Dr John Swenson-Wright, Lecturer in Modern Japanese Studies and a Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge.
Talk in the House of Commons on Monday 27th November 2006
John Swenson-Wright is the Fuji Bank University Lecturer in Modern Japanese Studies and a fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. A graduate of Oxford University and the the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, in Washington, DC, he has a D.Phil. in International Relations from St. Antony’s College, Oxford. His early research focused on early Cold War US-Japan foreign and security relations and was published as Unequal Allies? United States Security and Alliance Policy Towards Japan, 1945-1960 by Stanford University Press in March 2005. His current interest focuses on contemporary political and security interests in Northeast Asia, with particular reference to Japan and the Korean peninsula. In addition to his work at Cambridge, he is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, where he convenes a research and discussion group on contemporary Korea.
Lecture in full:
The North Korean Crisis and the Dangers of Malign Neglect
Ladies and Gentlemen, Sir Ronald – it is a great pleasure to be with you this evening to talk to you about the difficult, complex, and at the same time very important subject of Korea. When I was invited to speak a few weeks ago, the proposed topic was Korea’s foreign relations – an issue which covers many themes. In light of the enormous attention being given to North Korea’s recent, sudden admission into the select but – I’m afraid -- expanding club of nuclear powers, it seemed only natural to focus on this issue – not only because of its intrinsic significance but also because it casts light on the foreign policies of the two Koreas – both north and south.
Before I start, I should make one or two caveats. First, I am an academic – and so, unlike your regular, more distinguished speakers from the professional world of diplomacy and public policy-making, I can’t claim to have any unique inside knowledge into the current predicament or the backchannel negotiations currently taking place between the key players. My remarks, therefore, are very much those of a detached by-stander – albeit one who has been watching recent developments with increasing worry and concern. Second, my training is in Japanese studies and diplomatic history and contemporary politics – so I can’t legitimately claim to be a Korea-specialist as such. This makes my task tonight a potential mine-field – first because I am figuratively treading onto foreign scholarly turf and second, because of the charged and emotional-fraught nature of the bilateral relationship between Korea and Japan – always a sensitive subject because of the long-reach of history and the legacy of colonialism, now made all the more risky because of current bitter bilateral disagreements over territory, history textbooks and the difficult issue of rising nationalism in East Asia. I take some – albeit small consolation – from the fact that making sense of North Korea is anything but a precise science. North Korea may not quite be a “riddle wrapped in an enigma” – to use a familiar phrase – but the lack of concrete information from inside the Northern part of the “hermit kingdom” makes the task of decoding developments there always something of a hit-and-miss affair – a little like the tea-leaf reading Kremlinology of the Cold War era. Against this background, experts or at least commentators on Korean affairs can take comfort from the fact that it will be years, if not decades, before their predictions and analysis can be tested against hard empirical evidence – or anything as concrete as the archival records of the North Korean government – assuming such records even exist.
With these qualifications in mind, let me begin. North’s Korea’s apparently successful test of a nuclear device on October 9th has fundamentally and perhaps irrevocably transformed the strategic landscape of Northeast Asia. In one explosive moment the region’s “delicate balance of terror” has been overturned prompting diplomatic protests and consternation around the globe, imposing new tensions on relations between the key powers in the region, and raising the spectre (admittedly still a faint one) of tit-for-tat nuclearization by the North’s increasingly nervous South Korean and Japanese neighbours.
There seems little doubt that this represents a grave crisis. For the first time, a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty has torn up the international rule-book and walked away from its international obligations. Moreover, the nature of North Korean regime should make us all pause – brutal, authoritarian and with one of the world’s worst human rights’ records, the DPRK is clearly a state that has been willing to challenge the norms of acceptable international behaviour and in some cases has apparently deliberately sought to destabilize both its immediate neighbours and the East Asian region. This is after all the same state that blew up two-thirds of the ROK cabinet in the Rangoon bombing of 2003, brought down a South Korean airline through an act of state-sponsored terrorism, and in the late 1990s was still using its special forces to infiltrate deep into South Korean territory south of the 38th parallel. Even with the ending of this program of state terror – the CIA for example, has acknowledged, that its been at least 15 years since Pyongyang has done anything that could be construed as support for international terrorism – there are, the critics claim, reasons to be distrustful of North Korea. For all of its commitment to socialist ideals of self-reliance and national independence – the much vaunted notion of ‘juche’ - the DPRK remains a state that actively relies on international criminal activity as a means of generating foreign currency for itself – either through the export of synthetic narcotics, or through large-scale currency counterfeiting. All of this then provides powerful reasons for arguging that this is a regime we should not be doing business with?
