The Bush Administration and North Korea’s Nuclear Program
By Clark Sorensen
Jackson School
of International Studies
University of Washington
Revised as of April
6, 2003
©Clark Sorensen.
This paper is available for personal reading. It may be
quoted, but is not for distribution.
People who
follow the news have been aware over the past few months of the disturbing
stories coming out of North Korea.
Last December 22nd, the North Koreans expelled inspectors from the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who had been, under the terms of the
Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), keeping track of spent plutonium rods
from the DPRK’s nuclear reactors that had been shut
down since 1994. This January the 10th, the DPRK announced they were
withdrawing “immediately” from the NPT. In
response, the IAEA board, meeting at their headquarters in Vienna,
voted North Korea
to be “in material breach” of the NPT on February 13th, and thereby
referred the matter to the United Nations Security Council. On
the 27th of February, the North Koreans restarted for the first time
since 1994 their 5 megawatt graphite moderated reactor at Ryǒngbyǒn.
The DPRK’s official explanation for the reactivation
of the reactor was that they need it for the generation of power. Outside sources
say that since the reactor uses almost as much power as it produces, the only
reason to reactive it is to produce plutonium for reprocessing into nuclear
weapons.
On top of this
has been a series of threats and counter threats by North
Korea and the Bush administration. Shortly
after the DPRK expelled IAEA inspectors, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld remarked pointedly that “the United States is
perfectly capable of fighting on two theaters at once”—signaling to North Korea
that they shouldn’t take advantage of the USA’s preoccupation with Iraq. CIA
Director George Tenet sent a tremor of worry through the United States news
media when he testified to the Senate Armed Forces Committee on February 12th
of this year (the day before the IAEA meeting that found North Korea in
material breech of the NPT) that North Korea has nuclear armed missiles capable
of reaching the West Coast of the United States. (This “news” actually recycled
the 1998 Rumsfeld report that was itself highly
exaggerated) Within a few days of Tenet’s testimony the North Koreans announced
the resumption of missile tests that had been on hold since 1998. Then on March
2nd four North Korea MIG fighters shadowed a US
RC-13S Cobra Ball aircraft used to monitor missile launchings off the east
coast of North Korea.
The fighters had apparently tried to force the US
intelligence plane to land. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
responded by sending B 52s to Guam.
People
sometimes ask me, “Why are the North Koreans doing these terrible things.” It
is not easy to answer in one or two sentences. These issues have been simmering
for a long time, and so they can be correctly understood only in historical
context. The activities of North or South Korea,
however, rarely make the news except when a crisis emerges. Thus, the little
day-to-day events that precipitate the crises are rarely on people’s minds.
Much of what the North Koreans do is a reaction to US actions or policies, but most
of the actions and policies of the US that disturb North Korea are either not
reported in the media, or are buried in policy documents that only wonks—in
addition to the North Koreans—ever read. The result of these conditions is that
much what the North Koreans do that in fact is rational and systematic from
their point of view seems erratic and foolish to even a well-informed American.
In addition
to the problem that the US policies to which the North Koreans are reacting are
seldom widely know outside the community of policy specialists, is the problem
that the solution to North Korea issues can only be successful if it is in
harmony with the wants and desires of North Korea’s most powerful
neighbors—China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea. As the US media seldom report
extensively on how the Chinese, Russians, Japanese, and South Koreans
understand the world—and frequently even specialists lack insight in this
area—ordinary citizens lack crucial information they need to assess whether
proposed solutions to the North Korean nuclear issue are realistic or not. When
it comes to expectations of what China
should do to solve the North Korean issues, misconceptions of Chinese views of
the world and their influence on North Korea
are especially pervasive.
Because of
these considerations, it is most useful to deal with the North Korean nuclear
issue in a circular manner. That is, I will first give a quick overview of
current issues, then dip into the recent history of US-North Korean relations,
and finally come back to the present to discuss the policy options available today
in the context of political conditions in South
Korea, Japan, China, and Russia.
Before we get started on this,
however, I need to clear up a few issues of terminology.
Loose Talk about North
Korea
There has
been a lot of loose and scary talk about North
Korea in the US
media. The loose talk revolves around such terms as “nuclear threat”, “nuclear
blackmail”, “appeasement”, and “illegality”. Use of these terms is loose
because they do not accurately characterize what the North Koreans are doing,
and it is pernicious because they frame North Korean issues in ways that make a
diplomatic solution of them well-neigh impossible. Yet the use of these terms
to characterize North Korea
actions is rarely challenged in the mainstream media.
The possibility of North
Korea having nuclear capacity is often
called a “nuclear threat”, as if North Korea
somehow had the desire to hit the United States
or South Korea
with nuclear weapons. While such a strike would be a theoretical possibility if
the North had nuclear weapons, and is thus of course a bit scary, it is
important to remember that the North Koreans have never made an explicit
nuclear threat against the US or any other country. Former
North Korean President Kim Il Sung, in fact, told Carter when the he visited P’yǒngyang in 1994 that it would be suicidal for a small and
poor county like North Korea to ever delude itself into thinking that it could
develop a nuclear arsenal sufficient to threaten the United States. The United
States, on the other hand, has frequently
made nuclear threats to North Korea.
These threats are not widely known outside policy circles, so the idea that North
Korea truly feels fearful of US attack seems
incredible and irrational to most Americans. Yet even as recently as last
September the possibility of preemptive strikes specifically mentioning only
Iraq and North Korea was published as part of the Bush administrations National
Security Strategy. Since the United States
and North Korea
do not have diplomatic relations, and Iraq
has already been attacked, it is only prudent for the North Koreans to take
these threats seriously regardless of measured statements that may be issued by
other parts of the Bush administration. A fair assessment of the North Koreans’
motivation, then, would have to concede that they have significant security
concerns vis-à-vis the US,
and the “threat” goes as much from the US
to North Korea
as visa versa.
