Download us policy toward north korea in strategic context

U.S. POLICY TOWARD NORTH KOREA
IN STRATEGIC CONTEXT
Tempting Goliath’s Fate
Wade L. Huntley
Abstract
Since the collapse of the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework in 2002, the
Bush administration has failed to restrain North Korea’s nuclear weapons
ambitions, principally because of the constraints of highly idealized convictions. Resolution of the Korean nuclear crisis now depends on U.S. initiative
beyond the boundaries of these predispositions and beyond the terms of the
nuclear crisis itself.
Keywords: North Korea, United States, nuclear proliferation, security, strategy
Introduction
Critiques of the Bush administration’s policies toward
North Korea frequently highlight the administration’s insufficient responsiveness to the “real” circumstances currently prevailing on the Korean Peninsula
and in the East Asian region. But the ideological and sometimes personal predilections driving official North Korea policy are not incidental shortcomings
that are easily rectified; rather, they reflect the administration’s deeper, ideationally inspired worldview. Despite the somewhat more practical tone the
administration has expressed toward North Korea since early in its second
term, ideationally informed outlooks continue to blinker its responses to
Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions and growing capabilities.
This article first briefly reviews the background and current state of the
Korean Peninsula nuclear issue. The collapse of the U.S.-North Korea Agreed
Wade L. Huntley is Director, Simons Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation Research at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Asian Survey, Vol. 47, Issue 3, pp. 455–480, ISSN 0004-4687, electronic ISSN 1533-838X. © 2007
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Framework in 2002 not only initiated a new crisis but also qualitatively altered
how North Korea’s nuclear ambitions bear on regional security relations, complicating any resolution.
To better appreciate the context of the Bush administration’s reactions to the
crisis, this article examines U.S. responses to the threats that North Korea’s nuclear ambitions pose to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and to the
wider array of global nonproliferation efforts that the treaty spearheads. This
examination indicates how the administration’s approaches to nuclear proliferation evince a particular global outlook rooted in an ideational conception of
American grand strategy in the post-Cold War world.
Drawing on this understanding, the article focuses on the implications of
the agreement emerging from the Six-Party Talks on September 19, 2005, and
of the collapse of the talks’ momentum in the wake of the agreement. This episode underscores concerns that so long as the Bush administration’s approach
to North Korea remains overshadowed by more general ideational predispositions, a complete resolution of the current crisis is unlikely.
The article concludes that the goal to prevent the emergence of a nuclear
North Korea still can be achieved. But a permanent resolution will require
more thoughtful and farsighted responsiveness to current constraints and
opportunities—i.e., more “realism”—than administration officials have yet
demonstrated.1 A permanent resolution will also require a comprehensive approach dealing with all facets of East Asian regional security, within which the
nuclear confrontation with North Korea is embedded.
North Korea’s nuclear test on October 9, 2006, underscores the salience of
this conclusion. The further North Korea progresses down the road to becoming a full-fledged nuclear-armed state, the more any success at rolling back
that capability depends on progress toward developing a cooperative security
environment in the wider region.2
The confrontation between North Korea and the United States reflects metaphorically the Biblical parable of David and Goliath. In the parable, the boy
David, armed only with a slingshot, fells the giant Goliath with a single stone.
David prevails because, fearless despite his evident inferiority, he finds and
then exploits weaknesses Goliath didn’t realize he himself had. Goliath’s hubrisfed faith in his own strength blinded him to his vulnerabilities. The United
States, facing a North Korean regime correspondingly weak but uninhibited by
1. A peaceful resolution of the confrontation will also require the Pyongyang regime to equivalently subordinate its own ideational fixations to prudent responsiveness. This article focuses
on U.S. policy because, as discussed below, the status quo now favors North Korea, necessitating
U.S. initiative. Also, U.S. policy choices can shape certain outcomes regardless of North Korean
responses.
2. Because this article was in final preparation when the test occurred, its implications are considered mainly in a new section, with changes to the rest of the article kept to a minimum.
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U.S. potency, needs to remain aware and circumspective enough to avoid an
equivalent fate.3
David’s Aim
North Korea, like David, expresses unshakable faith in its own convictions and
its eventual victory, despite its evident inferiority. North Korea likely views its
nuclear weapons potential much as David viewed his slingshot—as the sole
instrument for confronting and exploiting the vulnerabilities of a gigantic adversary. The paltry achievements of North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs
underscore the aptness of this analogy.
North Korea’s nuclear aspirations have been problematic since the country
first joined the NPT in 1985. By the time Pyongyang accepted a safeguards
agreement in 1992, it was already suspected of having extracted up to 10 kilograms of plutonium from its research reactor at Yongbyon, enough to produce
one or two nuclear weapons. Subsequently, International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) officials witnessed the discharging of almost 8,000 irradiated
fuel rods in the reactor’s core, containing an estimated 27–29 kilograms of
plutonium. An escalating confrontation over the inability of the IAEA to
verify North Korea’s non-nuclear status was resolved only by direct U.S. intervention, culminating in the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework,
under which North Korea shut down the Yongbyon reactor and its nearby plutonium separation plant and stored the fuel rods in sealed canisters monitored
by the IAEA.4
Although the 1994 Agreed Framework successfully froze North Korea’s
plutonium-based nuclear program, it never succeeded in resolving questions
about past Pyongyang’s activities nor in removing known spent fuel from the
country, as ultimately intended. These shortcomings loomed when, in October
2002, the Bush administration confronted North Korea with charges that it was
undertaking a second, uranium-based nuclear program. Escalating reactions
led eventually to North Korea’s ending cooperation with IAEA safeguards and
withdrawing from the NPT, marking the collapse of the Agreed Framework.5
3. The point of this analogy is not to portray North Korea as the “righteous” party but to express
how the self-images of the two interlocutors shape their interaction. On the capacity of leadership
to function as a power resource in international relations, see Daniel L. Byman and Kenneth M.
Pollack, “Let Us Now Praise Great Men: Bringing the Statesman Back In,” International Security
25:4 (Spring 2001), pp. 107–46.
4. Joseph Cirincione, Jon Wolfsthal, and Miriam Rajkumar, Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002),
pp. 244–49.
5. For the author’s own assessment of the breakdown of the Agreed Framework, see Wade L.
Huntley, “Ostrich Engagement: The Bush Administration and the North Korea Nuclear Crisis,”
Nonproliferation Review 11:2 (Summer 2004), pp. 81–115.
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In early 2003, North Korea restarted the Yongbyon reactor and began reprocessing the plutonium stored at the Yongbyon site. Pyongyang is now believed
to have reprocessed most of the 8,000 fuel rods, yielding between 20 and 28
kilograms of weapons-usable plutonium. In April 2005, North Korea again
shut down the reactor to collect a new supply of spent fuel that could have
been reprocessed by mid-2006, potentially providing up to 15 kilograms more
of weapons-usable plutonium. Taken together, this current stock of separated
plutonium is enough to make from four to 13 weapons.6 Meanwhile, in February 2005, just months before the 2005 NPT Review Conference, North Korea
for the first time stated explicitly that it possessed nuclear weapons. Subsequently, surveillance detected North Korean preparations for a possible nuclear test, which North Korean officials suggested might come at any time.
The fourth round of the Six-Party Talks, convened in August 2005 after a
year’s interruption and then again suspended for several weeks, finally produced a last-minute “agreement on principles” on September 19. But the scope
of the agreement became immediately subject to diverging unilateral interpretations. The November 2005 round of talks made no progress in moving from
principles to details; by Spring 2006, the negotiation process was once again
completely stalled. The disintegrating situation reached new lows with North
Korea’s missile tests on July 5 and nuclear test on October 9.
Collapse of the Agreed Framework
The collapse of the Agreed Framework in 2002 created a critical watershed.
Many analysts, whether supporting greater confrontation or greater engagement, fail to recognize that the status quo has shifted fundamentally. Until
2002, North Korea’s nuclear ambitions were mainly contained. The research
reactor was shut down and the worrisome spent-fuel stockpiles, although not
yet removed from North Korea, were sealed and under IAEA safeguards. By
most public accounts, the suspected uranium-based program was (and remains) much further from producing usable fissile material than the plutonium
program.