Or does it? Without in any ways, seeking to excuse or minimize the North’s crimes, transgressions and misdemeanours, might there not be powerful pragmatic arguments – good, old-fashioned, realist (as opposed to non-realist) reasons to rethink a policy of isolation and containment where North Korea is concerned. To do this, we need – I would like to argue – to try – however uncomfortable it may make us - to step into Kim Jong-il’s shoes and envisage the world from his perspective.
How might we explain the actions of Kim Jong-il and the leadership in Pyongyang? Since North Korean decision-making remains shrouded in uncertainty, the answer is speculative but a number of potential explanations spring immediately to mind. First of all we should be wary of the conventional assumption that Kim Jong-il is crazy – a capricious, impulsive sociopath happy to push the nuclear button at the slightest provocation and hell-bent on conflict with the international community. Forget the simplistic cartoon-image of a Hennesey swigging, platform-shoe wearing, bouffant-hair-styled dilettante, with megalomaniac desires to dominate the world. Since the unprecedented Pyongyang summit meeting in 2000 between Kim and his South Korean counterpart - then President Kim Dae-Jung - the outside world has come to accept that the North Korean leader is a calm, balanced leader, capable of reasoned argument and yes – as former US Sec of State Madelaine Albright can attest – even occasional light-hearted “charming” political banter. Even the new Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe – no fan of the North Koreans and with a domestic constituency sharply critical of the North - is on record as describing Kim as open to rational argument. Like any rational actor, the North Korean leader may have chosen to test as a means of enhancing its deterrent capability, to minimize the risk of a preventive or pre-emptive attack from a United States which appears (privately at least) to entertain the possibility of engineering regime change in the North.
Why might the North think in this way? Two key themes appear to animate DPRK decision-making throughout the near 60 year existence of the state: namely, ensuring regime survival and distrust of the outside world. Rightly or wrongly, North Koreans see themselves as members of a small, vulnerable, weak state, constantly outgunned by a larger, more powerful and consistently hostile United States. Their image is that of David versus Goliath, rather than of two equally well-positioned strategic competitors jockeying for regional influence. Indeed, I’ve had this image presented to me on a number of occasions. In 2003, a delegation of North Korean diplomats visited Cambridge for informal discussions – shortly following the establishment of diplomatic relations between the UK and the DPRK. Pushed to explain why the DPRK was developing a nuclear energy programme with the potential to produce nuclear weapons, one official likened North Korea to an infant confronted by a hostile adult, brandishing a sword. In such a situation, he explained, the natural reaction is for the child to cry out in fear and to make as much noise and create as much disturbance as possible in order to dissuade the adult from attacking and as a means of expressing the child’s own anxiety and fear.
Of course, it would be a naïve to take such simplistic descriptions at face value. Nonetheless, we should also not overlook the degree to which the actions of the Bush Administration may have contributed to and reinforced the North’s fears. We perhaps shouldn’t forget the extent to which the Clinton Administration was close to reaching a comprehensive agreement with North Korea in late 2000 that might have opened the door to the successful normalization of relations between the US and the DPRK – leaving the route free in turn to perhaps a permanent solution to the nuclear issue. Clinton himself, was close to planning a visit to Pyongyang in late 2000 – choosing at the last minute to refrain from going mainly, it seems, because of the political pressures of the upcoming presidential campaign.