North
Korea expelling IAEA inspectors and starting
up its nuclear reactors is also routinely called ‘nuclear blackmail’ in the US
as if North Korea’s
nuclear program is designed only to make the US
grant concessions. It’s true that North Korea feels that, as a sovereign
nation, it has a theoretical right to have a nuclear program equal to that of even
great powers, if it so wishes. It
is also true that they are not willing to give up this right “for nothing”. One
should also not forget, however, that North
Korea has memories of being heavily bombed
by United Nations (mostly US) forces during the Korean War, and since the
collapse of the Soviet Union, and abrogation of the USSR’s
mutual defense treaty with the DPRK, North Korea
has faced an increasingly serious security threat from the United
States. The DPRK is no longer protected by
the nuclear umbrella of the Soviet Union. Some inside
North Korean seem to think this security threat can be ‘solved’ if North
Korea has its own nuclear weapons. Although
the North Koreans probably could be induced to give up their nuclear program in
exchange for security guarantees and other goodies, they will not give it up
for promises that the United States
may later on refuse to fulfill. If North Korea’s
actions were simply “nuclear blackmail” they would have to have no rational
basis in North Korean security concerns. But this condition is not truly met.
Another of the words that are
loosely thrown around is the term “illegal”, as when people argue that any kind
of North Korean nuclear program is prohibited by the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty, and thus North Korea’s
actions are “illegal” and deserve nothing but punishment. Although there are
some grounds (that are weak in my opinion) for using this terminology, use of the
concept of “illegality” in international relations can easily lead to erroneous
conclusions because of a misunderstanding of the differences between
international and domestic law. Assessments of the “illegality” of North Korean
actions often, too, are based on a selective reading of international
agreements. As experts like Gilpin have observed, the international system is
in essence one of anarchy, since all independent nations are sovereign and
(supposedly) equal. Nations express their sovereignty by having a supreme
legislative authority (a king, dictator, party, or legislature) that enacts the
laws of the nation, courts that adjudicate the law, and police that enforce the
law. Within a nation, if someone defies national sovereignty by breaking one of
its laws, the nation’s court system can punish that person, and there are
proper authorities to carry out that punishment. International law, however, is
the law between sovereign nations. It is created through treaties that
have been voluntarily entered into, and conventions whose legitimacy have
widely been accepted. There is, however, no supreme authority that can legislate
norms that are binding on all nations,
there is no universally recognized world court system that can adjudicate
norms, and there is no universal armed force that can enforce decisions against
countries. Institutions like the United Nations and The World Court have been
set up to take care of some these functions, but they are only partially
effective. Consequently, nations enter into treaties and observe United Nations
resolutions when it meets their purposes, and the more powerful nations also abrogate
treaties and ignore United Nations resolutions when that meets their
purpose. Nobody, of course, punishes the powerful nations when they do this. Whether
nations “get away” with abrogating treaties and ignoring the United Nations is
purely a matter of power and politics, and has little to do with consistent,
enforceable legal principle. When the United
States abrogated the Missile Test Treaty,
for example, the United States
cited its right of self defense, and the other signatories of the treaty had to
just swallow their unhappiness. Though one might want to say that a nation that
violated a treaty to which it was party has acted illegally, since nations are
sovereign and have the right to withdraw from treaties anyway, using the concept
of illegality moves one into an ideal, unrealistic realm, rather than to the
actual give and take of power politics that is what really structures
international relations.
Finally, the term “appeasement” is
frequently used to disparage diplomatic efforts to negotiate an end to North
Korea’s nuclear program. Many commentators
on the right have argued, for example, that North Korea is a bad country that
does illegal things and therefore offering any kind of carrot to induce the
North Koreans to stop doing these things would be “appeasement” encouraging
more behavior—as if a sovereign nation should be treated like an errant child.
As already mentioned above, the concept of illegality that lies behind this
assessment is of limited applicability. Moreover, because the right of self
defense is the most fundamental right of a sovereign nation, measures a country
takes to implement that right can easily be argued to supercede almost any
other obligation. Even if a supranational body like the United Nations deemed
that North Korea shouldn’t have nuclear weapons, say, the North Koreans could cite
their inalienable right to self defense as justification for such weapons,
undermining the legitimacy of even UN claims of illegality. Nations acting in
self-defense, in fact, are almost impossible to legitimately punish.
For this reason, negotiations between nations involve give and take, carrots
and sticks. If all carrots are called “appeasement”, however, one is left
without the ability to offer inducements (positive sanctions) in order to gain
compliance. This makes diplomacy almost impossible. States could try to get
other states to do what they want through threats. But when we had a system
based on the use of threats in the 19th and early 20th
centuries, wars were very frequent. The frequency of devastating wars, in fact,
is what led to the development of the present international system with the
United Nations serving as an international forum, and national sovereignty
guaranteed. Going back to the earlier system not only would lead to numerous
wars, but these wars would now be fought with weapons of almost unimaginable
destructiveness. A system lacking positive sanctions does not seem to be one that
would increase world security in the long run.
A fifth word that is sometimes used
with regard to North Korea is the word crisis, a term that the Bush administration avoids
using about North Korea’s recent actions, but that others (especially
Democrats) think is appropriate. The situation with North
Korea is not a crisis in the sense that America
or South Korea
are in immediate danger, but it is a crisis in the sense that time is
important. The longer one waits to deal with it, the more difficult it becomes
to resolve. It is also, in my opinion, a “crisis” that could have been prevented
through effective diplomacy. Effective diplomacy, however, has been in short
supply in the Bush administration—and not just over North
Korea. The North Korean issue has been put
on the back burner, of course, because of an overwhelming preoccupation in the
Bush administration with disarmament and now war with Iraq.
But the Bush administration’s foreign policy has also lacked coherence because
of inconsistencies between what has been said about major issues by hawks on
the National Security Council like Donald Rumsfeld,
and diplomats in the State Department. Thus on the same day that Colin Powell
has said that the US would seek a diplomatic solution to the North Korean
nuclear crisis, Donald Rumsfeld has said that “of
course the US could fight a war on two fronts at the same time”, implying that
a military option is on the table.
