Posted on 03/09/2003 10:15:51 AM PST by Dog Gone
WHILE the nation is preparing itself for war with Iraq, a potentially even graver crisis is evolving on the Korean peninsula. The North Korean regime -- arguably among the most brutal and repressive in the world -- used the occasion of a visit to Pyongyang by the U.S. assistant secretary of state to inform him that it had built a uranium-enrichment plant, betraying an agreement of 1994 to freeze its nuclear program. Since that day last October, Pyongyang has renounced its membership in the Non-Proliferation Treaty and evicted the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency. It has restarted the plutonium-reprocessing plant at Yongbyon and will within months be able to produce weapons-grade material for a score or more of plutonium weapons a year for its own arsenal and to transfer plutonium to other rogue states or to terrorist groups.
It has coupled these measures with demands for bilateral negotiations with the United States and the United States only. Overtures from the South Korean government have been rejected, and other states have been discouraged from proposing multilateral forums.
Pyongyang is seeking a replay of two sets of negotiations of more than a decade ago. In January 1991, the first Bush administration brokered a three-cornered arrangement among Seoul, Pyongyang and Washington. Seoul and Pyongyang agreed not to possess, manufacture or use nuclear weapons or engage in plutonium reprocessing and to negotiate a system of North-South nuclear inspections. In January 1992, the United States withdrew its tactical nuclear weapons from Korea.
Despite this demonstration of good will, the negotiated arrangements fell apart almost immediately. Pyongyang refused to admit South Korean inspectors, and it confined international inspectors to admitted nuclear facilities, neatly leaving out the reprocessing plant at Yongbyon, which was the core of our concern. By the end of 1992, North Korea began to harass the IAEA inspectors and, in March 1993, refused any further IAEA inspections.
After another year of unproductive exchanges and American consideration of bombing the reprocessing facilities, a so-called "framework agreement" was negotiated by the Clinton administration. North Korea was to shut down but not dismantle its plutonium production under international supervision. In return the United States pledged not to use nuclear weapons against North Korea, to build together with Japan and South Korea two light water nuclear plants, and to supply heavy oil for North Korea's heating and conventional power plants. Pyongyang set out to break the agreement almost immediately with its covert uranium-enrichment program in 1998. And it maintained its threat of weapons of mass destruction by flying a test missile over Japan.
Given this history, it is difficult to understand why so many nations -- even doughty Australia -- are urging another round of bilateral U.S.-North Korean negotiations to "solve" a crisis entirely of Pyongyang's creation.
What Pyongyang says it wants from the United States in return for selling us a standstill agreement a second time is a non-aggression treaty plus demands to be unveiled in the course of the negotiation. The proposal is deceptive on its face. The most Stalinist regime in the world -- that has abandoned all existing agreements with the United States, killed half the South Korean government in an assassination plot in Rangoon, abducted more than a score of Japanese for forcible labor in Korea (and many more South Koreans) and blew up a civilian South Korean airliner -- is not likely to be reassured by a non-aggression treaty with an arch-capitalist.
Such a treaty would represent an admission by the United States that it constitutes a special threat requiring a special arrangement. Pyongyang clearly calculates that, having stigmatized the United States by the fact of the treaty, it can then use it to charge us with violating its provisions. Any American deployment in nearby countries, such as Japan or Korea, any normal troop rotation, or whatever other policies ingenious North Korean diplomacy decides to challenge will become fair game that triggers another round of nuclear blackmail.
A bilateral U.S.-North Korean negotiation involves two further traps. Given the growing nationalism in South Korea, any deadlock will be blamed on the United States, further poisoning South Korean-American relationships. Or else Pyongyang can use bilateral negotiations to emerge as the spokesman of Korean nationalism and to marginalize South Korea as a puppet of the United States. Tempting the United States into bilateral negotiations would enhance North Korea's political standing while legitimizing its nuclear status, providing Pyongyang with maximum flexibility with a minimum of obligation. It would create incentives for nuclear proliferation elsewhere; it would bring about a situation where the enforcement of any agreement would be America's responsibility with none of the neighboring countries having undertaken any obligation with respect to development that profoundly affects them.