A change of administration, however, led to a dramatic cooling of relations between Washington and Pyongyang. For an incoming Bush administration – animated by an ABC – or Anything but Clinton Stategy – the notion of accommodation with the DPRK and pursuing the same policy as the Democrats – was anathema. Both in their declarative statements and their substantive policy initiatives, President Bush and his neoconservative closest advisers have given the North Koreans ample reason to assume that Washington’s approach is hostile rather than constructive. The President’s own rhetoric, from his famous “axis of evil” speech in 2002, to his on the record statements expressing his “loathing” for Kim Jong-il, have reinforced the idea that the US government is viscerally hostile to the North. To Pyongyang, US withdrawal from the Anti-balistic missile treat, its refusal to ratify the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, and a US National Security Strategy that argues for both preventitive war and preemptive attack, are all powerful evidence of an America that is actively seeking nuclear confrontation with North Korea and which is uninterested in serious negotiations to reduce the risk of global nuclear conflict. Most powerfully of all, the lessons of Iraq and now Iran, have impressed on the North Korean leadership the idea that weak states can only hope to protect themselves against a unilateral attack from the United States by demonstrably making good on their commitment to acquire Weapons of Mass Destruction.
The onus has been on the United States leadership – at the most senior-levels - to demonstrate that it really does seek a negotiated solution with the North. So far, however, the background noise from DC has been confusing and contradictory. At times, Bush has seemed semi-detached from events in the Far East, more preoccupied with events either at home or in the middle east and preferring to believe that the North Korean problem can be placed on the back-burner for later consideration. Equally – if not more - worrying, as US Korea watchers have often argued, it seems that the key policy-makers in the White House concerned with North Korea have been mainly motivated by a desire to topple the DPRK government rather than to deal comprehensively or constructively with the nuclear problem. As one anonymous US official noted in 2003, in an oft-cited New Yorker article by Seymour Hersch, “Bush and Cheney want that guy’s head” - Kim Jong Il’s - “on a platter. Don’t be distracted by all this talk about negotiations. There will be negotiations, but they have a plan, and they are going to get this guy after Iraq. He’s their version of Hitler.” If the North Koreans have been reading the American media – and there is no reason to think that they have not – then they could be forgiven for not taking American assurances at face value. In this context, nuclear weapons as means of rational deterrence, make perfect sense.
Alternatively, Pyongyang may view the nuclear option primarily as a card in an increasingly high-stakes poker game of diplomatic brinkmanship. Since September of 2005, Washington has been steadily raising the pressure against the north to resile from its nuclear program, by imposing new economic sanctions, targeting the North’s foreign currency resererves in Banco Delta Asia in Macao – holdings that arguably are used to bank-role the most senior members of the North Korean elite - and also by seeking to expose and restrict the North’s alleged counterfeiting operations. Like any accomplished high-stakes gambler, Kim – by revealing his nuclear assets has simultaneously raised his ante – allowing him to call for greater diplomatic concessions from the Amercans - while also calling the bluff of the international community and Washington’s claim that it “will not tolerate” a nuclear-armed North Korea.
Less obviously, a third factor may explain the North’s actions. Kim may be playing to his own domestic gallery, seeking to reassure North Korea’s military elites – a group that has grown increasingly influential since the late 1990s in keeping with the regime’s “military first” - or songun - strategy. Korea in this context, is less a Gangster State, intent on pursuing criminal activity, and more a Garrison State, focused on enhancing its military options and bolstering the position of the military leadership. The nuclear option represents, in this context, a form of technonationalism, intended to bolster public pride and feeding on the acute insecurities, xenophobia and anti-Americanism of a people inured to fifty-plus years of conflict with the United States. You can see direct evidence of this insecurity – some would describe it as paranoia – if you wander around the streets of Pyongyang, as I did in 2004. Everywhere you go, you encounter the constant reminders of the continuing state of war that exists with the United States – large murals depicting the armed struggle with the US imperialists and exhortatory slogans, urging ordinary Koreans to fight to protect the Fatherland. The Korean War may have been temporarily interrupted by the armistice of 1953, but in the psyche of ordinary North Koreans the conflict is a permanent one, reinforced by Pyongyang’s propaganda and – ironically - by the ideological and personal animus of the Bush Administration towards the Kim regime. Here, perhaps, is the most persuasive argument for a more nuanced approach from Washington and the value of negotiation. For Kim Jong-il, personal power and certainly his own legitimacy, grows not so much from the barrel of a gun, but from the state of siege that exists with the United States. Unlike his father, Kim Il-Sung, who was – and to some degrees still is – viewed as the saviour of his people because of his wartime guerrilla activity against the Japanese – however exaggerated it may have been by official accounts – Kim Jong-il’s status is much more conditional. Take away the external threat and it may be much harder for the leadership to continue to convince the rest of the country that it is indispensable to the future strength and security of the country.