In the Bush administration the National
Security Council—made up of the President, Vice-President Dick Cheney,
Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleeza
Rice, CIA Director George Tenet, the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Pentagon, and
a few others—rather than the State Department seems to be dominant in foreign
policy formulation. This has meant that foreign policy has often been set by
the National Security Council before the State Department has had a chance to
consult with allies and foreign countries. When time comes for consultation,
the policy is already set and Secretary Powell has had limited room to maneuver.
Diplomats have been left with few options but threats or bribes to get other
nations to go along with US
foreign policy. Because the policy hawks in the National Security Council do
not regularly consult with foreign leaders, and in fact routinely dismiss the
concerns of those who disagree with them, they often had unrealistic
expectations about the kind of cooperation the Bush administration can expect
on US foreign policy initiatives. Time and again in the days leading up to the
Iraq War the administration has been surprised by the refusal of allies—even so
close a military ally as Turkey—to
participate in the Iraq War. Many of the policy hawks in the Bush
administration have equally unrealistic expectations about the kind of
cooperation they can expect from China,
South Korea, Japan,
and Russia on
the North Korean nuclear issue.
A
Quick Overview of Current Issues
Having discussed a few ways the
North Korean issue has commonly, but erroneously in my opinion, been discussed
in recent years in the US I would like to give a quick overview of my
conclusions about North Korea before delving into the details of recent
US-North Korean relations, and the policy options available to the United
States in light of the political conditions in the neighbors of North Korea—South
Korea, Japan, China, and Russia—whose cooperation will be necessary to obtain a
satisfactory solution to North Korean issues. This overview consists of both
good news and bad news.
Good News
(1)
North Korea
does not in my opinion desire to attack the United
States with weapons of mass destruction, or
with terrorism, and under present circumstances will not invade South
Korea, either.
The reason I say this is not that
I think the North Koreans have suddenly become doves, or gone soft. It is
because North Korea
is not today militarily strong enough to defeat either the United
States or South
Korea, and the North Korean leaders know
very well that they could never survive a full scale war. Since they are aware
that a full-scale war will lead to the destruction of their regime, they will
avoid launching a major attack that would give the United States a pretext for
bombing, or invading, unless they are convinced that the United States is about
to destroy it by military or economic means, anyway. Notice that this
assessment of North Korean military capacity is based on an assumption that
both the United States
and South Korea
will continue with a robust deterrence policy. It is not based on trust.
The North Korean regime has not given up the dream of ruling the entire Korean
peninsula, and the only reason they will not try to do this by military means
is that know they now are militarily too weak to succeed over determined South
Korean and United States defense measures. Even militarily weak as they are
they can still continue to try subversion, of course, though in my opinion
South Korea’s democracy is strong enough and legitimate enough that the chances
of subversion succeeding today are low.
(2) Though their actions seem
provocative, the main motivation of the North Korean leadership is the security
and survival of their regime.
The legacy of the guerilla legends
that Kim Il Sung used to obtain and maintain his power—and that his sone Kim Jong Il continues to use—means
that North Koreans think of security primarily in terms of a strong indigenous
military, rather than, say, embedding themselves in mutually beneficial
international relations. Observers of North
Korea have sometimes remarked that North
Korea seems like a mountain guerilla
encampment writ large. Even if basis of North Korean security thinking is a
strong indigenous military, however, North Korean leaders are aware that a
small country cannot generate an economic surplus sufficient to support
firepower comparable to that of the major powers. During the Cold War the North
Koreans were able to rely on the nuclear umbrella of the Soviet
Union and China.
Living now without the credible nuclear umbrella of the Soviet Union
makes some North Korean leaders think that only indigenous nuclear weapons can
deter a superpower like the United States.
Because the security threat to North Korea
comes primarily from the United States,
however, the North Koreans have proved willing to give up nuclear weapons if
they can achieve security from US
attack by other means. They will ask for compensation for giving up what they
consider their sovereign right to have a nuclear program, however.
(3)
North Korea
when compared with South Korea
today is militarily much weaker than at any time in its history.
The economic difficulties that North
Korea has faced over that past 10 years, and
their loss of economic and military support from the Soviet Union,
have led to great degradation of their military capacity at a time when South
Korea—with the assistance of the United
States—has greatly improved the training,
equipment, and sophistication of its armed forces. Offensive war—that is, a
full-scale invasion of South Korea—is
now very difficult for them. North Korea does have important defensive
resources, the capacity to shell US forces and the South Korea capital from
north of the DMZ, and the capacity to shoot missiles at South Korea and Japan.
If the North Koreans chose to use chemical or biological warheads in their
artillery or missiles, they could rain unimaginable destruction on South
Korea and even Japan.
The reason they lack the ability to sustain an invasion, however, is
that they lack sufficient reserves of fuel, lack spare parts for their
mechanized equipment (which is inferior to that of South Korea and the United
States, anyway), have skimped on training because of lack of spare parts and
fuel,
and they probably have manpower whose health has been degraded by persistent
food shortages over a long period of time. Note too, that unlike during the
Korean War when the core officers of the North Korean military were
battle-hardened veterans of the Chinese revolution, no North Korean officers
today are battle-experienced. This is unlike South
Korea, whose top officers today often had
experience during the Vietnam War.
(4)
North Korea’s
present nuclear capacity, if any, is as yet too rudimentary to serve as an
offensive threat even in worst case analyses, and it is far from certain when,
or even if, they will gain significant nuclear capacity in the future.