Since 2003, however, no direct restraints have existed on North Korea’s
plutonium-based program. Moreover, by withdrawing from the Agreed Framework and the NPT without suffering any meaningful sanction, North Korea
6. David Albright and Paul Brannan, “The North Korean Plutonium Stock Mid-2006,” Institute
for Science and International Security (ISIS), June 26, 2006, http://www.isis-online.org/publications/
dprk/dprkplutonium.pdf; Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, “North Korea’s Nuclear Program, 2005,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 61:3, May/June 2005, http://www.thebulletin.org/
article_nn.php?art_ofnmj05norris. This estimate for the number of weapons North Korea
could generate from its presumed plutonium stocks assumes North Korea (1) has only low technological capability, equivalent to the U.S. at the creation of its first plutonium devices, and (2) is
developing a relatively larger number of lower-yield weapons.
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successfully stepped past several implicit “lines in the sand” that cannot now
credibly be redrawn.
Absent such restraints, North Korea is probably pushing its programs as
hard as it can. The rates of expansion of North Korea’s fissile material stocks,
its capability to fashion a warhead capable of riding a missile, and progress on
other enabling technologies all remain open questions. But the October 9 nuclear test eliminated any doubt that fabrication of a nuclear explosive device is
within its technical competence.
Beyond material limitations, China is the only meaningful restraint North
Korea now faces in advancing its nuclear programs. Beijing holds several
powerful coercive instruments, if it chooses to wield them. However, there are
limits to North Korea’s sensitivity to Chinese coercion, as demonstrated by
Pyongyang’s defiance of many of Beijing’s entreaties as the Six-Party Talks
unfolded. There are limits as well to China’s willingness to utilize the tools it
does have on behalf of the American priority to deny North Korea a nuclear
explosive, especially when Beijing’s own priority probably is to prevent the
country itself from exploding.
Fathoming Pyongyang
The reshaped status quo has likely reinforced North Korean core goals and
bolstered its confidence and self-assuredness in pursuing them. North Korea’s
strengthened position will make a “new deal” harder to reach: 1990s-style engagement was premised on patience, but now time is allowing North Korea’s
nuclear program to advance, giving Pyongyang incentive to obfuscate and
procrastinate. Yet, with increased stocks of reprocessed plutonium likely having been dispersed from the Yongbyon nuclear site, the use of force to end
North Korea’s nuclear program is less feasible than ever. Achieving a nonnuclear Korean Peninsula now requires rolling back an existing capacity; many
prior strategies to curtail North Korea’s nuclear weapons development are not
up to this qualitatively greater challenge.
Despite the new status quo, most policy analysis remains framed by the familiar question: is North Korea prepared to reach an agreement entailing surrender of its nuclear capability? Engagement advocates tend to answer “yes,”
asserting that North Korean belligerence is, in the main, a means of maneuvering for bargaining position. Confrontation advocates usually answer “no,” purporting that North Korean accommodation is merely a tactic to assuage its
neighbors and buy time.
But framing the question so simply obscures the real challenges. Given the
opacity of the North Korean regime, its real motivations are almost indiscernible; hence both camps base their expectations of Pyongyang’s responsiveness
more on conjecture than evidence. Moreover, there is a third possibility: it
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may be the case (as is true for any government facing a complex decision) that
North Korea’s leadership has not made up its mind. The Pyongyang regime,
although highly centralized and monolithic, has its internal factions and divided interests. Indeed, President Kim Jong-il himself may not now know exactly what agreement terms he would accept, and may not come to decide
unless and until, like Reagan at Reykjavik, the choice is at hand.7
Assumptions of any specificity concerning the nature of the ruling regime
in Pyongyang are a poor basis for other countries’ crucial policy decisions. Instead, policy should be aimed to shape the international environmental conditions within which North Korea must promulgate its actions. As a weak country,
North Korea is heavily constrained in its choices by these external conditions—
how much is hard to determine, but any shaping of these constraints will narrow the range of possible outcomes regardless of Pyongyang’s own dispositions.
The stale antinomy of “engagement” versus “confrontation” that still dominates
policy debate obstructs this more contextual approach.
Efforts to shape North Korea’s policy context should aim at rolling back the
country’s nuclear weapons capacity. This would also help dampen their demonstration effect elsewhere. Both these goals point to the need to build better
cooperation among key interested parties and to enhance mechanisms of
regional security cooperation and global nonproliferation compliance. A comprehensive contextual approach substantively bolstering regional security cooperation would also serve to mitigate the impact if a negotiated solution to
the problem of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions is not forthcoming.
Goliath’s Game
Throughout its first term the Bush administration made no apparent effort to
shape its North Korea policy on the basis of extant conditions. Instead, Bush
officials based policy fundamentally on assumptions about the Pyongyang
regime’s character, stemming from broader predispositions concerning the
extent of U.S. power and the rectitude of the administration’s overarching
global vision. As those assumptions proved specious, the administration’s policy floundered, increasing strains with other regional governments, including
ally South Korea.8 But the inflexibility of many Bush officials’ overarching
7. On the Reagan administration’s internal divisions over the role of the Strategic Defense Initiative in arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union, see Frances FitzGerald, Way Out There
in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).
8. See “Korea Backgrounder: How the South Views Its Brother from Another Planet,” International Crisis Group (ICG) Asia Report, no. 89, ICG, Seoul/Brussels, December 14, 2004, pp. 21–23;
and Kim Sung-han, “Coping with the North Korean Nuclear Problem: A South Korean Perspective,” paper presented to the workshop America in Question: Korean Democracy and the Challenge of Non-Proliferation on the Peninsula, Seoul, ROK, May 10–11, 2005.
WADE L. HUNTLEY
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predispositions impinged on the administration’s ability to adapt an ineffective
policy to changing circumstances.
In the parable, before David stepped to the fore, Goliath had easily intimidated all adversaries, fueling his sense of invincibility. Similarly, the United
States emerged from the Cold War as the planet’s preeminent power, most dramatically in military terms but also across many other measures of national
capability. The Bush administration has embraced the objective of sustaining
U.S. invincibility into the indefinite future and, despite warning signs of asymmetric vulnerability,9 coupled this goal to an activist global program premising
the universality of American values. The administration’s approach to the challenge of global nuclear proliferation and to North Korea’s impact on the global
nonproliferation regime reflects this orientation.
Nukes Don’t Kill People . . .
The Bush administration’s responses to the contemporary challenge of nuclear
proliferation stem from its particular conception of the role of nuclear weapons in global relations, including in any future U.S. military posture. As Pentagon strategists absorbed the implications of the end of the Cold War, U.S.
military planning throughout the 1990s increasingly expressed the aim of military “dominance” and foresaw a continuing role for U.S. nuclear weapons in
this posture. But the Bush administration’s nuclear weapons policies superseded even this ambition, mapping out intentions for new nuclear capabilities
linked to new strategies that tie these capabilities to an aspiration for global
political “primacy.” Seminal strategic documents issued early in the administration’s tenure clearly express its new “grand strategy” to revive pre-Cold
War notions of the American mission to deliver a safer world through virtuous
exercise of unchallenged American power.10
In its second term, the Bush administration has reaffirmed the core tenets of
this strategy. President Bush dedicated his second inaugural address to the
9. As the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks exemplify, the United States (and other countries) can be hurt by lesser actors (state or non-state) exploiting weaknesses that traditional forms
of state power cannot defend. The parable of Goliath, and even more the parable of Achilles’ heel,
conveys the fatefulness of ignoring such asymmetric vulnerability.
10. The 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review
(NPR) map out a fundamental shift from a “threat-based” to a “capabilities-based” approach intended to “extend America’s asymmetric advantages well into the future.” The 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS) articulates these ambitions, determining to “create a balance of power that
favors human freedom” and “extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every
continent.” The QDR is available at http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/qdr2001.pdf. The NPR
was first publicly summarized at a Department of Defense briefing on January 9, 2002; the classified review was subsequently obtained by news media, and substantial excerpts are available at
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm. The 2002 NSS is available
at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2002/. All links accessed December 14, 2006.