Here, perhaps, I should add an explanatory footnote. There has been much speculation recently about the durability of the regime and the possibility that Kim may have been using the nuclear tests to insulate himself from rivals within the North Korean leadership. For all the talk of possible coups, and possible competing power centers, in the last year or two, the balance of informed opinion seems to accept that Kim is for the moment secure. There appears little convincing evidence that the Dear Leader personally is at risk – even as the regime and country as a whole lurches from one crisis to another.
The puzzle in the current standoff, is less the North Korean willingness to challenge the international community by unilaterally tearing up its earlier non-nuclear commitments such as membership of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Seoul-Pyongyang Nonnuclear Accord of 1992, and more the confused and contradictory policies of the Bush admininstration.
Frustratingly, this is a crisis that might have been averted. We have after all been through an extensive series of negotiations – dating form the |Agreed Framework talks of 1993/4 which successfully froze the North’s then – much smaller – nuclear program – continuing through the 6-party talks that first started in August 2003. The most promising of all of these talks – the fourth round of six-party talks in September of last year offered a viable escape route from deadlock. As you may recall, under the terms negotiated in Beijing, the North agreed to end all its nuclear programs (whether plutonium or uranium based) and allow the return of international inspectors. Disarmament would be – in words consistent with US objectives – “comprehensive, verifiable and irreversible.” In return, the US reaffirmed its commitment to a nuclear-free peninsula, made clear that it had no intention to attack the North, and opened the door to peaceful co-existence and eventual normalization of relations. Economic aid to the North would be provided by the other members of the six-party talks and the medium-term prospect of a new, permanent, regional security architecture offered the critical mutual reassurance needed to diffuse regional mistrust and uncertainty.
Precisely why this deal failed is not clear. Ostensibly, Pyongyang walked away unilaterally from the agreement citing the refusal of the other parties to commit upfront and unambiguously to provide light-water reactors as a quid-pro-quo for the north’s nuclear disarmament. Others – particularly in the South Korean government - advance a more conspiratorial interpretation and point to an 11th-hour intervention by hardliners in the Bush administration (particularly in the Pentagon, the vice-president’s office, and also, within the Treasury). The hawks, according to this interpretation, felt that the State department’s regional specialists had over-reached themselves and negotiated an agreement which was tantamount to appeasement of the North. Even before the ink was dry on the agreement, Washington’s hardliners had decided – its claimed - to go after the North’s counterfeit currency operations, not merely to put pressure on Pyongyang but rather to scupper the entire deal.
Despite this setback, in the last few weeks. the diplomatic terrain appears to have moved slightly. The surprise announcement by the North Korean leadership on October 31st that it is willing to re-enter the six-party talks has offered a sliver of optimism that there might still be room for a negotiated solution to the current crisis. But, its probably far too early to break open the champagne, as Christopher Hill, the US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian affairs has wisely noted. Pyongyang’s movement appears to have resulted from a US concession, brokered in a three-way meeting this week in Beijing between US, North Korean and Chinese senior representatives, to address the issue of financial sanctions within the six-party talks process. In this sense, the agreement is only an agreement to talk about contentious issues rather than a meaningful solution.