The CIA has estimated that North
Korea already has one or two nuclear
devices. Actually, the only thing we know for sure is that North
Korea in the early nineties extracted enough
plutonium from their spent nuclear fuel rods to make one or two nuclear devices
if they reprocessed the material and completed the design of a bomb. This much
was confirmed by AIEA analysis of
the spend fuel rods. We do not know where, or if, that plutonium was
reprocessed to weapons grade, although reprocessing itself is not difficult to
do. Most American scientists think that obtaining plutonium is the most
difficult step in nuclear production, so that anybody who has the plutonium
should be able to figure out how to make a bomb. It is prudent, therefore, to
assume that the North Koreans have one or two nuclear bombs. Some Russian
scientists, however, think the North Koreans do not have the technical capacity
to complete the design of a nuclear bomb, and since North
Korea’s nuclear technology comes largely
from Russia,
this is an opinion worth considering. Even if North
Korea has two bombs, however, they have
never tested them, so they must have uncertainties about whether they will work.
Moreover, two bombs are useless as an offensive threat. If they test one, they
would have only one left over, and using that one would leave them completely
vulnerable to nuclear counterattack. If regime survival is what they are most
concerned about two nuclear weapons have only symbolic value.
(5)
North Korea
has significant missile capacity, but they do not have a missile capable of
reaching the US
with a nuclear warhead, despite reports to the contrary.
North
Korea has many short-range scud missiles
capable of reaching South Korea,
ships off the North Korean coast, and other target close by. They have a
missile called the Nodong that is capable of going
600-800 miles—far enough to hit most of Japan, Okinawa, and Taibei,
but not Guam—and they have deployed about 100 of them, reportedly aimed at
Japan. The three-stage missile design required to reach a target as far away as
the US has only
been tested once in 1998, and that test failed. Whether that missile would have
been capable of reaching the United States
even if it had been successful is a matter of conjecture:
·
If the missiles can carry enough
fuel
·
If the engines have a high level
of efficiency in burning the fuel
·
If the rocket structure itself,
and its payload are light enough
·
If they can make a nuclear device
small enough to put on a long-range missile
It is doubtful that North
Korea’s technology and their present economic
capacity will allow them to develop and deploy enough of these kinds of
missiles to create a credible nuclear threat for the United
States. Until their recent missile tests in
response to United States
concerns, in fact, the North Koreans had done no missile tests since 1998. The
recent tests have been of short range missiles. The hype about a North Korean
missile threat in the US
is mostly, in fact, just type in order to justify the deployment of an
intercontinental missile defense system.
(6)
Both North
Korea and the United
States have said that they want to solve the
issues between them through diplomacy, and the US
and North Korea
have successfully negotiated in the past.
(7)
Finally, It is even possible (but
not likely in my opinion) that the North Koreans do not actually intend to
produce nuclear weapons, and are simply pulling the US’s chain in order to get
concessions. In any case, because the North Koreans want nuclear weapons, if
they do, primarily for defensive purposes the main danger from the production
of plutonium in North Korea really is one of proliferation—the fear that they
may sell it—rather than of nuclear threats from North Korea per se.
Bad News
(1)
There has been only one high level
contact between North Korea and the United States since the beginning of the
Bush administration, and that contact between Undersecretary for Asian and
Pacific Affairs James Kelly and the North Koreans last October is the one the
precipitated the present crisis.
For diplomacy between North
Korea and the United
States to be successful, personal contacts
and trust have to be developed between US diplomats and their North Korean
counterparts. Otherwise neither side will be able to accurately read the
meaning and intentions of the other side. The process of creating such trust
requires regular contacts and consultations, and takes time to develop. This
process has not begun.
(2)
Both the United
States and North
Korea have preconditions for talks that the
other side finds unacceptable.
North Korea wants security guarantees
from the United States (in fact they want a non-aggression treaty) and direct
one-on-one talks with the United States, while the Bush administration has said
it will talk directly with North Korea only after North Korea agrees to
dismantle (not just freeze) all their nuclear facilities. The United
States is willing to talk (not negotiate)
with North Korea
only in the context of a multilateral forum, and President Bush has made it
known that he also rejects the notion of bilateral talks within a multilateral
forum. North
Korea has so far rejected any format but
direct bilateral talks with the United States.
This is, no doubt, due to fears of being ganged up on, but also has to do with
the North Korean’s assessment that it is the United
States that has the real power to make or
break any agreement about the Korean peninsula. In the meantime, the United
States has become preoccupied with Iraq.
While the US has not put the North Korean nuclear issue entirely to the side
(Secretary of State Colin Powell met with Korean Foreign Minister Yun Yǒng-gwan to discuss a “road map” for solving the issue on
the 28th of March), one cannot expect any major new initiatives
until the Iraq issue comes to some kind of conclusion.
(3)
The Bush administration has been
sending mixed messages on foreign policy—particularly on North
Korea, but also on other issues—so that
comments made by Secretary of State Colin Powell have often been undermined by
contradictory comments made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
The result of these mixed messages
is that nobody is confident that they know what US
policy really is.
North Korea, having no high level diplomatic contacts with the United States
that can be used to convey official US policy, tends to believe the worst,
assumes hostilities are a likely possibility, and is fearful of making a deal with
a country they no longer trust. Even the United
States’ allies, such as South
Korea, are not sure what US
policy really is. South Koreans fear that Washington
will decide on a “surgical strike” that will inadvertently lead to war on the
Korean peninsula with dire consequences for both Koreas.
In fact, because of persistent rumors about “surgical strikes” the South
Koreans asked the United States
to “clarify” its position just before the March 28th meeting between
Foreign Secretary Yun and Secretary of State Powell.
(4)
Although the Bush administration
clearly wants to wait until after the Iraq war to deal with the North Korea
issue, the longer we wait for effective diplomacy to begin, the more difficult
the problem becomes to solve.
To our knowledge, North
Korea has not yet begun reprocessing
plutonium, but if they begin to do so they will have enough plutonium to create
5-6 bombs in about six months, and will be able to produce enough enriched
plutonium to create 10-15 bombs per year. Once this process begins, freezing
the nuclear reactors (as was done in the past) will no longer provide the
protection it did. Negotiations will have to go much father than they did in
the past. Yet even the 1994 negotiations that led to the Agreed Framework were
very arduous and difficult, and the US
was not able to get all the concessions it wanted—particularly about plutonium
that might have been reprocessed in the past. North
Korea, for its part, has made clear that it
wants to solve this process through negotiations with the US,
and they would like to do this before the end of the Iraq
war. In order to get the attention of the United
States they have staged a series of
provocations, such as the apparent attempt to ground a US
intelligence plane off the coast of North Korea
on March 2nd. This tit for tat of provocation and response could
easily spiral out of control before negotiations even begin.
