those of North
Korea's. The fact that Tehran insisted that it had no
intentions of developing nuclear weapons was never
considered a credible statement in Washington. After
all, India had made similar declarations in 1974, when
it conducted the so-called "peaceful nuclear explosion".
In the estimation of the United States, if allowed to
make continued progress in its peaceful nuclear program,
Iran is likely to develop nuclear weapons in less than
10 years.
Bush's problem is that Iran appears to
be pursuing a strategy of building up a nuclear
infrastructure within the letter of international law,
but in a way that would make it easy to exit the
treaties and quickly build nuclear weapons. North Korea
might be a lost cause in the sense that it is believed
to have nuclear weapons, and for the first time it is
boasting about its capacity to produce many more.
According to a recent report, North Korea might be
"developing technology to make nuclear warheads small
enough to fit atop the country's growing arsenal of
missiles ..." But after institutionalizing the doctrine
of proactive nuclear counter-proliferation in its
national-security strategy, the Bush administration is
in no mood to back down.
Thus, in the case of
North Korea and Iran, the United States has clearly
opted for a multilateral approach. North Korea's
neighbors - South Korea, Japan, and China - have already
been playing a multi-faceted role in attempting to
unravel its nuclear-weapons program. The use of the IAEA
and the European Union to put pressure on Iran to sign
additional nuclear inspection protocols and take other
measures to make its nuclear program transparent are the
newest wrinkle related to multilateralism.
It is
important to note that the United States may not really
be having a change of heart regarding its preference for
unilateralism, especially when it comes to dealing with
members of the "axis of evil". As the Bush
administration sees it, emphasizing multilateralism on
the nuclear issue is in essence a "win-win" strategy.
Even in the trans-Atlantic community, there is not the
slightest amount of disagreement over the proposition
that Pyongyang and Tehran should not be allowed to
become nuclear powers. Perhaps the European allies
concur that North Korea might be a tough one to be
persuaded at this point, but no one is willing to give
up on that option. That is why when one of the most
hawkish members of the US State Department, Under
Secretary for Arms Control and International Security
John Bolton, told the British Broadcasting Corp during
the week of June 16 that "all options are on the table",
no one in Europe bothered to grumble publicly by saying,
"There you go again!"
Undoubtedly, the
international pressure on Iran will be intense. Iran
will have little option but to sign additional intrusive
protocols for future inspections of its nuclear
facilities and agree to maintain a high degree of
transparency in its nuclear program. Iran is not likely
to take Bush's warning of June 26 lightly when he said
that it had better keep its promise not to develop
nuclear weapons, "and if they don't, we'll deal with
that when they don't". Bush also knows he has
substantial leeway on the issue from the US public.
According to the public opinion polls conducted by the
Washington Post and ABC News on June 24, 56 percent of
the public endorsed the use of the military to block
Iran from developing nuclear arms.
Regarding
North Korea, the Bush doctrine of regime change will
have to be abandoned. Instead, credible guarantees will
have to be offered in the form of some sort of a
"non-aggression pact". South Korea is very much in favor
of that, and Japan will have no heartburn on that option
either. If it were to agree to a non-aggression pact,
Washington, in turn, will not allow Pyongyang to play
the silly game of purposeful ambiguity regarding its
nuclear program. North Korea will have to give ironclad
guarantees that its nuclear-weapons program will be
dismantled once and for all. It should also be kept in
mind, however, that given its depressed economic state
of development, Pyongyang's conventional capabilities
would experience no meaningful upswing vis-a-vis South
Korea. Under such circumstances, what other option does
it have but to rely on developing a nuclear option, if
for no other reason than to sustain a credible
deterrence? Thus any serious negotiations to unravel its
nuclear option will also include negotiations of
substantial economic assistance.
No matter how
obdurate such negotiations may turn out to be, they will
be highly preferable to the international community than
the most contentious US unilateral action of regime
change in North Korea, a la Iraq. Besides, the
consequences of attacking a nuclear-armed North Korea
are too awesome to ponder by all parties, including the
United States.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is
an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent strategic
analyst.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
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