Kim Jong-il and His Quest for the Magical Atom BombWill we go to war with North Korea?
Posted Friday, Oct. 6, 2006, at 5:27 PM ETListen to the MP3 audio version of this story here, or sign up for Slate's free daily podcast on iTunes.
We're headed into the climax of the stormiest, most Absurdist opera-melodrama in, quite possibly, the history of international politics: the tale of Kim Jong-il and his quest for the magical atom bomb. It's a spectacle that combines the bombastic grandeur of Wagner with the cryptic plotlessness of Beckett, yet it's been commanding our attention and gnawing at our anxieties all decade long.
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StumbleUponThe latest episode—which the protagonists are hailing and dreading as the start of the final chapter—came Tuesday, when the Foreign Ministry of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (the official beyond-ironic name for North Korea) announced that it will "in the future conduct a nuclear test"—i.e., explode a nuclear bomb.
World reaction was fierce, if expected. China warned of "serious consequences" if Kim Jong-il went ahead with the test. South Korea's president, Roh Moo-hyun, issued a "grave warning" and directed his government to draw up "contingency plans." Japan brought up U.N. Security Council sanctions.
But Christopher Hill, the assistant secretary of state for Asian affairs (and the Bush administration's chief negotiator on North Korean matters), issued the most curious statement: "We are not going to live with a nuclear North Korea, we are not going to accept it," adding that the Pyongyang regime "can have a future or it can have these weapons—it cannot have both."
In the realm of the diplomatic démarche, this is about as strong as it gets.
If North Korea explodes a bomb, President Bush and like-minded powers could be expected to pressure financial institutions to boycott all North Korean transactions. He could also mount a blockade of all ships going into and out of North Korea's ports. He wouldn't call it a "blockade" (which international law describes as an act of war), but he would—and legally could—take the action under the Proliferation Security Initiative, declaring that all ships are suspected of carrying nuclear materials. He could also order inspections of all North Korean aircraft landing in other countries. And he could call for U.N. sanctions.
But it all comes down to what the Chinese do. China, of course, has veto power in the Security Council. And most of North Korea's trade and traffic runs through China. Without Chinese aid, mainly in food and fuel, Kim's regime couldn't survive for long. Yet if the regime collapsed, millions of North Korean refugees would flood the Chinese border, prompting a catastrophe that Beijing wants to avoid for economic and security reasons. Kim's demise would also alter the military balance in East Asia. More than 30,000 U.S. troops currently holed up in South Korea to deter a North Korean invasion would be freed up and possibly deployed to bolster Taiwan's resistance to mainland pressures.
It is very likely, in other words, that China's rulers don't want to take any action that risks North Korea's survival—that they value national security and their own view of regional stability more than they value the principle of nuclear nonproliferation. (By the way, America's leaders do, too; hence the special allowances they make for the nuclear programs of India, Pakistan, and Israel.) If this analysis is mistaken, if China comes down hard on Kim after he sets off a nuclear bomb, then the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is in deep trouble. However, if Kim does explode a bomb, he will have calculated that China won't come down hard, that he can get away with going nuclear—and he may be right.
Bush, meanwhile, doesn't have any good military options to execute. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have trotted out the war plans for North Korea during previous crises, most recently in 2003, and everyone in attendance concluded that the risks were too great. Kim Jong-il's army has thousands of artillery pieces near the border, many within 50 miles of Seoul; a U.S. airstrike couldn't get them all in the first wave; a retaliatory strike could kill hundreds of thousands of South Koreans. As for toppling Kim through invasion, the North Korean army is weak and poorly supplied, but it's also huge (1 million men); the U.S. Army doesn't have many spare troops at the moment, and the terrain from the DMZ to Pyongyang, in any event, is prohibitively rough.
North Korea's own interests in getting a bomb are clear, and they have little to do with the fact that its leader is a bit of a flake. Kim's diplomats have clearly said for years that they learned a lesson from the wars in Iraq (those of 1991 and 2003): If you want to keep America from attacking, get some nuclear weapons. They also learned much from Pakistan's nuclear test in 1998, after which the country was transformed in American eyes from "outlaw state" to "strategic partner." In other words, Kim may think that he can wait out the pressure.
Kim Jong-il has developed his nuclear program in slow motion. After the 1994 Agreed Framework broke down at the end of 2002, he unlocked the fuel rods at his nuclear reactor and shipped them to a reprocessing plant. Not until February 2005 did he announce that he'd manufactured a nuclear weapon. Now, 20 months later, he proclaims that he'll test a bomb—and, even then, says he'll do so only "in the future."
All along it has seemed obvious to many intelligence analysts, State Department officials, and outside specialists that the North Koreans were using the nukes as bargaining chips, putting them on the table, hoping to cash them in for a deal similar to the '94 Agreed Framework—disarmament in exchange for aid, energy, security guarantees, and an accord to establish diplomatic relations and end the 1950 Korean War. (The fighting stopped in '53, but there never was a peace treaty; we are technically still at war.)
The Bush administration, from the outset, has resisted negotiations, on the principle that we should defeat evil, not negotiate with it—a fine moral point, except that we can't do much to defeat this particular evil, and it might be more moral still to keep evil from going nuclear.
