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July
11, 2003
David
Lindorff
An Iraq War & Occupation Glossary
July
10, 2003
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Dealing with the Devil: the Bloody
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Donahue
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Thoreau
New Far-Right Scheme: Impeach Supreme Court Justices
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Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
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Christian
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Weapons in Search of a Name
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Bush's Wars Web Log 7/1
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The Roadmap and the Wall
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Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/30
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Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
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June
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July
11, 2003
A Fearful Symmetry
Washington
and Pyongyang
By JOHN FEFFER
The streets of the capital are broad and the buildings
monumental. Inside the grand state offices, a power struggle
rages among the political elite, and the side that seems to have
the upper hand is insulated, single-minded, and shamelessly belligerent.
This clique supports a military-first policy that doesn't shrink
from the first use of nuclear weapons, a stance that strikes
fear into allies and adversaries alike. Nor are these fears soothed
by the actions or rhetoric of the leader, a former playboy who
owes his position to an irregular political process and the legacy
of a more statesmanlike father.
Choose your capital:
Pyongyang or Washington?
In the fun house of mirrors in which
contemporary global politics is enacted, a strange resemblance
has developed between George W. Bush and Kim Jong Il and between
their respective war parties. That North Korea is one of the
poorest and most desperate countries in the world and the U.S.
is the undisputed economic and military leader makes this folie
a deux all the more poignant and ridiculous. The weaker side
has exited the Non-Proliferation Treaty and is rushing to develop
a nuclear deterrent; the stronger side is after nothing less
than regime change. This summer Washington is confronting Pyongyang
with a policy of naval interdiction and a tightening chokehold
of economic isolation. North Korea is perilously close to treating
these encroachments on its sovereignty as tantamount to war.
Neither side trusts the other; both refuse to blink.
Such a convergence of opposites is not
unheard of in international relations. During the cold war, for
instance, the U.S. and the Soviet Union both indulged in a terrifying
symmetry of nuclear deterrence, third world interventions, and
mistaken budget priorities. But even during the darkest days,
Reagan and Gorbachev displayed a personal rapport. In contrast,
George W. Bush has called Kim Jong Il a "pygmy" and
a "spoiled child" and has confessed to journalist Bob
Woodward that he wants to topple the regime in Pyongyang regardless
of the consequences. North Korea has repeatedly warned of turning
Washington (or Seoul or Tokyo) into a "sea of fire."
The extraordinary gap in military and economic capabilities,
like a difference in electric potential, has already produced
sparks that may yet lead to a conflagration.
In East Asia, the cold war is not over,
and the conflict between Pyongyang and Washington, with its dance
of dependency and reciprocity, threatens to spiral out of control
in ways that Afghanistan and Iraq (so far) have not. War on the
Korean Peninsula would be catastrophic enough. But by encouraging
Japan toward a military renaissance and pressuring South Korea
to back a policy of isolating North Korea, the Bush administration
is pushing all of East Asia to the brink.
Policy Shift
In the fall of 2000, when the presidency
of George W. Bush was just a glint in the eye of Florida's secretary
of state, the U.S. and North Korea nearly ended their 50-year
war. Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang in October and found
Kim Jong Il "very decisive and practical and serious."
Bill Clinton was slated to meet the North Korean leader to conclude
a grand deal that would have traded economic incentives and security
assurances for an end to North Korea's missile programs. This
deal would have built on the 1994 Agreed Framework, also negotiated
by the Clinton administration, which froze the country's nuclear
program in exchange for two light-water reactors, shipments of
heavy fuel oil, and steps toward diplomatic normalization.
Clinton didn't go to Pyongyang, and the
grand deal didn't materialize. Instead, the Bush administration
took over with a determination to upend what it considered Clinton's
policy of "appeasement." It was aided in this quest
by a piece of intelligence inherited from its predecessor, namely
that North Korea had taken out a nuclear insurance policy. Although
its plutonium processing facility remained frozen, North Korea
was exploring a second route to the bomb through uranium enrichment.
The Bush team thus had the perfect weapon to attack U.S.-North
Korean reconciliation: the perfidy of the North Koreans themselves.