(5)
The consequences of failed
diplomacy are serious and may, in fact, lead to war.
Refusal of the United
States to compromise, at least to an extent,
on opening negotiations with North Korea
will, as it has in the past, in my opinion, lead to stalemate, with the result
that North Korea
may quickly become a nuclear state. As mentioned above, North
Korea acquiring nuclear weapons is more
serious as a proliferation problem than as a nuclear threat per se. That is,
the danger is more that North Korea
with its dire economic problems may sell enriched plutonium to nefarious parties,
than that North Korea
will attack other countries with nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, the possibility
of North Korea itself
becoming a nuclear power is also a grave concern. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush are both said to have remarked
in the first week of March that military options were on the table, at a time
when no effective diplomacy on this issue was being accomplished. George Will
on ABC This Week on March 2nd, in fact, quoted George Bush as
saying that if diplomacy fails, war is the only alternative. But if war breaks
out on the Korean peninsula, the consequences will be catastrophic even if the United
States “wins” the war. Don Obermeyer in his book, “The Two Koreas” quoted Pentagon
estimates that the casualties of a three month war on the Korean
Peninsula would be 50,000 US
military casualties, 100,000 South Korean military casualties, untold North
Korean casualties, and perhaps more than a million civilian casualties. We do
no know how China,
Japan, or Russia
(or even South Korea,
for that matter) will react to such a possibility. China
still has a mutual defense treaty with North
Korea, after all. Moreover, we cannot
eliminate the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons on both side, or of
missile attack on Japan.
For these reasons, threatening war on the Korean peninsula, in my opinion,
shows reckless disregard for the lives of US troops and those of important US
allies.
The
Recent History of US-North Korean Relations
Because
the news media in the United States
rarely cover North Korean issues, a lot of people here have been caught off
guard by the sudden appearance of the nuclear issue. Actually, however, this
appearance is not sudden. The issue of North
Korea and nuclear weapons has been simmering
off again and on again since the 1980s. There is a history of the US and North
Korea dealing with this issue that goes through the Reagan, George H. W. Bush,
Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations—both Republicans and
Democrats. This means there is a rather
extensive record of what has worked, and what has not worked in dealing with North
Korea. The present crisis developed last
fall (2002) with the break down of something called the Agreed Framework that
was negotiated between North Korea
and the Clinton administration in
1994. This agreed framework headed off North
Korea’s withdrawal from the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty, and froze North Korea’s
nuclear reactors. The core of the agreement was that the US
would help replace North Korea’s
graphite moderated reactors that produce lots of easily reprocessed plutonium
with Light Water Reactors whose spent fuel is much less amenable to processing
into weapons grade material. The US
would provide security guarantees to the DPRK, and in exchange the DPRK would
freeze its old reactors, stay in the NPT, and let the spent fuel be monitored
by the IAEA.
The
Agreed Framework was signed by Robert Galluci for the
US and Kang Sǒk-chu for the DPRK on October 21st, 1994. There is
much misunderstanding about this agreement, so it important to go over the
terms in detail. These are given below:
(1) Both sides will cooperate to
replace the DPRK’s graphite-moderated reactors and
related facilities with light-water reactors.
o
The US will organize an international consortium to do this.
o
US will supply 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil annually to replace the
energy of the closed graphite-moderated reactors until the LWR’s
are completed.
o
As soon as the agreement goes into effect North Korea will freeze the DPRK’s
graphite moderated reactors. They will be dismantled when the LWRs are completed.
o
The US and DPRK will cooperate to make sure that the spent fuel rods from
North Korea’s graphite moderated reactors are properly stored during
construction of the LWR’s, and will dispose of them
when the LWR’s are completed without them being
reprocessed in North Korea
(2) The two sides will move toward
full normalization of political and economic relations.
o
Barriers to trade and investment will be removed.
o
Each side will open a liaison office in the other’s capital.
o
As progress is made on other issues the two countries will upgrade
relations to Ambassadorial level.
(3) Both sides will work together for
peace and security on a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.
o
The US will provide formal assurances to the DPRK against the threat or use of
nuclear weapons by the US.
o
The DPRK will consistently make steps to implement the North-South Joint
Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
o
The DPRK will engage in north-south dialogue.
(4) Both sides will work together to
strengthen the international nuclear non-proliferation regime.
o The DPRK will continue to remain
in the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)).
o Upon conclusion of the supply
contract for the provision of the LWR, ad hoc and routine inspections will
resume under the DPRK’s agreement with the IAEA with
respect to facilities not subject to the freeze.
o When progress is sufficient in
the LWR the DPRK will come in full compliance with its safeguards agreement
with the IAEA.
Notice that in
Paragraph 3, there is a provision that the Joint Declaration on the
Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula signed by North and South Korea on January 20th, 1992 be incorporated into the agreed framework. The
provisions of this agreement are given below:
Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula—January 20th, 1992
1)
South and North
Korea shall not test, manufacture, produce,
receive, possess, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons
2)
South and North
Korea shall use nuclear energy solely for
peaceful purposes
3)
South and North
Korea shall not possess nuclear reprocessing
and uranium enrichment facilities
4)
In order to verify the
denuclearization of the Korea
peninsula, South and North Korea
shall conduct inspections of particular subjects chosen by the other side and
agreed between the two sides. In accordance with the procedures and methods to
be determined by the South-North Joint Nuclear Control Commission
5)
In order to implement this joint
declaration, South and North Korea
shall establish and operate a South-North Joint Nuclear Control Commission
within one month of the effectuation of this joint declaration
6)
The joint declaration shall enter
into force from the date the South and the North exchange the appropriate
instruments following the completion of their respective procedures for
bringing it into effect.