For the pessimists among us, however, even this progress may be illusory and real, substantive discussions are unlikely to materialize. Cynics might argue that the US adjustment may be at best a negotiating gambit and there is probably no prospect of a relaxation in the new international sanctions package introduced under UN resolution 1718. Indeed, US Secretary of State Rice in a speech on October 30th has made clear the importance of a united response to the North Korean challenge and her opposition to a bilateral solution and the notion of direct talks with the North Koreans. America’s closely ally in the region, Japan, is adamant that the North must give up its nuclear weapons and Tokyo is unwavering also in maintaining its own even stricter comprehensive sanctions against Pyongyang. In this context, it is hard to see how a breakthrough might be achieved. The North Koreans for their part are likely to be emboldened by their acknowledged nuclear status and will set their negotiating bar even higher in attempting to extract concessions from the international community. They may reasonably calculate that they have an opportunity to capitalize on tactical differences between the other parties to the talks, and by drawing out the negotiations they increase one of their most important assets, namely time – time in which to continue to build up their nuclear stockpile.
This time issue seems to me especially important and one which sometimes gets drowned out amidst the focus on immediate developments. Most informed, objective observers calculate that North Korea has currently enough fissile material to make anywhere between half a dozen and a dozen nuclear devices. If it choses once again to close down its active reactor at Yongbyon it can, with impunity – given the absence of international inspectors – extract more fuel rods to produce enough material for another bomb. In the medium term if it continues its covert highly-enriched uranium program, and makes good on its earlier plan to build a second and a third reactor, then there seems little to stop the North from setting up its own nuclear weapons production line – churning out in the most worrying scenarios enough material to produce anywhere between 70 and 90 bombs. In this context, given the risks of war through miscalculation and unanticipated proliferation the threat to the international community sharply increases and the hands on the nuclear clock move perilously closer to midnight.
So what can be done to avert disaster? If Washington continues to stress punishment as a means of forcing the North to back down, then the prospect for a negotiated settlement looks worryingly distant. Sanctions alone are unlikely to persuade Pyongyang to change course? Why? -- mainly because the key player in the sanctions game – China - is a half-hearted participant. Beijing remains reluctant to move substantially beyond verbal condemnation of the North. China, as the source of some 70 percent of North Korea’s energy needs and 50 percent of its food-supplies, has the means to impose real pain on the North, but worries that this risks triggering the collapse of Kim’s regime. To the Chinese leadership, the consequences of such upheaval are arguably equally if not more troubling than the existence of a nuclear North Korea: not only the mass exodus of North Korean refugees across China’s 800 mile border with the North, but a “loose nukes” scenario in which the North’s stockpiles of fissile material might fall into the hands of terrorist organizations or other “rogue states”, such as Iran. However much China covets the international role of responsible “stakeholder” able to deliver a compromise solution, it doesn’t want to push the North into a position where it collapses and China is left, in the short-run, with chaos nextdoor and, in the long-term, possibly a reunited Korean peninsula under American political and diplomatic tutelage.
Efforts to address the proliferation challenge posed by the North are at best stop-gap, imperfect measures. As I’m sure you know, Washington has been stressing the merits of a maritime blockade or selective quarantine of North Korea through the multilateral Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) – a 70 nation mechanism first set up in 2003. This may be a commendable way of signaling the resolve of the international community and the vitality of multilateral solutions, but no one seriously believes that this can hermetically seal off Pyongyang from the outside world. Your average nuclear device is about the size of a grapefruit – not something than can easily be tracked and seized either on land or on the high-seas. Already, even as unlikely a figure as Donald Rumsfeld has indicated publicly (perhaps inadvertently) that an effective anti-proliferation strategy may be “impossible.” Fortunately, for now at least, there is no indication that North Korea intends to proliferate. Its public announcement shortly before the October 9th test was revealing in including not only a non-proliferation and no-first use pledge, but also a commitment to ensuring a peaceful resolution of the crisis and a nuclear-free peninsula in the long-term. How long this commitment holds is the key question. At what point might a rational North Korean leadership intent on regime survival calculate that the certain prospect of gradual strangulation from progressively tighter economic sanctions outweighs the dangers of covertly trading fissile material on the international market? When such a tipping point is reached, the West risks, ironically, provoking the very outcome that economic sanctions are designed to prevent.