But the U.S. had also backtracked on
promises. It never fully lifted economic sanctions against North
Korea and didn't take other steps toward the normalization of
diplomatic relations suggested by the Agreed Framework. The Clinton
administration persuaded Congress to accept the construction
of two light-water reactors in North Korea by arguing, quietly,
that the regime in Pyongyang would not likely be around in 2003
when the reactors were supposed to go online. Instead, the regime
is still around, and the reactors are only one-third complete.
Although North Korea pursued its enriched
uranium program in the latter days of the Clinton administration,
analysts Joel Wit and James Laney suggest that the program accelerated
only when the Bush administration cranked up its hostile rhetoric--suspending
diplomatic contact, criticizing Kim Dae Jung's engagement policy,
and ultimately including Pyongyang in its infamous "axis
of evil." Whatever doubts remained in Pyongyang about U.S.
intentions were dispelled by the war in Iraq, which led North
Korean leaders to draw three conclusions. A nonaggression agreement
with the U.S. was pointless. No inspections regime would ever
be good enough for Washington. And only a nuclear weapon would
deter a U.S. intervention.
North Korean Threat?
This spring North Korea declared that
it had acquired this ultimate deterrent. Beyond the declaration,
however, the evidence is scant. Even if North Korea had enough
fissionable uranium or plutonium, the material would need to
be weaponized, which requires miniaturization technology that
North Korean scientists do not likely possess. A CIA report recently
leaked to The New York Times suggests that North Korea has an
advanced nuclear testing site in Yongdok, but there is still
no evidence that Pyongyang has yet developed any warheads to
test. As for delivering such a weapon, North Korea has tested
only one rocket with the potential to reach parts of Alaska--the
Taepodong in 1998--and the launch fell far short in terms of
both distance and accuracy. Nor does North Korea likely have
the heat shield technology that would prevent its warheads from
burning up on reentry from the atmosphere.
Pyongyang believes that it needs a nuclear
weapon--or the much cheaper illusion of one--because its conventional
forces are a mess. Though superior to the South Korean Army on
the eve of the Korean War, North Korean forces have fallen on
hard times. The South Korean Army spends $163,000 per soldier
for food, clothes, and armaments. North Korea spends less than
one-tenth that amount. North Korea's entire government budget
is several billion dollars smaller than South Korea's military
budget alone. Underfunded and no longer aided by cheap Soviet
imports, North Korean military technology is out-of-date. In
a naval battle in 1999, South Korean forces easily outgunned
the North Koreans. A South Korean officer told the Korea Herald,
"You could see many North Korean sailors exposed on the
deck, because they had to handle the guns manually, while our
sailors were inside watching radar screens and computer monitors."
Without fuel or spare parts, North Korean pilots are limited
to thirteen hours of training missions a year. After five years
of food shortages, soldiers are malnourished, and many have been
rebuilding crumbling civilian infrastructure rather than training
in military exercises.
Even so, Pyongyang is not entirely a
paper tiger. Its stocks of short-range missiles and long-range
artillery could do a great deal of damage, particularly to South
Korea. To beef up this retaliatory capability, Pyongyang continues
to finance its military sector, thus diverting precious funds
away from stabilizing its economy. The worst of the famine that
plagued the country after 1995 is over, but the North Korean
economy remains fragile. And the Bush administration wants to
cripple North Korea's economy further still.
Economic Noose
It's never been easy to get from Japan
to North Korea. Most visitors have to fly to Beijing before boarding
a biweekly North Korean jetliner to Pyongyang. By sea, however,
several cargo ships and a weekly ferry have until recently carried
people and goods between the two countries. Most of this trade
has been overseen by Chosen Soren, an association of Koreans
affiliated with Pyongyang but living in Japan.
In early June, nearly 2,000 Japanese
government inspectors descended on the docks of Niigata, a port
on the western coast of Japan, in preparation to search the incoming
North Korean ferry for safety violations, infectious diseases,
and immigration irregularities. Pyongyang responded by canceling
the ferry run. Urged on by Washington, the Japanese authorities
also detained two North Korean cargo ships as part of an effort
to shut down trade relations between Chosen Soren and Pyongyang.