It is important to note here, that
the incorporation of the North/South joint denuclearization agreement commits
the North to “consistently take steps” which include avoiding all reprocessing
of nuclear material.
I’m not here going to go into
detail on the tortured history of how the Agreed Framework came about. Let me
just note that there were five years from 1988 to 1993—all of the George H. W.
Bush administration, and the first two years of the Clinton
administration—during which there was stalemate over the issue of North Korea’s
nuclear program, the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, and what inspection
regime the IAEA should have in North Korea. This period was quite similar to
the period we have entered from October of last year with relations between North
Korea and the United
States spiraling out of the control to the
point that the United States
was seriously considering military options in the summer of 1994.
This stalemate was only broken by President Carter’s visit with Kim Il Sung in
1994 bringing a proposal of Light Water Reactors in exchange for a nuclear
freeze that eventually led to the negotiation of the Agreed Framework later
that year.
Although the Agreed Framework has
been reviled by some hyper-conservative elements in the United
States, it is important to recognize its
achievements as well as its limitations. Under achievements, we can list the
following:
- All
North Korea’s graphite moderated reactors were shut down, so no more spent
fuel rods with plutonium ripe for reprocessing were being produced.
- North
Korea’s existing spent fuel rods were
properly stored and monitored 24 hours a day by the IAEA (both by cameras
and personnel).
- The
Korean Energy Development Organization (KEDO) was organized to construct LWRs in North Korea.
South Korea
and Japan agreed
to finance the construction of the LWRs. South
Korean technologyg’s sunshine policy and visit
to P’yǒngyang in 2000, but this was only possible because of
the prior existence of the Agreed Framework.
was used so that South Korean technicians were sent to North
Korea along with those of other
countries, and significant progress was made on the construction.
- US
spent about $30 million a year to provide heavy fuel oil to North
Korea during the period of
constructions of the LWRs.
- North
South trade and contact slowly began to increase from almost nothing to
several hundred million annually, while travel between North and
South—almost absent before—became a regular feature of North/South
relations.
Important parts of the agreement, however, were never
carried out by one or both sides.
- Early
progress toward diplomatic relations stalled, and even liaison offices in
the two nation’s capitals—much less full embassies—were never set up.
- Construction
of the LWR’s fell way behind schedule. This
delay was caused by difficult negotiations with the North Koreans about
site and the participation of South Korean technicians, delays in
financing, and problems of the site itself, which is in a remote area with
little infrastructure.
- Few
steps were made to concretely implement the Joint Declaration on the
Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
- The United
States was often late in supplying fuel
oil to North Korea.
In addition, the original agreement had weaknesses that made
both sides less willing to fulfill the agreement than would have been optimal.
- Complete
accounting of all plutonium in North Korea
was delayed until construction of the LWRs was well
along.
- The
spent fuel rods put under IAEA inspection had to be left in North
Korea as a guarantee that the LWRs would be completed.
- The
Agreed Framework, while envisioning an eventual accounting of all North
Korea nuclear sites, left for the
future an agreement on inspection of non-declared nuclear sites.
These weaknesses largely reflected the distrust that exists
between North Korea
and the United States.
North Korea did
not trust the United States
to adhere to the Agreed Framework process, and so they refused to allow the
removal of the spent fuel rods and the inspection of non-declared sites—those
goals that the US
most wanted—until the LWR’s would be nearly
completed. This allowed critics of the Agreed Framework in the United
States to belittle the achievements of the
agreement.
US-North
Korea Diplomacy
after the Agreed Framework
During its last six years, though they
made little progress on establishing diplomatic relations between the DPRK and
the US, the Clinton
administration continued high level contacts with North
Korea. These contacts allowed the Clinton
administration to address problems with the Agreed Framework as they came up.
In 1999, for example, Admiral William Perry was able to visit P’yǒngyang and obtain a special inspection of an underground
facility at Kŭmch’angni that US intelligence
suspected of being a site for reprocessing nuclear material. This visit was
obtained in exchange for a small special shipment of humanitarian aid that the US
would probably have provided for North Korea
anyway. North Korea,
in response to Clinton
administration concerns about intercontinental ballistic missile tests, began a
self-imposed moratorium on such tests in 1998 while the US
and North Korea
negotiated on the issue. In 2000,
Secretary of State Madeline Albright visited P’yǒngyang
in the context of negotiating a deal on missile testing and exports that was
reported to involve a presidential visit to North Korea, though this deal was
not completed before the end of the Clinton administration.
From the advent of the Bush administration
in 2001, however, high level contacts between North
Korea and the US
were stopped. When President Kim Dae Jung visited the
White House early in 2001 to ask Bush to support his policy of reconciliation
and contact with North Korea,
Bush rebuffed him, saying Kim Jong Il could not be
trusted. Although there were occasions when officials of the Bush
administration and North Korea
met adventitiously at international forums, these superficial meetings did not
lead to any substantial results. The US
did until 2002, however, abide by the terms of the Agreed Framework, and did
continue to ship heavy fuel oil to North Korea.
North Korea,
for its part, seemed to be hold to its end of the bargain as well.
Things began to deteriorate
rapidly in the second year of the Bush administration following 9/11. In his
2002 State of the Union speech in January, President Bush fingered North
Korea, along with Iraq
and Iran, as an
“axis of evil” country, and this caused a storm of controversy. The
speechwriter, who left government shortly after, has since claimed that North
Korea was added to Iraq
and Iran
primarily to make sure that three countries were included in the axis, and to
make sure that at least one of the countries was not Muslim. While this imagery
played well in the US
where people were still traumatized by 9/11, it had a number of deleterious consequences.
It linked administration policy on North Korea and Iraq—two countries that
have, in fact, no alliance and little in common—in unnecessary ways that
hampered the administration in the timing and content of its policies in both
countries. It greatly increased North Korea’s
concerns about security vis-à-vis the US,
undermining the main reason North Korea
was adhering to the Agreed Framework, and came perilously close to violating
Paragraph 3 of the Agreed Framework in which the US
pledged not to make nuclear threats against North
Korea.