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proposition that “it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the
growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture,
with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”11 In early 2006, the administration’s long delayed update of the NSS emphasized this core intention
even more forcefully than did its 2002 predecessor, identifying as its two foundational pillars the aims of “promoting freedom, justice and human dignity”
and “leading a growing community of democracies.”12 Although much media
attention focused on the new strategy’s reaffirmation of preemptive attack as a
counterproliferation option, the true thrust of the strategy is to establish that
promotion of democracy overseas is as central as ever to the administration’s
definitions of U.S. global purpose.13
This vision of virtuous American global leadership based on dominant military power harkens back to a nineteenth-century idealist internationalism underpinned by the security of broad oceans. The Bush administration’s embrace
of a globalized reincarnation of this vision on the basis of U.S. military inviolability represents the reascendance of idealism over realism in shaping American grand strategy. But this articulation also marks the dominance of a specific
form of idealism. The active promotion of overseas democratization, by force
if necessary, pushes aside aspirations to constitute a society among heterogeneous states, aiming instead to challenge the prerogative of state sovereignty
itself. President Bush’s repudiation of the Yalta Agreements concluded at the
end of World War II evinces this viewpoint.14 More akin to the ambitions of
Theodore Roosevelt than the aspirations of Woodrow Wilson, the administration’s emergent grand strategy represents a triumph for emancipatory militant
idealism over liberal international idealism.15
The Bush administration’s response to spreading nuclear capabilities,
driven by this emancipatory militant idealism, focuses less on general nonproliferation than on preemptive counterproliferation to eliminate specific
11. President George W. Bush, Inaugural Address, January 20, 2005, http://www.whitehouse.
gov/news/releases/2005/01/print/20050120-1.html.
12. The 2006 NSS is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/, accessed December 14, 2006.
13. As one measure, the word “preemption” appears only five times in the document, while the
terms “freedom” and “democracy” appear over 200 times. Ralph A. Cossa, “2006 National Security Strategy: It’s All About Democracy,” PacNet 13, March 27, 2006, http://www.csis.org/media/
csis/pubs/pac0613.pdf.
14. Speech by President George W. Bush, Small Guild Hall, Riga, Latvia, May 7, 2005, http://
estonia.usembassy.gov/freedom.php.
15. For a more detailed exposition of this interpretation, see Wade L. Huntley, “Threats All the
Way Down: U.S. Nuclear Initiatives in a Unipolar World,” Review of International Studies 32:1
(January 2006), pp. 49–67. For a similar distinction between contending strains of U.S. foreign
policy idealism, see Jonathan Monten, “The Roots of the Bush Doctrine: Power, Nationalism, and
Democracy Promotion in U.S. Strategy,” International Security 29:4 (Spring 2005), pp. 112–56.
WADE L. HUNTLEY
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adversaries’ capabilities before they are realized.16 U.S. counterproliferation
planning includes possible nuclear weapons use, driving calls in the Nuclear
Posture Review for development of nuclear capabilities applicable to such
roles. In this view, increased U.S. reliance on nuclear threats is actually part of
the nonproliferation solution, and greater American commitment to nuclear
disarmament is irrelevant. Thus, Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Rademaker, head of the U.S. delegation to the 2005 NPT Review Conference,
stated on the eve of the meeting that America’s disarmament record is “excellent” and that plans to use the conference to focus attention on North Korea
and Iran were fully appropriate: “This notion that the United States needs to
make concessions in order to encourage other countries to do what is necessary in order to preserve the nuclear nonproliferation regime is at best a misguided way to think about the problems confronting us.”17
In the value system underlying emancipatory militant idealism, there is no
contradiction in threatening nuclear attack to thwart nuclear proliferation. From
this perspective, nuclear weapons themselves are not really the problem; the presence of nuclear weapons in the hands of bad states is the problem. The viewpoint is the international equivalent of American conservatives’ credo opposing
domestic gun control: guns don’t kill people; bad people with guns kill people.
. . . Bad States with Nukes Kill People
Appreciating these ideational roots of the Bush administration’s nuclear weapons and nonproliferation policies elucidates its approach to North Korea. The
administration’s distaste for engaging North Korea diplomatically expresses a
deeper conviction that the current Pyongyang regime is an international miscreant that does not deserve the prerogatives of sovereignty. North Korean
antipathy to the United States drives but does not explain the administration’s
tenacious support for “regime change” as the ultimate solution to the nuclear
crisis. Persistent anti-diplomatic rhetoric emphasizing that North Korea cannot be “rewarded for bad behavior” evinces the posture of a parent or a sheriff,
not a sovereign equal.18 One does not negotiate with children or outlaws.
16. The Bush administration’s National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction
(WMD) (White House, December 2002), www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/12/WMD
Strategy.pdf, offers only a single paragraph on the role of “active nonproliferation diplomacy,”
which simply reiterates the need for “a full range of operational capabilities” if the efforts fail (p. 4).
See also National Strategy for Combating Terrorism (White House, February 2003), www.white
house.gov/news/releases/2003/02/counter_terrorism/counter_terrorism_strategy.pdf.
17. Testimony to Congress, cited in Carol Giacomo, “U.S. Rules out Concessions to Shore up
Nuclear Pact,” Reuters, April 28, 2005.
18. On the framing of public policy choices in terms of familial metaphors, see George Lakoff,
Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2002).
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The Bush administration’s ideational strategic posture also shapes its views
on the implications of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. The wider regime of
norms and expectations surrounding the NPT has become as important to global
arms control and nonproliferation as the treaty itself. North Korea’s nuclear
weapons development poses several challenges to the nonproliferation regime:
the potential East Asian regional repercussions, the corrosive impact on the
NPT itself, and the possible proliferation of nuclear materials and expertise. The
Bush administration’s responses to these concerns evince its preoccupation
with particular nuclear aspirants rather than proliferation as a systemic problem per se, expressing the ideational predispositions shaping officials’ outlook
on global nuclear challenges.
First, in East Asia a steadily (if slowly) growing arsenal of nuclear weapons
in North Korea will aggravate tensions and uncertainties. If these tensions
reach certain breaking points, North Korea’s actions could trigger a nuclear
proliferation “domino effect” in East Asia. Such developments would shake
the nonproliferation regime at its foundation.
Some observers worry especially that North Korea’s ambitions might spur
Japan to obtain nuclear weapons of its own. Japan sustains a peaceful nuclear
power program that generates high-grade plutonium, a space launch capacity
providing advanced ballistic missile capabilities, and the technical expertise to
reorient these activities into a sophisticated nuclear weapons development effort if Tokyo chose to do so.19 Senior Japanese leaders (including those under
former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi) have occasionally opined on Japan’s
capacity to exercise this option.20 Even prior to October 2006, it was clear that
a North Korean nuclear test would dramatically emphasize the specific threat
to Japan, a threat that many in Japan increasingly perceive North Korea as
posing, and would likely fuel incipient Japanese opinion favoring an independent nuclear capability.
But Japan may be less prone to soon pursue nuclear weapons than it appears. Japan’s government has long recognized that obtaining nuclear weapons would not advance its strategic interests either vis-à-vis North Korea or in
the East Asia region more broadly.21 U.S. nuclear-girded security guarantees
19. See Selig S. Harrison, ed., Japan’s Nuclear Future: The Plutonium Debate and East Asian
Security (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1996).
20. Howard W. French, “Nuclear Arms Taboo Is Challenged in Japan,” New York Times, June
9, 2002; Marc Erikson, “Japan Could ‘Go Nuclear’ in Months,” Asia Times Online, January 14,
2003, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/EA14Dh01.html.
