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North Korean nuclear weapons: Lessons from Libya

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In Brief

Despite Libya and North Korea’s geographical distance many analysts have drawn parallels and even forecast similar fates for their leaders.

The NATO intervention in Libya poses the following question: In the contemporary world can a small country conduct an independent foreign policy, regardless of the approval of the global ruling class, without running the risk of being punished for it?

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The answer appears negative. The current situation in Libya, and the Arab world more generally, shows that if a political regime does not meet so-called ‘internationally approved standards of democracy’, and if a country has valuable natural resources, then military force can be used against it to overthrow the ruling elite and replace them with more ‘loyal’ new government. As a rule, political destabilisation — especially open domestic revolt — serves as an invitation for external interference.

The manner in which the representatives of the ‘free world’ rapidly and simultaneously changed their attitude toward Gaddafi’s regime is noteworthy. While the eccentric Libyan leader — who has conducted an anti-American foreign policy for 40 years — has never been a favorite of the West, he has been somewhat tolerated. Gaddafi has never been an ‘outlaw’ or alienated from ‘civilized society’ like North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Libya has never been labelled as part of the so-called ‘axis of evil’. Moreover, eight years ago Gaddafi began efforts toward rapprochement with the West, abandoning the idea of possessing nuclear weapons and letting Western monitors enter his country. As a result, international sanctions against Libya were removed. But the moment the Western world considered a more acceptable alternative to Gaddafi’s regime could be found it did not hesitate to start an operation to overthrow him.

It is difficult to say what West has gained, even from a short-term perspective, when it abandoned all agreements with Tripoli and provided support to anti-Gaddafi forces. Strategically it has been a defeat for Western democracies from the start.

The most significant outcome for the West is that they have let the world see that the principle of national sovereignty is becoming little more than an illusion. The lesson for leaders who are at odds with the West is that the security of the state — even those that are part of the UN system and observe all the norms and principles of the international law — won’t always be ensured by political means. Rapprochement with the West has proven a disastrous mistake for Gaddafi.

What is crucial now is not Gaddafi himself, but the influence the Libyan example may have on other countries. The notion that nuclear threshold states can safely abandonment their nuclear weapons for the sake of global security, as asserted by Western democracies, has been discredited.

North Korea has clearly received the message. A North Korean Foreign Ministry Spokesperson stated that ‘the present Libyan crisis teaches the international community a serious lesson … It proved once again the truth of history that peace can be preserved only when one builds up one’s own strength as long as high-handed and arbitrary practices go on in the world’.

‘It was fully exposed before the world that “Libya’s nuclear dismantlement” much touted by the US in the past turned out to be a mode of aggression whereby the latter coaxed the former with such sweet words as “guarantee of security” and “improvement of relations” to disarm itself and then swallowed it up by force’.

‘The DPRK was quite just when it took the path of Songun (military first policy) and the military capacity for self-defence built up in this course serves as a very valuable deterrent for averting a war and defending peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula’.

Indeed, Pyongyang faces external threats of greater concern than Libya. In the US State Department’s Human Rights Report, North Korea is presented as an ‘absolute dictatorship’ which ‘rejects the right of its nation to change its government’. Washington sees Pyongyang’s nuclear programs and exports of nuclear technologies as a serious threat to its interests in North Eastern Asia. Also, the North Korean government is suspected of forging US currency, drug trafficking and other crimes. The unpredictability of North Korea, which plays by its own (and not American) rules, creates uncertainty making the implementation of Washington’s strategic tasks more complicated.

The above mentioned factors are more than sufficient to trigger a decision by the West to overthrow the Kim Jong-il regime except for one major ‘but’: North Korea has already obtained nuclear weapons, or at least nuclear explosive devices with weapons potential, as demonstrated by its nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.

Unlike Gaddafi, Kim Jong Il realized right after the wars in Yugoslavia and in Iraq that he could not receive any effective guarantees of protection against possible aggression from external powers, no country — even China — would fight for Pyongyang, and his country should rely only on its own military potential.

In other words, Kim Jong Il made the necessary preparations against regional uncertainties, and has secured his country against external intervention and regime change, while Gaddafi overlooked these risks and lost. Like Kim Jong Il or not, but when he was backed into a corner he played it all or nothing and reached his goal, ignoring the indignation of the ‘international community’ over Pyongyang’s nuclear potential. The US and their allies can express their indignation regarding North Korea all they like, but they now find themselves in a situation where they have to deal with a de-facto a nuclear power that undermines the NPT and global nonproliferation regime progress. The Libyan lesson has only served to further shut the window on any hope of convincing Pyongyang to abandon nuclear weapons.

Recently the efforts to re-start Beijing six party talks became more intensive. At first the meeting between North and South Korea’s nuclear envoys at an Asian foreign ministers summit in Bali took place on last July. Then a few days after it North Korean first vice foreign minister Kim Kye-Gwan visited New York where hold a talk with the US State Department counterparts. Despite the fact neither side divulged much about the talk content many observers presage that some essential results were reached in New York. At least formally the three stages plan aimed at six party talks revival acheivedtwo preliminary steps: North-South and  DPRK-USA representatives meetings are fulfilled.

Of course above mentioned events are only the steps in right direction.

At the same time we have insufficient grounds to judge it. The basic positions of the parties  remain too far from each other to reach a compromise yet. Pyongyang, especially now against the background of events in Libya first of all seeks for its own security. The other participants of the six party talks place priority on North Korean nuclear disarmament while Washington and Seoul do not want to provide survival to the regime they so strongly despise. So what we have now isn’t a breakthrough but merely some kind of tactical game.

Alexander Vorontsov is Head of the Korean and Mongolian Studies Department at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Oriental Studies. Mr. Oleg Revenko is also a senior researcher of the Institute of World Economy and International Affairs (IMEMO) Russian Academy of Sciences.

An earlier version of this article first appeared here at Strategic Culture Foundation.

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