The fundamental fact is that no compromise is possible between a North Korea armed with nuclear weapons and a non-nuclear one. If Pyongyang emerges from this crisis with an unimpaired nuclear and missile capability enhanced by its demonstrated capability of evasion, the door will have been opened to nearly unrestrained global proliferation and to a major challenge to the balance of power in North Asia. The goal of policy must be a non-nuclear Korea.
A key challenge is to determine North Korea's objectives. Is there some combination of assurance and aid that may induce Pyongyang into a non-nuclear future? Or has North Korea concluded that it must have a nuclear military capability to survive, in which case diplomacy -- whether bilateral or multilateral -- must fail?
Before drawing such conclusions, it is imperative to involve China, Japan and Russia together with South Korea in an effort to solve the nuclear problem on the peninsula. A denuclearized Korea can be achieved only by confronting Pyongyang with consequences it is unwilling to face. If the United States undertakes this task alone, the likelihood of a military confrontation is magnified because Pyongyang may then count on the opposition of South Korea and the standing aside of China, Japan and Russia to negate our threats.
China and Japan are vitally affected by a North Korean nuclear capability and by the acquisition by Pyongyang of a capacity for nuclear blackmail. Japan will not stand by when nuclear weapons are being produced and perhaps proliferated by a nearby neighbor. It will either enter the nuclear field or greatly increase its armaments or both. For China, a permanent nuclear crisis at its borders could lead either to another Korean war or to the collapse of its North Korean buffer or both, with streams of refugees crossing the Yalu River. Russia, with unstable regimes along its long borders, should seek to forestall a development giving an impetus to nuclear proliferation.
No country is more directly and perhaps overwhelmingly affected than our ally in South Korea. Through every previous crisis South Korea held fast to the U.S. security alliance and built its own considerable military power in close alliance with ours. But at least since the presidency of Kim Dae Jung starting in 1998, a major change in South Korean priorities has taken place. Seoul went far beyond previous South Korean governments in promoting engagement with the North (the "sunshine policy"). This policy was supported by the Clinton administration. Kim Dae Jung wanted to create a better psychological climate for the security issue by focusing first on so-called soft issues, such as family reunification and economic cooperation.
But Pyongyang never meaningfully implemented the family reunification agreement, nor did it create incentives for investment. The new Bush administration analyzed Pyongyang's strategy correctly, but when it put forward its conclusions bluntly, a rift opened up with the South Korean hopes about the sunshine policy. The recently elected South Korean administration has made this difference explicit and carried it to an extreme. It rejects any hint of military pressure on North Korea by the United States. But in the absence of such a threat, it is difficult to oblige North Korea to act reasonably. Negotiations (bilateral or multilateral) are bound to turn into a catalog of North Korean demands which, in its present frame of mind, Seoul is likely to embrace at least in part.
Perhaps a majority of South Koreans gives denuclearization of the peninsula a low priority if only because denuclearization of North Korea does not significantly dismiss the threat to Seoul. Leftist groups treat America as the source of tensions; pacifists justify the North Korean program as a response to American threats; nationalists see in the North Korean program an affirmation of Korean dignity. The new South Korean government seems to imagine itself not as an ally but as an intermediary between North Korea and the United States and urges the United States to negotiate a peaceful solution to the North Korean nuclear program which, coupled with the renunciation of pressure, means acceding to many of Pyongyang's demands.
But for America and it is hoped the other nations of Asia, non-proliferation is a vital issue. If the South Korean and American objectives prove irreconcilable, the American deployment in Korea becomes a hostage to the North Korean nuclear program and South Korean politics -- a state of affairs incompatible with a healthy U.S.-South Korean security relationship and, in the long run, with American deployment on the Korean peninsula.