21. In 1995 the Japanese Defense Agency compiled a 31-page secret report reaffirming previous government studies’ conclusion that developing nuclear weapons would damage Japan’s national and regional security interests. The existence of the report was disclosed by the Asahi
Shimbun on February 20, 2003, http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/japan/nuke.htm,
accessed December 14, 2006. See also Matake Kamiya, “Nuclear Japan: Oxymoron or Coming
Soon?” Washington Quarterly 26:1 (Winter 2003), pp. 63–75.
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are fundamental to Japan’s security posture and U.S. policy has usually adamantly opposed nuclear acquisition by any of its East Asian allies. Japan’s
greater interest now appears to be to expand its East Asian and global military
presence, which it can do more easily as a non-nuclear state under the auspices of its U.S. alliance than it would be able to as an independent nucleararmed power. With reassurances that the U.S. defense commitment remains
unwavering, North Korea’s nuclear test triggered in Japan only a ripple of discussion of the nuclear weapons option.
An overtly nuclear-armed North Korea might also spur nuclear ambitions in
South Korea and Taiwan. Governments in both Seoul and Taipei have demonstrated nuclear ambitions in the past, which were ultimately restrained by direct U.S. interventions. Public opinion in both South Korea and Taiwan is
more favorably disposed to nuclear weapons than in Japan. But the nuclear
programs in both cases are far less advanced than Japan’s. In neither case is
fast acquisition of nuclear weapons feasible.22
So the North Korean nuclear test is not likely to topple other East Asian
dominoes. On the other hand, a collapse in confidence in U.S. security guarantees, especially vis-à-vis developments in Korea, might in the long run prove
the crucial tipping point for going nuclear among key Japanese defense planners. The U.S. reaction to the Korean nuclear crisis is the “intermediate domino” mediating Pyongyang’s actions and Tokyo’s prospective responses.
The Bush administration has not appeared especially concerned that North
Korea’s activities might spur East Asian regional proliferation. Indeed, at one
point as the Agreed Framework was collapsing the administration seemed to
signal that it might view a nuclear Japan more benignly than previous U.S.
governments.23 Such an attitude, if seriously conveyed, could have a pivotal
influence on Japanese defense planners. Even absent such an intention in Washington, the reemphasis on nuclear deterrence and strategic defenses in the
U.S.-Japan alliance sends a powerful indication to all East Asian states about
American intentions in the region: tipping nuclear balances of power in favor
of allies and friends is a higher priority than resisting nuclear proliferation.
The Bush administration’s full endorsement of Japan’s nuclear practices, despite the latter’s latent nuclear capabilities, and the administration’s decision
22. For overviews of these cases, see David Albright and Corey Gay, “Taiwan: Nuclear Nightmare Averted,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 54:01 (January/February 1998); and Jungmin
Kang et al., “South Korea’s Nuclear Surprise,” ibid., 61:01 (January/February 2005).
23. The Asahi Shimbun on March 17, 2003, quoted Vice President Dick Cheney as stating that
in response to North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and missiles, “Japan may be forced to
consider whether or not they want to readdress the nuclear issues.” See http://www.globalsecurity.
org/wmd/world/japan/nuke.htm, accessed December 14, 2006. The comment came in the context of considerable U.S. discussion spurred by Charles Krauthammer, “The Japan Card,” Washington Post, January 3, 2003.
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to reopen nuclear cooperation with India in part to encourage India to “balance” China, further express this orientation.
North Korea’s nuclear ambitions also have consequences for the global
nonproliferation regime. North Korea is the first state ever to withdraw from
the NPT. Pyongyang has also released itself from the 1992 agreement with
South Korea to keep the Korean Peninsula nuclear free as well as from the 1994
Agreed Framework. There currently exist no formal international legal constraints on North Korea’s nuclear activities.
North Korea had the legal right to leave the treaty on 90 days’ notice. Although some NPT countries refuse to acknowledge the country’s withdrawal,
the U.N. Security Council did not act on the 2003 IAEA referral owing to Chinese resistance, concern for undermining direct negotiations, and other factors.
The 2004 NPT Preparatory Conference and the 2005 NPT Review Conference
sidestepped the issue—presiding officials diplomatically “placed in their
pockets” the placard in front of North Korea’s empty chair.24
Whether or not North Korea’s NPT withdrawal was legally stipulated, its
prior NPT noncompliance leaves its withdrawal far short of the “good faith”
criterion that is a general principle of international law.25 Hence, the Security
Council could still take up the question of North Korea’s NPT noncompliance
under the U.N. Charter’s Article VII as a “threat to the peace.”26 But it could
have done so just as easily before North Korea’s NPT withdrawal. The U.N.
secretary-general’s high-level report on global security recommends that any
state’s notification of NPT withdrawal should prompt “immediate verification
of its compliance” with the treaty. But the report recommends no sanctions beyond cessation of IAEA support.27
24. Peter Heinlein, “Annan Urges NPT Review Conference to Get Serious,” Voice of America,
May 13, 2005, http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/un/un-050513-287d99b8.htm,
accessed December 14, 2006; and “Walking the Nonproliferation Tightrope: An Interview with
Ambassador Sérgio de Queiroz Duarte, President of the 2005 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference,” Arms Control Today, http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_12/Duarte_ACT
version.asp.
25. Christer Ahlström, “Withdrawal from Arms Control Treaties,” SIPRI [Stockholm International Peace Research Institute] Yearbook 2004: Armaments, Disarmament, and International Security (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), ch. 19.
26. See Charter of the United Nations, http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/index.html; cf.
George Bunn and John Rhinelander, “The Right to Withdraw from the NPT: Article X Is Not Unconditional,” Disarmament Diplomacy, no. 79 (April/May 2005), http://www.acronym.org.uk/
dd/dd79/79gbjr.htm.
27. “A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility,” Report of the Secretary-General’s
High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, United Nations Department of Public Information, 2004, p. 45, http://www.un.org/secureworld/report3.pdf. Even if it was not already too
late for “immediate” application of this provision to North Korea, the sanction would have been
irrelevant insofar as North Korea ejected the IAEA when it withdrew from the NPT.
WADE L. HUNTLEY
467
Hence, politics, not legality, will determine whether or not North Korea will
be pressed on its NPT noncompliance through formal mechanisms such as the
Security Council. At this symbolic level, there are no good options to mitigate
the significance of North Korea’s NPT withdrawal. If North Korea remains
outside the NPT and suffers no serious consequences, the precedent will erode
current NPT compliance norms. But making allowances to gain North Korea’s
reaccession to the NPT, especially absolving past noncompliance, would also
set a precedent that could induce other NPT parties to bend the rules.
The Bush administration rarely expresses worries over such potential impacts of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions on the viability of the treaty or the
health of the nonproliferation regime. The silence is striking insofar as the erosion of the NPT regime is the medium through which Korean Peninsula developments drive other proliferation dangers—such as Iranian ambitions, with
which the Bush administration is now seized. North Korea’s NPT withdrawal is
unlikely to induce Iran to act in kind, but Iranian leaders must be learning important lessons about what consequences Iran might (or might not) suffer by
following a similar path and how the repercussions might be managed. Conversely, Iran would resist settling its own disputes on terms any less generous
than those North Korea might receive for re-accession, particularly regarding
the extent of permissible domestic nuclear power generation technologies.
More broadly, however, the administration’s dispassion over diminution of
the NPT is hardly surprising, given American officials’ expressed lack of faith
in both nonproliferation and international treaties. In particular, the NPT’s Article VI, the only U.S. international legal commitment to complete nuclear disarmament, contravenes the administration’s ambitions to expand U.S. nuclear
capabilities and deterrence applications. This explains why officials approached
the 2005 NPT Review Conference actively seeking to roll back the disarmament commitments of the 2000 conference.28
A third area of concern is that North Korea’s reinvigorated nuclear program
gives it the potential to fuel proliferation by exporting fissile materials, nuclear
weapons development technologies and expertise, or even completed operational weapons. This potential is highlighted by the depth of Pakistani nuclear
scientist A. Q. Khan’s links to Pyongyang29 and by controversies as to whether
uranium discovered in Libya might have originated in North Korea.30
28. Giacomo, “U.S. Rules Out”; cf. Wade L. Huntley, “The NPT at a Crossroads,” Foreign Policy
in Focus (Silver City, N. M., and Washington, D.C.), July 1, 2005, http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/144.