As summer approached, Washington and
Tokyo shifted into high gear to turn the economic screws on North
Korea. The military option remains on the Pentagon's table, but
Washington is also testing the possibility of toppling the regime
in Pyongyang by spending it into the ground.
This economic strategy has several components.
The Bush administration has cut back on food aid, arguing that
monitoring should be improved and no doubt hoping that fewer
high-calorie biscuits will incite children, pregnant and nursing
mothers, and the elderly to rebel against the regime. There has
also been an attempt to cut off the drug trafficking and arms
exports that North Korea has increasingly relied on, in part
because Pyongyang's attempt to expand legitimate enterprises
has been thwarted by the U.S. and its allies. Toward that end,
in June Washington developed the "Madrid initiative"
by convening another coalition of the willing to explore how
to bend international law to the U.S. objective of boarding every
suspicious vessel heading into and out of North Korea.
And the otherwise-multilateralism-averse
Bush administration is rejecting North Korea's demand for bilateral
negotiations in favor of including more countries in the discussion.
This strategy serves to underscore North Korea's isolation. But
the hard-liners in the administration--John Bolton in the State
Department, Paul Wolfowitz in the Pentagon--are also not interested
in the give-and-take of negotiations. This "just say no"
faction has repeatedly rebuffed various North Korean offers,
not bothering to pursue the negotiable items beneath the bluff
and bluster in an effort to achieve a diplomatic solution to
the escalating crisis.
Military Shell Game
In the fall and winter of 2002, hundreds
of thousands of South Koreans poured into the streets to protest
the acquittal of two U.S. soldiers whose vehicle struck and killed
a pair of young Korean girls. Many of the protestors also wanted
a reduction of the 37,000 troops stationed in South Korea, nearly
half of whom are positioned as a tripwire near the demilitarized
zone (DMZ) across from North Korea.
Imagine Korea's surprise when the U.S.
military responded this June by announcing the withdrawal of
the Second Infantry Division from the DMZ to positions south
of Seoul. The protestors should have been delighted. They weren't.
Although the transformation of U.S. forces
in South Korea to a more mobile rapid reaction force has been
underway for several years, the withdrawal of the troops from
the DMZ has been widely interpreted as pulling U.S. soldiers
out of harm's way to prepare for a military strike on North Korea.
The Pentagon has long been concerned with the "tyranny of
proximity" that hampers its maneuverability on the Korean
Peninsula.
New South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun
pleaded with Washington to put off this relocation until the
current nuclear crisis is resolved. He was ignored. Instead,
the Bush administration threw money at the problem, offering
$11 billion to upgrade U.S. forces in South Korea over the next
four years.
This latest offer is part of a joint
U.S. and South Korean effort to beef up the latter's military
capabilities. Seoul has set out to acquire at least three Aegis-class
destroyers and to upgrade its air force with cutting edge U.S.
reconnaissance planes and F-15 fighters. At South Korea's urging,
the U.S. reversed a 1979 agreement and extended the range of
South Korean tactical missiles to 300 km, which brought them
within striking distance of all of North Korea. For 2003, the
Seoul government will spend $14.5 billion on the military, a
6.4% increase over 2002 and the highest defense budget in its
history.
South Korea is not the only country in
the region to use the current crisis as a rationale for military
muscle flexing. In February 2003, for the first time since World
War II, a top Japanese official threatened another country with
attack. Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba argued that Japan had
the right to prevent a North Korean ballistic missile attack.
What Ishiba failed to explain was how Japan was going to accomplish
this preemptive strike. Still governed by a peace Constitution
that restricts its military to a defensive posture, Japan has
no offensive missiles of its own. And without an in-air refueling
capacity, Japanese bombers can only make one-way trips.
All of that is changing. Under the leadership
of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and with support from Washington,
Japan is shrugging off the constraints of its peace Constitution.
It is aggressively pursuing missile defense, has launched its
first military satellites, has promised to provide backup to
any U.S. military action in the region, and is set to acquire
an in-air refueling capacity to make its threats of preemptive
strikes a great deal more credible. Some Japanese and U.S. politicians
have even called on Tokyo to develop its own nuclear deterrent.