Here, I hope you’ll forgive me if I let my professional bias show, when I argue that history can be a useful guide to how to proceed or at least provide some salutary lessons. We’ve been here before of course – or rather, to be more precise, the United States has had in the past to consider the efficacy of international sanctions in preventing nuclear war. The Cuban missile crisis – also involved the risk of nuclear confrontation, also involved an element of diplomatic brinkmanship, and also, of course relied on the mechanism of a maritime blockade – or quarantine as it was somewhat disingenuously referred to at the time. Even here, though, sanctions and pressure while argubably necessary, were not sufficient. Kennedy in the final analysis, had to allow some of the Russian ships through to Cuba and – most significantly – offered Khruschev a deal or concession by agreeing to withdraw US missiles from Turkey.
The dangers of Washington’s hard-line position of sanctions plus containment are not limited to the uncertainty surrounding Pyongyang’s reaction. Already, the crisis is producing strains with America’s key allies in the region. Despite the efforts of John Bolton – US ambassador at the UN – to paint the world reaction to the nuclear test as a model of global unanimity, the process has not been smooth and orderly. Already, behind the scenes there are signs of dissent and tension. In South Korea, the Roh government has refused to fall into line with demands from Washington to cancel two key development projects with North Korea one in Kaesong just north of the DMZ and a second tourism initiative at Mount Kumgang. Moreover, there have been a number of high profile resignations from the South Korean cabinet, including that of the Defense and Unification Ministers – a measure of the internal political turmoil associated with the nuclear test and the gradual discrediting of the Roh administration’s engagement strategy towards the North. Because of the nuclear crisis, Roh has suffered politically at home and his approval ratings are now flat-lining in the low teens. However, despite this real setback, the new cabinet appointed in early November includes individuals who are firmly pro-engagement and the President appears determined to dig in his heels and opposed to the American policy prescriptions.
To understand the divergence between Seoul and Washington on this issue I think we need to recognise just how frayed and problematic the South Korean – American alliance relationship has become in recent years. Policy-makers in Washington worry about the proliferation risk from North Korea and the global security challenge of a nuclear North Korea. For their counterparts in Seoul, by contrast – and in fact for most of South Korean public opinion – the challenge from the North is not a direct one. When Pyongyang provocatively tested its ballistic missiles last July, the average Korean was worried more about the results of the World Cup than about the likelihood of an attack from North Korea. Koreans have come to identify with their Northern brethren, who they see as fellow countrymen not likely aggressors and have heavily discounted the probability of an invasion from the North. For the Koreans, the real risk to the south is the danger of instability and regime collapse in the DPRK – and the attendant massive economic bill that the South would have to pick up. The lessons of German unification have been carefully studied and absorbed by many in the ROK.
This divergence between Washington and Seoul in the risk assessment of the Northern ‘problem’, is further compounded by other secular, long-term changes. The so-called 386 generation that was instrumental in boosting the political fortunes of Kim Dae-Jung and Roh Moo-hyun – a generation of individuals who were born in the 1960s, went to university in the 1980s, and first exerted substantial political influence when in their 30s – are sceptical of Korea’s political ties with the United States. Part of the focus for this scepticism is hostility to the continuing presence of US troops in the South; part also is - ironically - the consequence over the current debate over the planned draw-down of US forces from South Korea – some 12,000 troops are to leave by 2008 as part of the Pentagon’s Global Force Posture Review – with some questioning the reliability of the US commitment to the defense of Korea that this seems to imply. Linked to this is the continuing controversy over plans to divide allied military forces into separate command structures, replacing the US-led Combined Command structure that has operated for much of the postwar period. While one should not minimize the extent to which there are real tensions separating the politicians in both countries, the consequence of this military transformation will be to enhance the flexibility of the alliance relationship in ways that potentially at least benefit both sides.