29. Khan reportedly claimed that during a trip to North Korea in 1999, he was shown three nuclear devices. See David E. Sanger, “Pakistani Tells of North Korean Nuclear Devices,” New York
Times, April 13, 2004.
30. See Dafna Linzer, “U.S. Misled Allies about Nuclear Export,” Washington Post, March 20,
2005; David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, “Using Clues from Libya to Study a Nuclear Mystery,” New York Times, March 31, 2005.
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This is the consequence of a nuclear North Korea that Bush officials take
most seriously. The administration has at times seemed prepared to accept a
nuclear North Korea as a fait accompli, with the consequential increase in East
Asian regional insecurity and pressure on the NPT. But North Korean proliferation of nuclear materials or technologies to other states or non-state actors
has apparently emerged as the administration’s genuine “red line.”31
In response to this specific concern, the Bush administration in May 2003
launched the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a coalition of countries
aiming to combat WMD proliferation through preventive interdiction of shipments of concern by land, sea, or air.32 But the PSI cannot prevent North Korea from smuggling small containers of fissile materials into the global black
market if it is determined to do so. Because North Korea perceives the PSI as
specifically coercive, the initiative has also become a point of friction in U.S.
relations with South Korea, which resists joining the PSI in order to avoid excessively antagonizing Pyongyang.33
As an ad hoc coordination of activities, the PSI has lacked international accountability. Its legitimacy has grown as it has gained more national adherents
and the endorsements of the G-8 Global Partnership and the U.N. secretarygeneral.34 But the PSI remains disassociated from multilateral nonproliferation treaty regimes.35 More direct linkages could enhance the accountability
and effectiveness of the PSI, whose responsiveness and flexibility in turn could
help prioritize achievement over process in multilateral compliance mechanisms. This synergy would have two positive impacts. Practically, it would
strengthen the world’s available tools to keep proliferation problems from
growing. Politically, it would enhance the nonproliferation regime’s role as the
locus for international nuclear nonproliferation cooperation. Multilateral legitimation would also facilitate greater cooperation with the initiative by countries like China and South Korea.
31. “N.K. Nuke Test No Red Line, Former U.S. Negotiator Says,” Chosun Ilbo [Chosun Daily
News], April 28, 2005; David E. Sanger, “Bush Shifts Focus to Nuclear Sales by North Korea,”
New York Times, May 5, 2003.
32. “Proliferation Security Initiative: Statement of Interdiction Principles,” Fact Sheet, Office
of the Press Secretary, White House, Washington, D.C., September 4, 2003, http://www.state.gov/
t/np/rls/fs/23764.htm; see also Mark Valencia, “The Proliferation Security Initiative: Making
Waves in Asia,” Adelphi Paper 376 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, October
31, 2005).
33. South Korean diplomat, personal discussion, Seoul, Fall 2006.
34. “G8 Action Plan on Nonproliferation,” Sea Island summit 2004, http://www.g7.utoronto.
ca/summit/2004seaisland/nonproliferation.html; United Nations, “A More Secure World,” p. 45.
35. For a summary discussion of this linkage, see Joseph Cirincione and Joshua Williams,
“Putting PSI into Perspective,” May 3, 2005, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/npp/publications/
index.cfm?faview&id16827.
WADE L. HUNTLEY
469
But given the Bush administration’s ambivalence to the NPT, just noted,
such strengthening of multilateral nonproliferation mechanisms may in fact be
a consequence that induces American officials to resist such linkage. This conclusion points once again to the ideational predispositions coursing through
the current administration’s approach to nuclear nonproliferation problems.
In sum, the Bush administration’s apparent willingness to abide the regional
implications of a nuclear North Korea rather than engage Pyongyang directly
arises from its pessimism over cooperative security solutions and its relative
disregard of increased incentives for nuclear weapons acquisition by allies
Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Bush officials’ ambivalence toward implications for the NPT further expresses the administration’s pessimism over
multilateral approaches to nonproliferation as well as its distaste for the NPT
specifically. Although the administration is genuinely concerned over potential North Korean proliferation of fissile materials and technologies, its approach to the problem has again forsworn full-fledged multilateralism in favor
of ad hoc efforts such as the PSI.
Such lack of faith ultimately stems from the emancipatory militancy at the
core of the Bush administration’s “grand strategy” for the U.S. global posture.
This viewpoint clearly drives some administration officials’ apparent reticence
to abide Pyongyang as a sovereign interlocutor and their implicit (though denied)
conclusion that in the end a satisfactory settlement of the nuclear confrontation will require regime change in North Korea. Given such a conclusion, the
administration’s relative quietude over the deleterious consequences of a nuclear North Korea may simply express a de facto decision to minimally tolerate
extant circumstances until regime change (natural or facilitated) solves the problem. For some of the administration’s most influential figures, near-term success of this strategy to “contain and strain” North Korea is the ultimate hope.
David Meets Goliath
In the parable, David and Goliath could not negotiate—the divisions were too
fundamental. Hence, the post-2002 willingness of the Bush administration to
engage North Korea through the Six-Party Talks (also including South Korea,
China, Japan, and Russia) represents a departure from the biblical analogy.
Although much of the administration’s engagement has been grudging and
tactical, in 2005 its approach departed decidedly from an ideationally rigid
course. Belligerent rhetoric was replaced by a willingness to give North Korea
assurances for its sovereignty and security and to work closely with China and
South Korea to fashion plans to address the range of the North’s wider problems. This engagement reflected the greater moderation characterizing the Bush
administration’s posture early in its second term.36
36. See Gideon Rose, “Get Real,” New York Times, August 18, 2005.
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The process reached an apex with the joint statement of principles of September 19, 2005. While the accord validated the architects of the Bush administration’s more practical direction, North Korea’s fresh commitment to end all
nuclear weapons development also evinced a responsive, welcome reasonableness on Pyongyang’s part.37 The agreement seemed to validate the negotiated
approach to the current Korean nuclear crisis that both North Korea and the
United States have variously resisted.
But the agreement on principles did little to resolve trenchant practical differences. Some obstacles reemerged immediately, as widely divergent U.S.
and North Korean national statements exposed continuing deep divisions on
several issues (particularly concerning Pyongyang’s retention of civilian nuclear facilities). Such divergence should have been expected—North Korea’s
provocative statements mirrored similar previous behavior—and were to a certain extent planned.38 But the divisiveness quickly dampened any momentum
from the agreement. The next round of talks in November 2005, aimed at beginning to work through details, produced no progress. Meanwhile, new U.S.
economic sanctions designed to curtail alleged counterfeiting of U.S. currency
reflected a reassertion of authority over North Korea policy by Vice President
Dick Cheney’s office and left the negotiating process deadlocked again. In this
climate, North Korea on July 5, 2006, undertook a series of missile tests, triggering widespread alarm and a Security Council condemnation. North Korea’s
October 9 test-explosion of a nuclear device elicited an even stronger Security
Council reaction, bringing the situation to a new nadir.
In retrospect, the September 2005 statement of principles represents a less
fortuitous crossroads than it first appeared. A brief review of this recent and
apparently failed attempt at a negotiated settlement illustrates the deeper obstructions to a full resolution and indicates the limited range of future courses.
The Road Not Taken
The September 2005 agreement articulated a consensus on a set of principles
addressing both goals and means. North Korea committed itself to end efforts
to produce nuclear weapons, give up its “existing nuclear weapons,” rejoin “at an
early date” the NPT, and resubmit to IAEA safeguards, including readmission
37. While this essay does not explore the ideational determinants of the policies and strategies
of Pyongyang’s ruling regime, these determinants may be even stronger than those prevailing in
the Bush administration.
38. To ease U.S. acceptance of the agreement’s language, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
reportedly proposed that each party would issue separate statements describing their understanding
of the deal, with whatever additional specificity they chose. “U.S.-Korean Deal on Arms Leaves
Key Points Open,” New York Times, September 20, 2005.