A reassessment of the alliance and its strategy is imperative. This requires a more careful analysis of the actual North Korean threat to Seoul. True, Pyongyang has the capacity to do extraordinary damage, but only at the price of its own obliteration. Thus on the Korean peninsula there has been re-created the classic standoff of the Cold War. Both sides will shrink from the use of ultimate force. But they will have to find a strategy below this threshold to protect their vital interests. To calculate this threshold correctly becomes one of the tasks of American Korean policy, preferably in alliance with South Korea.
A serious strategy will attempt to counter North Korea's intransigence and outrageous playing of the nuclear card with a broader multilateral approach addressing the security situation on the Korean peninsula as a whole. Such a course could strive to address the aims of all parties: the nuclear issue, an attempt to end the isolation of North Korea, and economic cooperation. This can only take place within the context of a non-nuclear Korea.
The role of China will be crucial. Beijing cannot be enlisted in this effort by abstract appeals for assistance in a non-proliferation strategy. For China's interests include the role of North Korea as a buffer on traditional invasion routes and nuclear deployment, not only in Korea but in the rest of Asia. What is needed is an elaboration of the strategic dialogue that the meetings between the Chinese and American presidents have initiated. The stakes are high. For if such an understanding proves unachievable, American strategy will inevitably gravitate either to removing the reprocessing plant by force or to a deterrent posture along the periphery of Asia increasingly reliant on nuclear weapons -- the kind of world it is in everybody's interest to avoid.
One way to achieve these goals is by a conference on the security future of the Korean peninsula involving China, Russia, Japan, the two Koreas and the United States. Such a conference could place the North Korean nuclear problem in the context of other concerns by the countries involved. Neither China nor Japan has an interest in a collapse of a North Korean political entity -- though the ultimate test of Pyongyang's survival is to build a more humane set of institutions. In such a context, all participants could renounce force in changing North Korea's borders, thereby achieving the non-aggression guarantee Pyongyang professes to seek. It could provide a framework for integrating North Korea into the world economy. It could leave the issue of unification to negotiating between the two Koreas. What it must not do is to ratify nuclear weapons in North Korea.
Time is of the essence. For soon the plutonium production in North Korea will reach a level beyond the capacity of the international system to control by other than military measures.
It is hard to forsee a good end to this region as long as these vicious, paranoid-schizophrenic mass-murderers are still in power. For them, Armageddon isn't something to keep distant over the horizon,... it is next door and invited over for dinner.
If there ever was a compelling case for a swift, pre-emptive nuclear strike to totally decapitate a government, this is it.
It's either that, or a collective effort by North Korea's neighbors to undermine the regime.
As time goes on, your option becomes more likely.
Afghanistan -> Iraq -> North Korea -> ?
What could be simpler?
Sorry, but can't think of another reasonable approach.
I can't imagine why Japan wouldn't want collapse in Pyongyang. It would open new investment and depose a serious threat.
They truly are a rogue state, and those who think it is a puppet of either China or Russia don't really know much.
Then why did China supply North Korea chemical precursors for production of weapons grade uranium? This is the key question in this equation which not only goes unanswered, it goes completely undiscussed!
There are several possiblities:
That the Bush Administration, and particularly Condoleeza Rice haven't breathed a word over this complicity gives me serious cause for concern over the current direction of US policy.
it exposes the lies outright and the full intentions of everyone on the left - don't do anything about a madman before he has the capacity to strike with nuclear weapons, wait until he does and then give him whatever it takes so that he will promise not to use the nukes on you.
Consequently, they're not particularly interested in helping us out here. But that's not the same thing as saying that North Korea is under their control or doing their bidding. The countries are quite different, and North Korea has no interest in opening up even to the extent that China has.
I personally would simply like to seem them removed and the peninsula re-united under Seoul. He seems to prefer some kind of controlled stand off.
They can't be trusted, they sell weapons, they are oppressive and they still have our boat. I would like to see them fall and solve the crisis permmentantly.
I don't know how difficult that would be, but that should be the goal. They are a bankrupt nation who begged food for their army & heating oil from us. How difficult could it be to bring about the downfall of Kim jong?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.