In the coming weeks, the Bush administration will—and should—do all it can to rally the regional powers, including China, to hold firm on threatening Kim Jong-il with severe economic penalties if he goes ahead with a nuclear test. This campaign would not be weakened—it might, in fact, be made more credible—if word went out to Pyongyang, even a backstage whisper, that there is a way out of this hole, that a deal is still possible. If Bush doesn't offer an exit strategy, or if Kim doesn't want to take it, the already frightening world is going to get scarier still.
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Remarks from the Fray:
If Kim wants nuclear bombs, so be it. It is none of America's business that Kim wants to develop nuclear bombs. The day that it becomes America's business is the day that North Korea nukes America. (If so, America will annihilate North Korea and that will be that.) Until that day, which will never occur because Kim is cleverly rational, it's none of America's business to meddle in North Korean internal affairs.
Conversely, has North Korea ever told America that it can't develop new weapons, such as new missiles, new nuclear weapons, new warplanes or new anti-missile defense systems? Of course not! It would be absurd because no foreign country meddles in American internal affairs. Yet, why does America have the right to meddle in other countries' (e.g., North Korea, Iran, and China) internal affairs with regard to weapons development and military expenditure? Per person, America by an exponentially large margin spends more money on its military than any other country. The second biggest spender, China, spends far less than America, and it has approximately four times more people!
Lastly, it should be pointed out that America has been the biggest warmongering country in the last fifty years. By far, it has been engaged in more wars in the past fifty years than any other country. America is also the ONLY country which has actually used nuclear weapons. In this context, the countries of Iran and North Korea look downright peaceful. Accordingly, it is America, and not North Korea or Iran, that should give up its nuclear weapons and have UN weapon inspectors running all over its country.
--Lataphor
(To reply, click here.)
One has to wonder how verifiable a underground North Korean nuclear blast would actually be. A Hiroshima class nuclear explosion is the equivalent of about 15,000 tons of TNT. A similar explosion could be generated with large quantities of . . . TNT or other high grade explosive or even gasoline. One has to wonder whether satellite images can provide enough information to definitively distinguish a small underground nuclear explosion from a really large underground conventional explosion - particularly if it were detonated very far underground.
Pyongyang clearly wants the West to think it has nuclear capabilities and is certainly desperate to avoid another public failure. One has to assume that the North Koreans at least possess the technical expertise necessary to detonate conventional explosives. Thus, the possibility of a nuclear hoax seems at least initially plausible.
In sum, there seem to be at least three possibilities: (1) North Korea might successfully detonate a nuclear device; (2) North Korean could try to detonate a nuclear device and fail; or (3) North Korea could detonate something deep in the ground and claim that it was a nuclear device.
--Lysander
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If China is seriously concerned with the possibility of a major war with the U.S., then they would probably cheer the U.S. leaving South Korea. South Korea is a potentially vital staging area for U.S. forces trying to attack China. Any "redeployment" of U.S. troops from South Korea would almost certainly mean redeployment much further away from potential fighting. (it is unlikely we would move them to Taiwan itself). The U.S. military is already moving significant assets from Okinawa to Guam, leaving South Korea would give the Chinese a much more substantial geographical buffer against possible 'western' incursions. In theory forces on the Korean peninsula might be "pinned down" by North Korea attacks, but on the whole I'd suggest that the Chinese would just as soon see U.S. forces sent back to the other side of the Pacific.
--fozzy
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I cannot take any commentator seriously on the North Korea debate unless they answer this question: Should North Korea be bribed not to follow through on its threat to test a bomb? And if so, what have we gained?
Nobody wants North Korea to have nukes, and although I tend to think Kaplan's incessant (but utterly vague and contentless) calls for "more dialogue" are strategically wrongheaded, I can at least respect them as an alternate position. The goal is no Korean nukes; whether one uses a carrot or stick to get there is a matter for debate.
However, it is imperative not to use the carrot simply to head off North Korea's recent test threat. Dialogue and bribery may very well be the best bet to end their nuclear program. Well and good, let the US engage directly, or via six-party talks, or what have you; as I said, it might not be my strategic choice, but at least there's a goal in mind that could be accomplished as part of a bargain. But if the US and the world offer concessions just to head off this test, that is utterly foolish and counter-productive. The reason, in legal terms, might be called "illusory consideration." [...]
In classic contract law, [...] if a party makes a promise that purports to offer a benefit, but does not in fact convey anything thereby, that promise is said to be "illusory" and there is no contract because of a failure of consideration. For example, if we enter an agreement that says "I promise to paint your house if I feel like it, and you promise to give me $100," that is not a valid contract. What, after all, have I really promised? I have not promised to paint your house. I have not promised anything that you didn't already have before paying $100 (I could have painted your house if I felt like it at any time, without you paying me).
In this instance, North Korea suddenly announced it would test a nuclear weapon. If the world rushes to offer incentives to stop this particular supposed nuclear test, and the test doesn't happen right away (or even if North Korea says "OK, we'll cancel this test"), then what has the world gained? Nothing. It is an illusory promise. North Korea could say in two weeks "We've decided again to test" and we would have the same rigamarole all over again. [...]
Dialogue may be a good idea, but it needs to be substantive dialogue about North Korea's overall nuclear program, not about this threatened nuclear test. If negotiations are going to be undertaken, they should be undertaken completely without regard for North Korea's latest announcement. Anything else, and the world is paying for an illusory promise, and teaching North Korea it can spin mere words into gold.
--HLS2003
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(10/7)