WADE L. HUNTLEY
471
of international inspectors to nuclear facilities.39 This measure appeared to
represent the “strategic decision” by North Korea to give up all nuclear weapons
capabilities that has been a fundamental Bush administration condition for
U.S. accommodation.
In the agreement, the United States affirmed explicitly that it has no intention
to attack or invade North Korea with either nuclear or conventional weapons
and stated formally for the first time that it has no nuclear weapons deployed
on the Korean Peninsula.40 South Korea also affirmed the absence of nuclear
weapons on its territory and recommitted itself to the 1992 Joint Declaration
on Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. These terms satisfy long-standing
North Korean demands.
The United States, along with the other four parties, “expressed their respect” for North Korea’s asserted right to maintain civilian nuclear energy capabilities and “agreed to discuss at an appropriate time” North Korea’s demand
that it receive a light-water nuclear reactor for electric power generation. This
was an agreement to disagree: North Korea’s demand to receive light-water reactors as part of any ultimate settlement had threatened to scuttle the process,
but the Bush administration has consistently opposed allowing the country any
significant civilian nuclear power capability. Few outside North Korea consider large new nuclear power plants to be a viable solution to the country’s
desperate energy needs, and the NPT’s provisions for states to acquire peaceful nuclear technology useful for nuclear weapons programs is a real loophole
in the regime. North Korea’s civilian nuclear program remains an unresolved
issue that will be at the center of future discussions.
All six parties agreed “to take coordinated steps to implement the aforementioned consensus in a phased manner in line with the principle of ‘commitment for commitment, action for action’.” This language established a
sequential approach under which North Korea would accrue some benefits
before it satisfied all its obligations, an apparent softening of the Bush administration position that complete, verifiable, and irreversible North Korean disarmament was a precondition to any further U.S. actions.
Finally, both the United States and North Korea agreed “to respect each
other’s sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their
39. United States Department of State, “Joint Statement of the Fourth Round of the Six-Party
Talks Beijing, September 19, 2005,” http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2005/53490.htm. All
quotations in this section are from this document.
40. The removal of U.S. nuclear weapons in 1991–92 was acknowledged only through the media
by unnamed sources. This formal affirmation is one of the few significant exceptions to the U.S.
policy to “neither confirm nor deny” specific nuclear weapons deployments. Personal correspondence with Hans M. Kristensen; cf. Kristensen, “The Neither Confirm nor Deny Policy: Nuclear Diplomacy at Work,” working paper, August 2004, http://www.nukestrat.com/pubs/NCND.pdf,
accessed December 14, 2006.
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relations subject to their respective bilateral policies.” This provision echoed
similar intentions in the 1994 Agreed Framework, lack of progress on which
may have been more disappointing in Pyongyang than delays on the material
side of the deal. The September 2005 agreement also promised that “the
directly related parties will negotiate a permanent peace regime on the Korean
Peninsula at an appropriate separate forum.” The Korean Peninsula remains
technically in a suspended state of war defined by the terms of the armistice
that ended the Korean War in 1953. The agreement thus directly linked resolution of the nuclear crisis to an overarching political settlement.
Most provisions in the agreement had been previously articulated, in one
form or another, by one or more countries independently.41 The agreement did
bring all six parties into concord on a common language but that language remained ambiguous in crucial areas. Indicatively, the agreement reportedly was
reached only because the U.S. acceded at the last minute to Chinese and South
Korean urging to accept the patchwork terms on the civil nuclear power issue.42
This reticence reflected ongoing tensions within the Bush administration over
its more moderate approach. Once the September 2005 agreement had led only
to a new impasse, administration hardliners skeptical of any negotiated outcome
reasserted influence over North Korea policy, bringing back much of the resoluteness of the administration’s first term (though less of its confrontational
tone). Consequently, the ideational presuppositions driving the Bush administration’s global practices regained the upper hand in shaping U.S. responses to
the imperatives of the Korean situation.
The Road Ahead
In September 2005, some sort of accord may have been necessary to keep the
Six-Party Talks process from collapsing entirely. But in the short run, the agreement that emerged did more to clarify differences than to stimulate momentum for real progress toward resolving the ongoing crisis. In particular, this
episode highlights two considerable sets of hurdles.
The most immediate stumbling block is resolution of the scope and nature
of any peaceful nuclear program that North Korea might retain. Although divisions on this issue are deep, a practical compromise acceptable to all sides is
41. Ralph A. Cossa, “Six-Party Statement of Principles: One Small Step for Man,” PacNet 41,
September 19, 2005, http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/pac0541.pdf, accessed December
14, 2006.
42. Only a week earlier, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the head U.S. negotiator,
had stated that North Korea’s insistence on retaining a civilian nuclear program was “a nonstarter.”
Donald Kirk and Howard LaFranchi, “North Korea’s Agreement to Scrap Its Nukes,” Christian
Science Monitor, September 20, 2005; Joseph Kahn and David E. Sanger, “U.S.-Korean Deal on
Arms Leaves Key Points Open,” New York Times, September 20, 2005.
WADE L. HUNTLEY
473
not inconceivable.43 Beyond this immediate problem lies the less noticed difficulty that will be faced in verifying North Korean compliance with whatever
stipulations may emerge for dismantling its existing nuclear weapons capabilities and eliminating all capacity for future nuclear weapons development.
Achieving the agreement’s goal of “verifiable denuclearization of the Korean
Peninsula” will require North Korea to come clean on its alleged second
uranium-based nuclear program and accept verification intrusiveness an order
of magnitude larger than it has experienced in the past. Putting aside the staunch
political resistance such intrusiveness is likely to engender in Pyongyang, the
material advancement of North Korea’s nuclear program may now present
new technical obstacles to verifying denuclearization at a level satisfying the
international community. North Korea will have a hard time proving it is nonnuclear, even if it wants to.
Dramatically increased verification challenges will make arranging the timing of other elements of any agreement more difficult as well. Many benefits
to North Korea under any final accord are likely to be contingent on achieving
such verification. But under the principle of “commitment for commitment,
action for action,” North Korea will insist that some benefits begin flowing to
it before complete verification of its denuclearization is realized, particularly
given the difficulties described above. This result would attract the criticism,
as did the 1994 Agreed Framework, that North Korea could accrue enough
support to stave off internal crises while never fully forsaking its nuclear
programs. The difficulty of these obstacles underscores the importance of the
September 2005 agreement’s anticipation of reaching a regional accord wider
in scope than the immediate nuclear crisis.
U.S. pledges to normalize relations and provide negative security assurances likely carry great weight for a country that has been subjected to cavalier talk of “regime change” since the advent of the Bush administration. Such
language was reinforced in North Korean eyes by the U.S. invasion of Iraq as
well as inclusion in U.S. planning of North Korea as a potential target for nuclear counterproliferation strikes. Much would need to be worked out to specify the nature and limits of any concrete U.S. negative security guarantees.
The presence of U.S. troops in South Korea and the compatibility of commitments to North Korea with existing positive security guarantees to South Korea
and Japan are focal challenges. Nevertheless, the costs of early and significant
U.S. moves toward normalizing relations are relatively cheap compared to the
potential benefits that could accrue in smoothing negotiations over more contentious tangible matters.
In this context, the promise offered by the six parties’ mutual commitment
to negotiate a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula is particularly
43. For one suggestion, see Rose Gottemoeller, “The Process in Place,” ibid., August 23, 2005.
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significant. A peace treaty to end the formal state of war would help constitute
a wider East Asian cooperative security regime to supplant the deterrence and
balance of power dynamics now dominating regional relations. But this linkage is symmetric: efforts by East Asia’s principal states to forge such broader
cooperative mechanisms would reinforce the Six-Party Talks process and bolster prospects ultimately to resolve Korea-specific conflicts.
