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07/14/2005
North Korea's WMD Gambit
Last time we examined the thoughts of those participating in a
war game that looked into how to deal with North Korea. Today
I thought I’d give some of the opinions of Nicholas Eberstadt of
the American Enterprise Institute, as spelled out in a piece he
penned for the Summer 2005 edition of The National Interest.
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[Excerpts]
“North Korea’s WMD project is aimed at rather more than
simply cadging deliveries of food or fuel when the wolf is at the
door. Indeed, the purposes of its WMD programs are so closely
wedded to purposes of state that they can be described as
integrally fused into the very logic of the North Korean system
until we appreciate the thinking that animates North Korea’s
WMD quest, we will face the prospect of ever more unpleasant
and expensive surprises from Pyongyang.
“The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is a state
unlike any other on the face of the earth today. It is a political
construct specially built for three entwined purposes. The first
purpose is to fulfill a grand ideological vision: the reunification
of the now-divided Korean Peninsula under the unfettered
‘independent, socialist’ rule of the Pyongyang regime – in other
words, unconditional annexation of present-day South Korea and
liquidation of the government of the Republic of Korea (ROK)
so that Kim Jong-il and company might exercise total command
over the entire Korean race (minjok in Korean) .
“The second purpose is to settle a historical grievance, namely
the failure of the famous June 1950 surprise attack against South
Korea – an assault that might well have unified all of Korea on
Pyongyang’s terms but for America’s unexpected military
intervention in defense of the ROK. In Pyongyang’s telling, it is
only American imperialism that has permitted an otherwise
rotten, unstable and irredeemable ROK government to survive
since 1950 .
“The third purpose is to conduct a war and that war is not some
future theoretical contingency. Rather, in the view of North
Korean leaders, their country is at war today, here and now. This
may help to explain why the DPRK, with its population of more
than twenty million, has for years fielded an army of a million-
plus soldiers, a military force that currently ranks as the world’s
fourth largest – larger even than Russia’s .
[Ed. Recall the Korean War ended in an armistice. There is no
peace treaty formally concluding hostilities.]
Eberstadt writes that the North’s leadership has to understand
that unless the United States is removed from the alliance system
that backs the South, it cannot begin to believe it would win a
conventional war.
“(Thus), to deter, coerce and punish the United States, the DPRK
must possess nuclear weaponry and the ballistic missiles capable
of delivering them into the heart of the American enemy .
“Thanks largely (though not exclusively) to its short-range
SCUD-style missiles and bio-chemical weapons, primarily
targeted on South Korea, Pyongyang can always remind
counterparts in the Blue House (South Korea’s presidential
residence) that the enormous metropolis of Seoul is a hostage to
fate, to be destroyed in a moment on Kim Jong-il’s say-so.
Intermediate No Dong-type missiles capable of striking Japan
(and American bases there) with nuclear warheads put Japanese
political leaders permanently on alert to the possible costs of
incurring North Korea’s anger and the potential dangers of siding
with the United States in a peninsular crisis. Finally, long-range
missiles of the improved Taepo Dong variety may be capable of
striking the U.S. mainland, now or in the relatively near future.
“There is no indication, incidentally, that North Korean decision-
makers view WMD as ‘special weapons’ to be held in reserve.
On the contrary, missiles and nuclear devices seem to figure
integrally in North Korean official thinking and are already being
used on a regular basis in North Korean statecraft, as the
government’s ongoing forays in ‘blackmail diplomacy’ attest.
Moreover, despite North Korea’s emphasis on race doctrine,
there is no indication whatsoever that North Korean leadership
would hesitate to use such weapons on minjok in South Korea.
Pyongyang did not blink at starving perhaps one million of its
own people for reasons of state in the 1990s. It regards the South
Korean state as a cancerous monstrosity, and those who support
it as corrupt and worthless national traitors .
“Simply stated, the DPRK’s growing WMD arsenal, and the
threats that arsenal permits the North Korean regime to pose to
other governments, are the key to the political and economic
prizes Pyongyang intends to extract from an otherwise hostile
and unwilling world.
“Second, WMD threats – especially nuclear and missile threats –
have already been used by North Korea with great success as an
instrument for extracting de facto international extortion
payments from the United States and its allies, and as a lever
forcing the United States to ‘engage’ Pyongyang diplomatically
and on Pyongyang’s own terms .
“The greatest potential dividends for North Korean nuclear and
ballistic diplomacy, however, still lie in store – and this brings us
to a third point. For half a century and more, U.S. security policy
has been charged with imposing ‘deterrence’ upon Pyongyang.
Shouldn’t we expect that Pyongyang has also been thinking about
how to ‘deter’ the United States over those same long decades?”
[Eberstadt then refers to former Secretary of Defense William J.
Perry’s 1999 report.]
“Faced with the risk of nuclear attack on the U.S. mainland,
(Perry) warned, Washington might hesitate at a time of crisis in
the Korean Peninsula. But if Washington’s security commitment
to South Korea were not credible in a crisis, the military alliance
would be hollow and vulnerable to collapse under the weight of
its own internal contradictions. North Korea’s WMD program,
in short, may be the regime’s best hope for achieving its long-
cherished objectives of breaking the U.S.-South Korean military
alliance and forcing American troops out of the Korean
Peninsula.
“Fourth, those who hope for a ‘win-win’ solution to the North
Korean nuclear impasse must recognize the plain fact that
Pyongyang does not now engage in win-win bargaining, and
never has. The historical record is completely clear: Pyongyang
believes in zero-sum solutions, preferring outcomes that entail
not only DPRK victories, but also face-losing setbacks for its
opponents. From the DPRK’s perspective, win-win solutions are
not only impractical (because they leave adversaries
unnecessarily strong), but actually immoral as well .
“The unsettling thrust of this analysis is not just that the North
Korean leadership today may positively prefer a strategy that
augments the government’s WMD capabilities. It may also
positively fear a strategy that does anything less. Kim Jong-il is
doing his best to make the world safe for the DPRK. Our task,
by contrast, is to make the world safe from the DPRK. This will
be a difficult, expensive and dangerous undertaking. For
America and its allies, however, the costs and dangers of failure
will be incalculably higher.”
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This past weekend, North Korea agreed, yet again, to return to
the six-party bargaining table. Keep the above thoughts in mind
as you follow the process.
Hott Spotts returns on July 21 bird flu.
Brian Trumbore
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