As the US-led war against Iraq ends its third week and the assaults on Baghdad have all but decapitated President Saddam Hussein's regime, the almost six-month-old North Korean nuclear crisis is again under the international spot light.
The UN Security Council met on Wednesday to discuss the issue. Pyongyang last Tuesday tested a third surface-to-ship missile into the Yellow Sea, as if to remind the world, of its continued relevance and frustration. It has also threatened to fire its No Dong missile, capable of reaching Japan with its 1,300km range. So far, Washington remains unperturbed by Pyong-yang's continuing provocations.
The Bush administration refuses to engage in bilateral negotiation with North Korea and continues to pursue a multilateral approach to resolving the impasse. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun's administration is taking a more proactive stance in seeking a way out of the nuclear impasse. High-ranking South Korean officials are making the diplomatic rounds in Beijing and Moscow, Pyongyang's two remaining quasi-allies. Seoul has also floated the idea of providing the energy-starved North with Russian gas. It is highly expected that the topic will be the most important one on the agenda during Roh's upcoming visit to the US.
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Meanwhile, Russia, China and the UN have also been involved in low-profile diplomacy to persuade Kim Jong-Il's government to give up its nuclear pursuit. Indeed, it has been widely reported that the Chinese government sent strong diplomatic warnings to Pyongyang and even cut off its oil supplies for three days. Will multilateral diplomacy -- the approach the Bush administration insists on -- work or are we likely to see more provocation in the coming weeks as Pyongyang continues to demand one-on-one talks with Washington?
The Bush administration's handling of the North Korean nuclear crisis since last October has been a combination of pressure, isolation, and containment. It cut off supplies of heavy fuel to North Korea in December after Pyongyang's violation of the 1994 Agreed Framework. It has to date refused to engage in direct talks with Pyongyang, steadfastly upholding the principle that North Korea's intransigence should not be rewarded. Instead, it has undertaken shuttle diplomacy to the region's capitals seeking to convince its allies and relevant powers to adopt a multilateral united front to pressure the North.
The administration's expectation has been that, under increasing international pressure and isolation, North Korea would buckle. That strategy so far has not yielded the result anticipated by the Bush administration. Pyongyang has undertaken a series of provocative actions in defiance of Washington and the international community at large. It expelled the International Atomic Energy Agency's inspectors, declared it's withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, reactivated a mothballed nuclear reactor, conducted three missile tests, and threatened to scrap the 1953 Armistice. North Korea has also warned that any UN Security Council sanctions would be tantamount to a declaration of war.
The Bush administration's refusal to direct talks with North Korea is pushing the regime to the brink. In this game of chicken, Washington appears confident that Pyongyang will blink first. However, there is the grave risk that the two nations could continue their headlong race on a collision course until it is to late.
Significantly, the US may be narrowing its options to a choice between a nuclear North Korea and war. President George W. Bush has warned that if US policies on the North "don't work diplomatically; they'll have to work militarily."
The administration probably hopes that the US-led campaign in Iraq will send a strong message to Pyongyang that WMD proliferation will not be tolerated, nor will it pay. The threat or use of military action in response to the mounting North Korean threat, particularly in res-ponse to such point-of-no-return developments as the reprocessing of spent fuel rods and/or transfer of nuclear weapons materials to other countries (or even terrorist groups), could end in two ways.
One is that the war in Iraq may suffice to reign in North Korea's nuclear ambition, as it may fear suffering a similar fate. In this scenario, Pyongyang is deterred and intimidated, thus buying time for the administration to deal with North Korea once it disposes of Saddam.
But there is a greater -- if not equal -- chance that Kim will remain unflinching. Indeed, the Iraq war can equally strengthen Pyongyang's resolve to acquire nuclear capabilities to avoid Saddam's fate. The North is certainly closer to possessing a nuclear capacity than the Iraqi regime had ever been.
However, military action presents a high level of uncertainty and risk. North Korea possesses a huge military, with thousands of artillery pieces, special forces and massive amounts of troops deployed within miles of the DMZ. Additionally, the North's ballistic missile forces cover the entire area of South Korea and can reach Japan as well. Also, it is well known that North Korea possesses chemical weapons as well as one to two nuclear devices.
Without any certainty of taking out and suppressing North Korean conventional and non-conventional arsenals through a preemptive first strike, military action is a sure trigger to another Korean war.The stakes are too high to contemplate such a course of action. The Clinton administration briefly considered using military operations during the 1993 to 1994 nuclear crisis but ruled them out because of the huge uncertainties and the possibility of war on the peninsula. It is not certain that the Bush administration faces any better prospects.
US refusal to engage North Korea is driven by the premise -- and expectation -- that once that nation is isolated and faces the prospect that its energy and food supplies could be cut off, the regime in Pyongyang could not survive any longer. The key to the success of such a strategy is to persuade the regional powers that the North's actions threaten the entire international community and thereby prod them to exert more pressure on Pyongyang.
However, neither China nor South Korea is willing to adopt such pressure tactics against North Korea. Both Seoul and Beijing perceive Pyongyang's nuclear brinkmanship as largely a result of the latter's acute sense of insecurity. As much as they both want to resolve the issue, they are equally determined not to let the situation deteriorate into a serious and even irreversible open military conflict since they will be the ones to bear the brunt directly.
The two countries see their interests in keeping stability as the top priority even as they continue to look for ways to resolve the nuclear impasse. China's position at the UN Security Council meeting was quite revealing, as it opposed the council's involvement and warned against actions that "would further complicate this matter."
Continued delays by the US could be costly. There are growing concerns that North Korea could use this time to secure enough fissile materials for five to six nuclear bombs. Washington needs to confront Pyongyang's demands for direct talks by challenging the North to accept a comprehensive package deal that would not just obligate it to return to the Agreed Framework but go much further -- the dismantling of all of its existing programs of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems, under stringent inspection and verification regimes in return for US security guarantee and international economic assistance.
But in order for the Bush administration to seriously consider this option, a couple of myths must first be debunked. One reason that the US is resolute in not negotiating with the North is that Pyongyang's bad behavior should not be rewarded; nor is the regime trustworthy.
Granted, these concerns are genuine. But if Washington's ultimate objective is to disarm Pyongyang's WMD programs, it needs to take concrete action, rather than continue its stance of inaction or denial. After all, all arms control agreements must be negotiated and verification measures developed and implemented to make sure that what is agreed to will be abided by.
The US must not let the North Korean nuclear crisis spin out of control. Time is running out and the US' only choice is between a nuclear-armed North Korea and a devastating waron the Korean Peninsula.
Yuan Jing-dong is a senior research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, California.
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