Some intelligence reports, in fact, hint that that North Korean nuclear
activities increased after this speech. Finally, it greatly angered the South
Koreans.
Why should Bush’s remarks about North
Korea have angered South Koreans, when South
Korea has traditionally viewed North
Korea as a security threat? One reason is
that South Koreans do not see North Korea
as an entirely separate nation from South Korea.
Rather North and South Korea
tend to view each other as a single nation (minjok)
with two different governments, rather than entirely different countries.
Criticism of North Korea
in some circumstances is taken as criticism of the entire Korean nation, and
can lead to resentment. A second reason South Koreans were angered is that the
axis of evil speech suddenly and without warning undermined President Kim Dae Jung’s reconciliation policy with North Korea that the
Bush administration had told South Korea they supported. Many South Koreans, in
fact, had interpreted George Bush’s treatment of Kim Dae
Jung during his White House visit as condescending and insulting,
and the axis of evil speech just added fuel to this fire.
Following the axis of evil speech, hints of a more aggressive
Bush policy toward North Korea
emerged. In March the Nuclear Posture Review, a classified document, was
reported by The Los Angeles Times to advocate preemptive nuclear strikes
against even non-nuclear states. It was said this policy would be incorporated
into the National Security Strategy report due to be published in the fall. China,
Iran, Iraq,
Libya, North
Korea, Russia,
and Syria were
specifically mentioned as possible candidates in the Los Angeles Times
report. John
Bolton, US Undersecretary of Arms Control, was said to want the US
to withdraw from the NPT, but to have been overruled by Secretary of State Colin
Powell. Since the US
had already withdrawn from the ABM Treaty over the objections of Russia,
this report seemed plausible. Administration members began to publicly worry
about the threat of hardened deep bunker targets impervious to conventional
strikes that might be used for chemical and biological weapons production, and
to speculate publicly about developing nuclear weapons capable of striking such
targets. Specific mention of battle scenarios practiced by US troops, with North
Korea as the putative target of nuclear
strikes were mentioned in an article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and about that
time in September the promised National Security Strategy of the United
States of America report was released.
The National Security Strategy
focused on eliminating terrorism and weapons of mass destruction using a “crime
and punishment” framework that emphasizes the use of negative sanctions and
military force, and barely mentions positive sanctions (i.e. incentives) at
all. It advocates unilateral action and use of preemption, for “while the
United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international
community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our
right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to
prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country”
Preemptive action on rogue states is a prominent feature of the review, and the
only countries mentioned by name in this section of the report are Iraq and
North Korea.
In spite of these new threats of
the United States
to North Korea,
North Korea at
this time was still trying to open negotiations with the United
States and Japan.
On September 3rd they expressed the hope that the Agreed Framework
would be continued. Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichirō,
visiting P’yǒngyang in mid-September, came to an agreement on
establishment of foreign relations that involved the admission of DPRK
kidnapping of 11 Japanese nationals, and Japanese promises of $8-10 billion in
aid. Kim Jong Il took this occasion to ask Prime
Minister Koizumi to convey to the United States
the DPRK’s voluntary indefinite moratorium on missile
testing and their willingness to negotiate with the United
States on this issue. North
Korea successfully and peacefully
participated later in the month in the Asian Games held in South
Korea.
It was in this atmosphere of
increasing tension with the United States,
apparent North Korean willingness to negotiate with the US,
and progress in normalization of relations with Japan
and South Korea
that the first high level contact between North
Korea and the United
States was held. Undersecretary of State for
East Asian Affairs, James Kelly, visited P’yǒngyang
in early October, 2002. The Bush administration reportedly agreed to this
meeting partly to gain the support of Japan
and South Korea
for administration policy on Iraq.
John Bolton, Undersecretary for Arms Control, had already stated in Seoul
in August, that the KEDO reactors could not be completed by 2005 without ‘special
inspections’ of suspected North Korean nuclear sites. While the Agreed
Framework did stipulate that ‘ad hoc’ inspections of non-declared sites would
take place before the completion of the LWRs,
Bolton’s use of the term ‘special inspections’—a term that has earned the
consistent ire of North Korea since 1992—was a red flag to the DPRK, and
Bolton’s statement was criticized by North Korea. In the meantime, Kelly made
it known beforehand that he wanted to talk with the North Koreans about weapons
of mass destruction, development and export of missiles, conventional arms,
human rights issues, and the humanitarian situation in North Korea. It would
have taken a miracle for one meeting to yield progress on all these issues, but
the North Koreans initially seemed willing to negotiate on all of them. James
Kelly met with North Korean Foreign Minister Kang Sǒk-chu on October 4th.
Reports following the meeting seemed to indicate that it did not go well. James
Kelly mentioned “serious difficulties” on his way home to Washington,
while North Korea
publicly complained about the “US
attitude of hostility”. Nothing more became public about the meeting until ten
days later—five days after the October 10th Congressional
authorization for the use of military force against Iraq.
A report was leaked through Reuters News Agency on the 15th, and then
followed up by an official State Department press release on the 16th.
According to these reports the US
“had recently acquired information that indicates that North
Korea has a program to enrich uranium for
nuclear weapons in violation of the Agreed Framework and other agreements.
North Korean officials acknowledge that they have such a program. The North
Koreans attempted to blame the United States,
and said that they considered the Agreed Framework nullified.” The timing of
this statement after the vote for the use of force against Iraq
enraged a number of Congressional Democrats.
The North Koreans reacted angrily to
this ten days later on October 25th in a statement released through Chosǒn
Sinbo, a pro-North Korean newspaper published in
Japan. They claimed, among other things, that Kelly had accused them of having
an enriched uranium program without evidence, that US nuclear threats against
North Korea violated both the Agreed Framework and the Nuclear
Non-proliferation Treaty, and claimed with special bitterness that the US had
not only said there would be no dialogue between it and the DPRK, but also that
DPRK-Japanese relations and North-South relations “will enter into a state of
collapse.” They have consistently claimed, moreover, that they, as a sovereign
state, have the right to have nuclear weapons if they need them for
self-defense.