The key difficulty at present for the bilateral alliance relationship is the apparent different outlook of the two countries in assessing regional threats that extend beyond North Korea. The Pentagon hopes for a more flexible structure that will allow US forces in Korea to be deployed to deal with a range of potential contingencies, including the possible threat of an attack by China against Taiwan. Seoul by contrast is anxious not to be drawn into such a conflict. Indeed, the preference of the Roh administration has been to portray South Korea as a natural balancer within the region --- (occasionally the metaphor of a hub is also used) – geographically, ideologically and temperamentally equidistant between the US and China and a pivotal player parlaying its relatively small size into decisive political and strategic influence in the region. Some of this influence is reinforced by newly emerging economic ties – South Korea’s most important trade and investment partner is now China – some of it is reinforced by shifting cultural and social trends – the largest overseas destination for South Korean students is now China and no longer the United States. Underlying this, is an aspiration that extends across the political divide in South Korea, to translate the ROK’s new found democratic and economic vitality into real political influence. Realizing this hope will, however, be difficult, not only because Washington may be unhappy to see Seoul play the role of regional balancer, but also because of substantial tensions – historical, territorial, and strategic - with South Korea’s neighbour, Japan – only partially alleviated following the emergence of a new Japanese Prime Minister.
In Japan, the North Korean crisis has enhanced the standing of the new government of Shinzo Abe which remains firmly allied to the US and which has seen its electoral stock rise as public opinion – animated by strong anti-North Korean sentiment – has warmed to the notion of tough action against Pyongyang. Even here, though, the looming threat from the peninsula is spurring a historically unprecedented and open debate about the merits of nuclearization, prompting worries on the part of many outside observers (particularly in the US) that this will fuel a destabilizing and debilitating regional arms race, possibly weakening in the long-run the security ties between the United States and Japan.
For the time being, the prospect of a nuclear Japan remains low, such is the strength of Japan’s nuclear allergy both amongst public opinion and the country’s governing elites. Moreover, of all of Washington’s allies, Tokyo is most explicitly wedded to a policy of pressure (atsuryoku) that sits comfortably alongside the American hard-line approach. Nonetheless, the Abe government, formally at least, also accepts the merit of combining this tough posture with a willingness to engage in dialogue (taiwa) with the North. In this, there remains the glimmer of a solution to the current standoff.
The Bush administration needs to accept that a wide-ranging bilateral discussion with the North, alongside the multilateral talks, would constitute an opportunity rather than a tactical defeat for the government. Washington needs to unleash some of its more seasoned Korea watchers within the bureaucracy. Christopher Hill might – for example -- be constructively permitted to visit the North for face-to-face discussions with the DPRK leadership. Similarly, a senior US politician could be recruited in an effort to reprise Jimmy Carter’s surprise 1994 visit to Pyongyang during the last nuclear crisis. Whether a figure such as Bill Richardson (currently governor of New Mexico) or Donald Gregg (Chairman of the Korea Society, former US ambassador to South Korea, and former head of the CIA and an unimpeachable Republican – albeit more sympathetic to Bush I than Bush II) could break the deadlock is unclear, but such an initiative would have the merit of signalling Washington’s commitment to resolving the crisis peacefully. Above all there needs to be a return to the provisions set out in the September 2005 agreement, perhaps coupled with imaginative proposals to encourage the conversion of North Korea’s nuclear stockpiles to peaceful use. For example, Joel Witt, a former Clinton administration official now based in Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), has devised with his colleagues a Cooperative Threat Reduction Regime that could realise such an outcome, while fostering environmental reconstruction and a foundation for sustained collaboration between US and North Korean scientists.
In the absence of such creative diplomacy and the proffering of incentives alongside sanctions – carrots as well as sticks – the prognosis for progress remains bleak. Most worrying of all in the current volatile climate, is the persistent cloud of uncertainty – involving doubt about both sides’ intentions, about the technical viability and safety of the North’s Soviet-era civilian nuclear technology program, about the long-term viability of the North Korean regime, and above all about the prospects for war on the peninsula. What we haven’t seen much of in the wake of the recent crisis is much serious thought or planning to deal with worst case scenarious – either the consequences of regime collapse in the north or the danger of an unexpected attack from a North Korea that fears under imminent risk of attack and which – much like Japan in 1941 – calculates rationally, from its perspective, that pushing all of its military chips into the pot is the least worst option for ensuring long-term survival. The real and present danger is less the risk of conflict through conscious design and more the danger of war through mutual anxiety and miscalculation. All the more reason for an end to the Bush Administration pattern of drift and vacillation and the replacement of a policy of malign neglect with one of engagement and open dialogue.
Thank you