Because the status quo changed following the collapse of the Agreed Framework, resolving the current Korean deadlock now requires significant progress
toward regional cooperative security. Many analysts have long called for a
bold initiative for dealing with North Korea; most reasoned proposals call for
some combination of “carrots” and “sticks.” But with the new status quo now enabling North Korea to grow its nuclear arsenal to the limits of its technological
capabilities, anticipating broader regional security cooperation as an outgrowth
of the Six-Party Talks process is no longer sufficient. Reversing the trajectory that
has taken North Korea across the threshold to becoming a full-fledged nucleararmed state requires a bold initiative reaching beyond Korea itself, setting as a
forefront goal the creation of a sturdy East Asian security community.
The Bush administration is capable of such thinking: former Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld once embraced the principle, articulated earlier by
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, that “if a problem cannot be solved, enlarge
it.” James Goodby has applied this adage to the Korean confrontation:
The nuclear issue can only be resolved within a framework that is as large as the
strategic issue of which it is a part. . . . In parallel with [the Six-Party] talks, or independently if the talks are not resumed, [the parties] should work out a mandate for a
permanent mechanism to promote security and cooperation in Northeast Asia. . . .
The mandate for a security community should be as broad as that of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.”44
So long as Bush administration policymakers sustain their ideational preference for emancipatory militancy over multilateralism, any lasting mechanisms
of regional security cooperation will be hard to develop. But a minimalist beginning, oriented around a more realist, problem-solving approach, is feasible
and the initial parameters of such security cooperation are straightforward.
Regarding North Korea, the United States and China could find common ground
in emphasizing both the impracticality of “regime change” and the need for a
forceful role for the Security Council, thereby forging the Sino-American concord needed for a lasting solution. But reaching that convergence would require the United States and China to build a more collaborative strategic
relationship regarding Northeast Asia more broadly—and to involve the region’s
44. James Goodby, “Enlarge the North Korean Problem,” International Herald Tribune, June
21, 2005. Cf. Huntley, “Ostrich Engagement.”
WADE L. HUNTLEY
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other principal parties, constituting a “small m” multilateralism along the lines
of the early nineteenth-century European “Concert of Powers.”45
In this context, the aspiration to negotiate a permanent peace regime on the
Korean Peninsula—revived in the September 2005 statement of principles—
should move to the forefront. But that peace-building effort now should also
expand beyond Korea and aim to establish broader security cooperation on the
basis of practical regionwide problem solving (rather than more-ambitious
institution-building). The Six-Party Talks have been considered a potential
precursor to a wider East Asian cooperative security regime. Now, however,
progress toward enduring regional security cooperation has become a prerequisite, not merely a hopeful consequence, for the peaceful achievement of a
non-nuclear Korean Peninsula.
Nuclear North Korea: Now What?
On October 9, 2006, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test. The Punggye
nuclear test site, approximately 350 kilometers northeast of Pyongyang, has
been under external surveillance for years. Preparations for a possible test were
observed in 2005 and again in early 2006. On October 3, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry announced it would “in the future conduct a nuclear test.”46 This
warning made North Korea the first state ever to give prior public announcement of its first nuclear test, contrasting particularly with India’s and Pakistan’s efforts in 1998 to conceal their test intentions.
North Korea’s nuclear test marks an escalation of the crisis over its nuclear
ambitions, but not a transformation. Since the breakdown of the Agreed Framework at the end of 2002, all of the implications of a nuclear North Korea have
been at hand: that was the moment the critical threshold was crossed, placing
Pyongyang decidedly on the road to becoming nuclear armed. The regime’s
subsequent declarations that it has nuclear weapons and requires them for
its security—now backed up by its nuclear detonation—all evince how far the
country has moved down that road.
A Testing Decision
North Korea reportedly gave China about 20 minutes’ warning of the exact
time and location of the test, indicating the yield would be about four
45. Paul Evans, “Constructing Multilateralism in an Anti-Region: From Six Party Talks to a
Regional Security Framework in Northeast Asia?” Conference on Cross Currents: Regionalism
and Nationalism in Northeast Asia, Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, Stanford University, May 11–12, 2006, revised July 8, 2006; see also David Capie and Paul Evans, Asia-Pacific
Security Lexicon (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002), pp. 77–81.
46. “DPRK FM Issues Statement on ‘New Measure’ to Bolster ‘War Deterrent’,” Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), October 3, 2006.
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kilotons.47 Although this is small by historical “first test” standards, it is consistent with judgments that North Korea is probably fashioning smaller devices. But preliminary estimates from seismic monitoring of the explosion’s
actual yield ranged from 0.5 to 0.8 kilotons, suggesting that the test was not
entirely successful—a fizzle.
Speculation that the explosion was merely a large conventional blast was
never well grounded: why simulate a failure? Air samples collected a few days
later detected radioactive debris, confirming that the explosion was nuclear with
a yield of less than one kiloton.48 A more likely explanation for the low yield
is that North Korean technicians did not achieve the precise timing needed for
triggering a mechanism using the implosion-type design required for plutonium detonation. Another possibility is that North Korea may have deliberately
designed a smaller device, seeking to preserve a limited plutonium supply or
to ensure that the test site successfully contained the explosion. The more
alarming possibility that North Korea successfully tested a refined low-yield
missile warhead is unlikely, though not precluded.49
While the nuclear test aggravated the situation, it also—ironically—helped
alleviate certain concerns by demonstrating that the nuclear program probably
is not as advanced as many feared. Decision makers in Pyongyang must have
realized that testing would provide important forensic evidence on the nature
of the device and its fissile materials to outside observers. Possibly the leadership judged that the data the scientists would accrue outweighed this concern.
But the inevitable exposure, combined with Pyongyang’s bold announcement
of its intention to test, together indicate the likely dominance of symbolic over
strategic motivations in going forward with the detonation.
In this vein, the nuclear test, just like the July missile test and the long list of
other North Korean provocations, was almost certainly not merely an effort to
get attention. Such explanations pander to easy dismissals of Kim Jong-il as
nothing more than a deluded and self-indulgent dictator. Rather, North Korea’s
provocative actions probably flow from a calculated strategy of brinkmanship
and coercive diplomacy. This strategy anticipates positive effects beyond the
short-term rise in tensions and animosity such actions elicit and has brought
47. Siegfried S. Hecker, “Report on North Korean Nuclear Program,” Center for International
Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, November 15, 2006, http://iis-db.stanford.edu/
pubs/21266/DPRKreport-Hecker06.pdf.
48. “Statement by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [ODNI] on the North Korea Nuclear Test,” ODNI News Release, no. 19–06, October 16, 2006, http://www.odni.gov.
49. Anthony Cordesman, “The Meaning of the North Korean Nuclear Weapons Test,” Center
for Strategic and International Studies, October 9, 2006, http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/
061009_cordesman_commentary.pdf; Richard L. Garwin and Frank N. von Hippel, “A Technical Analysis of North Korea’s Oct. 9 Nuclear Test,” Arms Control Today, November 2006, http://
www.armscontrol.org/act/2006_11/NKTestAnalysis.asp.
WADE L. HUNTLEY
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success in the past. The renewed positive negotiating environment with Washington following North Korea’s 1998 missile test, which led to Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright’s visit to Pyongyang two years later, is one example.
The announced December 2006 resumption of the Six-Party Talks, after more
than a year’s suspension in the aftermath of the failed 2005 statement of principles, suggests this approach may once again be working.
Responses
The eventual consequences of North Korea’s October 2006 nuclear test will be
a function less of the country’s own actions and intentions than of the reactions of the other principal governments involved. The U.S. reaction was relatively predictable and probably prepared in advance. While muting its rhetoric
and emphasizing the need for a diplomatic solution, the Bush administration
also pushed strongly for new, tighter sanctions and creation of an “inspections
cordon” to try to seal off North Korean exports of nuclear materials and other
military resources—all consistent with a “contain and strain” strategy.
China’s reaction was more uncertain and ambivalent. China shares the goal
of having a non-nuclear North Korea, for many reasons. China has also invested significant prestige in the Six-Party Talks process and has been visibly
perturbed not only by Pyongyang’s actions but by its manner of undertaking
them. Beijing termed the test “brazen,” a term usually reserved for adversaries.50
But China’s interests in North Korea are broader than the nuclear issue.
