It is decision time for North
Korea, China, South Korea and the US. As
North Korea has reportedly mastered ICBM technology and possibly nuclear
warhead miniaturization, the world is at a crossroad. There seems to be little room left to safely kick
the can down the road.
Each of the above actors will
have to make momentous decisions in the weeks and months to come. None will be easy or popular. For better or for worse, both payoffs and
penalties will be outsized.
The quasi-consensus advice, from
here at home and abroad, is for the US to “engage in meaningful negotiations”
with North Korea. In my view, it would be premature or wrong.
The US has tried to dissuade
North Korea from building nuclear weapons for a quarter century, to no
avail. Such effort was undertaken by both
Democratic (Clinton, Obama) and Republican (Bush) presidents, variously viewed
as thoughtful, dovish, impulsive, hawkish or pragmatic. It made no difference. It is thus logical to conclude that North
Korea doesn’t want to negotiate away its nuclear militarization.
North Korea is governed by a
repressive elite which presides over an impoverished country which treats its
people very badly. Even its ambassadors,
privileged as they are, defect when given the chance. There is little doubt that this elite views
its nuclear achievements and armament as the way to repulse would-be attackers
and stay in power. Could the US guard them
against such threats?
The answer is simply NO
because the greatest threats are from within North Korea. Neither China, nor Japan, nor the US would
want to conquer the DPRK[1],
a country devoid of natural resources and populated by 25 million poor
people. South Korea may wish for a
reunification, as West Germany did, but it would make no sense to do it
militarily; even a peaceful reunification would be difficult: the cost of
integrating one North Korean would have to be borne by two South Koreans; in the
German case, the ratio was a better, yet still taxing, 1:4. The only
real threat to Kim’s regime is from within.
The US couldn’t and wouldn’t protect the Shah of Iran or Mubarak in
Egypt, where it had greater strategic interests; this is truer still for Kim.
China has enjoyed having North
Korea as a buffer along its border. Their relations could never have been described as cordial, but both countries found some mutual benefits. As China seems to
take a more authoritarian tack, its tolerance for the DPRK may endure. Nevertheless, a nuclear North
Korea brings big short and long-term challenges: it could force the US to
strike and destabilize a neighbor with 25 million people to eliminate an
existential threat; longer term, Japan,
and possibly South Korea, may conclude that the US won’t risk a nuclear war
to fulfill its military obligations and decide to build their own nuclear
arsenals.
For the rest of the world, a
nuclear North Korea brings obvious risks, the biggest one being proliferation. There is evidence that North Korea provided
technical assistance to both Iran and Syria in the nuclear arena. A pariah nation with nukes would logically
increase trading on its weapon expertise, and such activity may not be limited to
nation states. Finally, it would
encourage countries close to the threshold of nuclear power, such as Iran, and
others to push the envelope.
In my view, the two most
likely outcomes are as follows:
1)
Covertly prodded/encouraged
from abroad, local factions unseat Kim with the understanding that they will
dismantle their nuclear weapons. Joint
inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, China and the US will
insure compliance. China and the US
agree to a multi-year, multi billion dollar economic assistance program. The US agrees not to move its South Korean military bases or
units further North. The
US recognizes North Korea.
2)
The US strikes
North Korean ballistic installations and nuclear assets. It also effectively disables its
communication networks and electricity grid.
It warns that any North Korean attack on the South will be met by an overwhelming
conventional response. The US also offers
to initiate talks about nuclear disarmament with legitimate North Korean
counterparts, effectively forcing Kim to step down.
There
is a third possibility, although I see it as less likely: as the world gets
increasingly concerned about the fallouts of a military confrontation in the
Korean peninsula, Europe, China and the US step up their sanctions to the point
where they really hurt everybody in North Korea and endanger the stability of
the regime. At that point, the DPRK
government turns to (personal) survival mode and agrees to enter into
negotiations.
In
conclusion, parties negotiate when it is the most palatable option they
have. A very good example of this is
the recently signed Colombian peace accord after the FARC started to suffer heavy tactical and strategic losses. For decades, the US has been willing to
negotiate denuclearization while North Korea hasn’t. Recently, the commercial and military
pressure on North Korea has increased notably, but time is running out. This is why I believe that the above two
scenarios are the most likely.
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