Disturbing Parallels
By bolstering allied forces in South
Korea and encouraging Japan to flex some newfound offensive muscles,
the U.S. is following through on its own military-first policy.
The parallel with Pyongyang is disturbing. Until recently, North
Korea pursued a strategy of kangsong taeguk, seeking strong economic
and military power. Building up the military was important, but
so too were the critical economic reforms that the government
had been slowly unveiling in preparation for the big bang of
lifting wage and price controls in summer 2002. In March 2003,
however, Pyongyang shifted to a military-first policy in response
to the current crisis.
The hard-liners in both capitals have
developed a reckless codependency. The North Korean threat serves
as a useful rationale for missile defense and the expansion of
U.S. military influence in East Asia. And obstinate leaders in
Pyongyang, who blame U.S. policies for the problems that assail
the country, now have ample ammunition for their argument that
negotiations with Washington are a waste of time.
It is difficult to know what kind of
opposition to this inflexible position exists in Pyongyang. In
Washington, though, bipartisan support for a diplomatic solution
is growing. Conservative Republican Rep. Curt Weldon visited
Pyongyang in June and came back with a ten-point proposal that
would start with a one-year nonaggression pact signed by Washington
and Pyongyang. Within the administration, it is rumored that
the relatively moderate Colin Powell and his allies in the State
Department continue to push for the more traditional carrot-and-stick
policies of the Clinton era. Scholars and activists are also
mounting pressure from the outside.
A bipartisan consensus has formed around
a revised "grand bargain" between the U.S. and North
Korea that would freeze the latter's nuclear and missile programs
in exchange for political and economic incentives. According
to this new consensus, promoted for instance by Selig Harrison
and the Task Force on U.S. Korea Policy, North Korea would freeze
both its plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment facilities
in exchange for guaranteed supplies of energy (such as natural
gas from Russia), and it would freeze its missile testing program
in exchange for U.S. or European launches of North Korean satellites.
In addition, the U.S. would finally lift all remaining sanctions
against North Korea, support North Korea's applications to international
financial institutions, and provide economic support for the
rehabilitation of North Korea's energy and extraction industries.
The U.S. would also eventually "lower its military profile"
on the peninsula in exchange for comparable confidence building
moves by North Korea.
Considered in isolation, many of the
elements of this grand bargain are certainly within reach. In
October 2002, North Korea offered to shut down its nuclear program
in exchange for a nonaggression pact, and it has indicated on
numerous occasions that its missile program is negotiable. In
2000, North Korea made an opening bid to end its missile program
in return for $3 billion over three years, no doubt a negotiable
figure. It also wouldn't take much to remove North Korea from
the State Department's terrorism list and to lift the remaining
economic sanctions. North Korea has hinted that it would compromise
on the single remaining obstacle--several Japanese Red Army hijackers
holed up in North Korea for the last 30 years.
Before the current crisis broke, such
a grand bargain with North Korea seemed conceivable. Other countries--South
Korea, Taiwan, South Africa, Kazakhstan--have been persuaded
to stop nuclear programs through diplomatic means, and the right
combination of incentives no doubt could have been found for
North Korea. Now, however, an Agreed Framework Plus that could
provide such a magical mix of carrots seems almost chimerical
owing to the twin obsessions of the principals--Washington's
push for regime change and Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear deterrence.
We are entering a crushing new era of geopolitics. In the absence
of well-enforced international laws and treaties, countries will
fall back on their own mechanisms for preventing outside intervention.
In geopolitics, as in geometry, parallel tracks do not meet.
Until the U.S. and North Korea undo their fearful symmetry by
getting serious at the negotiating table, East Asia will remain
on the precipice.
For more see:
Alliance of Scholars Concerned About
Korea http://www.asck.org/
American Friends Service Committee, Asia
Desk http://www.afsc.org/asia/default.htm
Friends Committee on National Legislation
http://www.fcnl.org/issues/int/nkoreaindx.htm
Nautilus Institute
http://www.nautilus.org/napsnet/
Task Force on U.S. Korea Policy/Center
for International Policy http://www.ciponline.org/
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