China experienced a massive refugee influx during North Korea’s famine in
the mid-1990s and thus is particularly sensitive to its neighbor’s wider economic and political stability. From Beijing’s perspective, a collapse of governance there would mean certain chaos on its border and a host of uncertainties
as to outcomes.
Additionally, China’s broader regional interests make it unwilling to follow
all U.S. policy preferences. U.S.-China tensions on security issues beyond Korea inhibit fulsome collaboration on the specific problem of Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions. Beijing probably also judges that to be seen to be simply
doing Washington’s bidding would undermine what political leverage the Chinese do have in Pyongyang. Thus, as much as Pyongyang’s provocations push
Beijing to a harder line, confrontational reactions from Washington exert an
opposing pressure.
The passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718 six days after the
nuclear test, although prompt and unanimous, reflected these trans-Pacific differences. The resolution calls for North Korea to “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs in a complete, verifiable, and irreversible
50. “North Korea’s Nuclear Test: The Fallout,” ICG Asia Briefing, no. 56, November 13, 2006,
www.crisisgroup.org, p. 9.
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manner.” It directs member states to “prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale,
or transfer” to North Korea of a wide range of military and non-military goods.51
Unlike in the aftermath of Pyongyang’s July 2006 missile tests, China acceded
to invocation of Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, denoting North Korea’s actions as a threat to global peace, resulting in the U.N. Security Council’s strongest action against North Korea in half a century.
However, at China’s urging that invocation referred to Article 41, not Article 42, thereby specifically ruling out the use of armed force as a response.
Moreover, immediately following passage of the resolution, U.N. Ambassador
Wang Guangya qualified China’s acceptance of the inspections cordon:
China does not approve of the practice of inspecting cargo to and from the DPRK
[i.e., North Korea]. We therefore have reservations about the relevant provisions of
the resolution. China strongly urges the countries concerned to adopt [a] prudent
and responsible attitude in this regard and refrain from taking any provocative steps
that may intensify the tension.52
Prospects
The nuclear test has proven that, as asserted earlier, achieving a non-nuclear
Korean Peninsula now requires rolling back an existing capacity. Although
North Korea still has very far to go before it is a full-fledged nuclear power, no
country has ever given up a publicly demonstrated nuclear weapons capability.
The only two cases of nuclear rollback—South Africa and the former Soviet
republics—involved governments that had not embraced nuclear weapons in their
security policies. And both rollbacks were triggered by dramatic regime change.
The goal of rolling back North Korea’s nuclear weapons acquisition should
not be surrendered. But the international community also must take measures
to prevent a nuclear North Korea from fueling regional security conflict and
global nuclear proliferation. Both these goals point to the need for security cooperation among the key interested parties, particularly the United States and
China, encompassing the full context of the North Korean nuclear crisis, not
merely the crisis alone. More than ever, enduring regionwide security cooperation
is a prerequisite to peaceful achievement of a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula.
Conclusion
The descent of circumstances from the September 2005 statement of principles
to the October 2006 nuclear test underscores the necessity now of addressing
51. United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1718, October 14, 2006, http://daccessdds.
un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N06/572/07/PDF/N0657207.pdf.
52. “Explanatory Remarks by Ambassador Wang Guangya at the Security Council after Taking
Vote on Draft Resolution on DPRK Nuclear Test,” Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of
China to the U.N., October 14, 2006, http://www.china-un.org/eng/smhwj/2006/t276121. htm.
WADE L. HUNTLEY
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the wider context of the nuclear crisis. Despite the trenchant material obstacles
to resolving the Korean nuclear confrontation, the greatest challenges are
political and symbolic. This is a major reason why future prospects are overshadowed by the ideational predispositions that the Bush administration brings
to its engagement of this problem—not to mention the ideational blinkers of
Kim Jong-il’s regime. None of the parties to the talks, least of all North Korea
and the United States, appears ready to act decisively to expand the scope and
stakes of engagement in the manner now required to generate a real solution.
The United States has the most latitude for enterprise. But neither the passion of
the Bush administration’s emancipatory militancy nor the ostensible sobriety
of the administration’s critics is a sufficient basis for the initiative, innovation,
and imagination—in a word, the idealism—that building an East Asian security community requires.
The Bush administration is right to base U.S. security policy on a vision for
a better world. And it is right to see a link between North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and the character of Pyongyang’s regime. But this linkage does not
make seeking (or passively hoping for) regime change a basis for policy. Liberalization within states is rarely achieved through means that widen the divides between states. Neither a peaceful nonproliferation solution in Korea
nor peaceful liberalization of the Pyongyang regime are promoted through
confrontation; they require engaging not only North Korea but also the complex tensions throughout East Asia and the systemic dynamics of global nuclear proliferation.
The Bush administration often alludes to the “democratic peace” in justifying its stark confrontations with autocratic regimes and ambitions for global
democratization. But how administration officials interpret the implications of
the finding that democratic countries tend not to fight wars with each other is
at best partial. Many in Asia, particularly in South Korea, have concluded that
the United States is avid in promoting democratic development in other countries but loathe to accommodate the divergences from U.S. desires that may
emerge when such democratization is realized.53 This kind of accommodation
is a necessary concomitant of the “democratic peace”; the Kantian conception
of a structure of peace through the spread of republican governments also premises genuine cooperation among these governments, not rote allegiance to the
strongest of them.54 This conception further appreciates that sturdy liberal government rises from a foundation of genuine self-determination, not the merely
53. Workshop Report, “America in Question: Korean Democracy and the Challenge of NonProliferation on the Peninsula,” East Asia Institute, Seoul, May 10–11, 2005, http://www.eai.or.
kr/english/.
54. For an expansion on this point, see Wade L. Huntley, “Kant’s Third Image: Systemic
Sources of the Liberal Peace,” International Studies Quarterly 40:1 (March 1996), pp. 45–76.
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formal exercise of democratic instruments under the shadow of foreign military occupation.
More broadly, emancipatory militant idealism is no protection from the asymmetric threats emanating from the seamy side of globalization. Such thinking
offers false promise instead of real preparation for the threats to the United
States and the challenges to the global security system that are likely to emerge
in coming decades. Among these, the old and new dangers of nuclear proliferation are at the forefront. Evangelical bravado by the world’s most powerful
state, backed by a military budget approaching that of all other nations combined, will instead exacerbate those threats and distract attention and resources
from the practical efforts that might successfully cope with them.
But greater “realism” is not the only alternative to emancipatory militancy.
The United States could also follow an alternative “grand strategy” oriented
more toward collaborative international community building. This approach
would appreciate how security globalization leaves the United States simultaneously dominant and vulnerable. It would, accordingly, articulate a vision of
the U.S. world leadership that prioritizes improved global governance to address a wide range of interrelated challenges. Such a strategy would draw on
internationalist thinking and community-building ideals just as immanent in
the American idealist tradition as cowboy diplomacy.
Even modest reorientations in such new directions are unlikely while the
Bush administration remains in office. In the meantime, successfully confronting the challenges to the global nonproliferation regime, and specifically the
North Korean nuclear crisis, will remain grueling tasks. Over the long term,
achieving a more productive reorientation in U.S. global strategy necessitates
current critics to demand more than just greater “realism” in Washington. Such
critics need to be prepared to engage in a proactive global dialogue on common ideals and on the appropriate long-term leadership role of the United
States in realizing those ideals.
Goliath, so confident in his strength that he willingly bore the fate of his entire army on his own shoulders, each day pridefully challenged his adversaries,
who cowered in intimidation. Then one day the impertinent David felled the
giant with a single stone, defeating the giant’s army as well. Less blinded by
hubris, Goliath might have easily deflected that stone. All attendants to U.S.
policy-making on global affairs would do well taking to heart the classic lessons of this parable: overwhelming power obscures asymmetric vulnerabilities,
and pride goeth before the fall.