Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 51, no. 4, August–September 2009, pp. 5–12
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Following North Korean missile and nuclear tests and a series of other belligerent actions and threats, tensions on the peninsula have entered a dangerous phase. There is a heightened potential for regional conflict and global repercussions if the wrong precedents are set by, for example, acquiescing to the North’s nuclear rule-breaking. Demanding to be recognised as nuclear-armed and focused on leadership succession, Pyongyang seems no longer to be using brinksmanship for negotiation leverage. In response, the United States and its Asian allies have signalled that North Korea cannot expect business as usual. Even China’s posture has begun to shift, although not nearly enough.
For the past two decades, the United States and its allies have sought to test the proposition that North Korea would be willing to trade its nuclear programme for the right economic and political concessions. In 1994 and again in 2007, North Korea did pledge to give up its weapons capabilities, although implementation of the agreements never went beyond the preliminary steps. Regardless of whether North Korea was ever serious about denuclearisation, Pyongyang has now staked out, in word and deed, the position that it will never let go of its nuclear arsenal. In doing so, it may well have hastened its own demise.
Answering the threat
What a difference a year makes. In summer 2008, North Korea submitted a declaration of its plutonium holdings, turned over 18,000 pages from the operating records of its Yongbyon facilities, and destroyed the cooling tower of its reactor. Twelve months later, North Korea has newly tested its most destructive weapons, resumed plutonium reprocessing, unveiled a uranium-enrichment programme, annulled the Korean War armistice agreement, declared void all bilateral agreements with South Korea and all multilateral agreements from the Six-Party Talks, and threatened ‘merciless’ nuclear attacks if nations implement measures adopted by the Security Council in response to North Korea’s provocations. Given the timing of these changes, which can be traced back to autumn 2008, they are surely connected with the succession question that suddenly became more acute upon leader Kim Jong Il’s stroke last August.
Some analysts contend that the United States is to blame for having demanded excessive verification measures that went beyond the agreed staged requirements of the Six-Party Talks. This criticism downplays Washington’s September 2008 fall-back to a more reasonable verification plan, one that North Korea agreed to orally, then refused to put in writing, even though the Bush administration, at great jeopardy to its alliance relationship with Japan, had followed through with removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Bush has since been replaced by a president who has promised the respect and bilateral communications Pyongyang has long sought, but the North Korean regime has shown no interest.
With the North now insisting that it no longer cares about the normalisation of relations with the United States, the Obama administration has reluctantly concluded that the time for incentives is over. In case Pyongyang does not mean what it says, the door to dialogue…
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Mark Fitzpatrick is Senior Fellow for Non-proliferation at the IISS.
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