In spite of all the invective the
North Koreans have never specifically mentioned whether they had “admitted” to
Kelly of having an enriched uranium program, or whether the said they said at
that time that they regarded the Agreed Framework as “nullified.” There in fact
has been a certain amount of skepticism of Kelly’s account of what the North
Koreans said, especially in South Korea
(though this skepticism has not been extensively reported on in the United
States, and most people remain unaware of
it). On October 21st even before the North Korean’s official
response the State Department commique, for example,
South Korean Minister of Reunification Chǒng Se-hyǒn visited North Korea and, after talking with
North Korean officials, claimed that the “beginning and end of the story” had
been left out. He took particular exception to the notion that the North
Koreans had said they viewed the Agreed Framework as “nullified.” It wasn’t
until January 19th, 2003, that they published an interview with O Sǒng
Chol, DPRK Foreign Ministry Director, in which he
claimed that Kelly had actually had no proof of his accusations, and that the
North Koreans had flatly denied the existence of a highly enriched uranium
program. On the second day of the Kelly visit, when the admission supposedly
came, O was quoted as saying, “You say about the so-called ‘nuclear
development’ in our country. But it is the DPRK that has always been actually
threatened by US nuclear weapons. If you continue to assume a high-handed
attitude toward us in the days to come, we are entitled to possess not only
nukes, although we are not in possession of such a weapon at this point, but
also any type of weapon more powerful than that in order to defend ourselves.
This is a natural demand for an independent sovereign state. We have no reason
to talk with you any longer if you make such a brigandish
demand of us.” At this point, unless somebody publishes transcripts of the
exact conversation, it seems, it will be impossible for those of us who weren’t
there to know for sure what was said.
In addition to the problem of
doubts about the exact content of the remarks made by North Korea, we also do
not know the quality of intelligence that Kelly brought with him to the P’yǒngyang meeting. It makes a difference in assessment the
quality and reliability of the intelligence whether it is based on a defector’s
report, satellite surveillance, detecting certain isotopes in the air, or
something else. A defector’s report, for example, might not be accurate,
because defectors hoping for good treatment often claim to know more than they
actually do. Sampling of certain isotopes in the air, on the other hand, would
be almost certain proof of reprocessing. As we have seen above, the North
Koreans claim that Kelly’s evidence was unspecific, and unpersuasive. This
alone wouldn’t put the intelligence in question. The Bush administration has
made the intelligence available to Japan,
China, and Russia,
as well as South Korea,
however, and none of these countries seems to have changed their policy as a
result of this. Prime Minister Koizumi is said to have already been briefed on
it when his visited North Korea
in September, yet progress on Japanese-North Korean relations continued until it
was derailed in October by US
pressure and the controversy in Japan
about abducted Japanese citizens. Russia
also seems not to have found the intelligence particularly impressive. These
are only straws in the wind, of course, but until the Bush administration sees
fit to make the source of intelligence public, they are all we have to go with.
Diplomatic Repercussions of Kelly’s Meeting with Kang Sǒk-chu
The first
reactions of the United State, North Korea, and North
Korea’s neighbors to the revelations of the
Kelly visit were measured. X Hubbard, US
Ambassador to South Korea
called for a peaceful resolution of the problem on October 22nd. The
United States, South
Korea, and Japan,
meeting with each other at the APEC summit on October 26th called
for the denuclearization of North Korea
by peaceful means. North Korea,
for its part, asked for a nonaggression pact with the United
States, recognition of its sovereignty, and
no economic interference by the United States
(i.e. no economic sanctions). Shortly thereafter, however, the US
adopted a harder line, claiming that North Korea
had violated the Agreed Framework, and thus could not be trusted in negotiations.
The US put strong pressure on Japan to break off negotiations for normalization
of relations with North Korea—something made easy for Koizumi by the
controversy about Japanese citizens abducted to North Korea—and Japan DPRK
normalization talks broke down in Kuala Lumpur on October 29th. Japan
and South Korea
nevertheless met and issued a communiqué on November 11th calling
for the Agreed Framework to be maintained. By November 14th,
however, under heavy American pressure, they agreed to allow KEDO to halt all
shipments of heavy fuel oil to North Korea
until “concrete and credible actions to dismantle completely its highly
enriched uranium program.” This decision ended the last tangible benefit that North
Korea obtained through the Agreed Framework,
and was, in effect, the last nail in the Agreed Framework’s coffin.
Setting
aside doubts about whether the DPRK actually has a highly enriched uranium
program, would this program be in “violation” of the Agreed Framework? In
discussing this question it is important to note, first, that the Agreed
Framework was not a treaty. A treaty would have had to have been ratified by
the US Senate, and would have been binding under international law. It was,
rather, a process that outlined, step-by-step, how North
Korea and the United
States could move from nuclear confrontation
to a non-nuclear North Korea
in exchange for benefits from the United States.
Although a complete accounting of all plutonium, removal of the spent fuel
rods, and ad hoc inspections of non-declared nuclear sites did not take place
immediately under the Agreed Framework, the Agreed Framework did try to set up
a process by which all of these things would eventually happen as the Light
Water Reactors came closer to completion. Complete compliance with the NPT, the
IAEA inspection regime, and the North-South Joint Denuclearization Agreement,
thus, would have come only at the end of the Agreed Framework process. How to
get from A to B was left deliberately vague, and required continuous negotiation
as the construction of the LWRs progressed.
Second, one should note that the
only thing unequivocally demanded of the North Koreans was their “freezing”
their existing nuclear reactors, and this did take place. Reprocessing of any
kind is prohibited by the North-South Declaration on the Denuclearization of
the Korean Peninsula, but so far as the Agreed Framework is concerned North
Korea was only required in Clause 3 to “consistently take steps” to implement
this Declaration. While maintaining a separate reprocessing program while
freezing o