North Korea’s strategy is not difficult to predict. Decades ago, North Korean leaders decided to go nuclear and subsequent global events have increased their resolve — they openly say that Saddam Hussein would still be alive if he had actually possessed weapons of mass destruction.
North Korea is not interested in promises of favourable economic cooperation or security and lessons from recent history confirm their reluctance to take such promises seriously. Muammar Gaddafi of Libya agreed in 2004 to surrender his nuclear program in exchange for economic reaches but he then ended up being killed by rebels who were supported by Western powers. In 1994, Ukraine agreed to remove the nuclear weapons it had acquired after the collapse of the Soviet Union in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom, but Crimea was subsequently annexed by Russia. North Korean leaders see these examples as justification of their belief that nuclear weapons are vital for their regime’s survival.
What can the outside world do in this situation? If the goal is North Korea’s denuclearisation then the honest answer — while discouraging — is ‘nothing, short of a military operation’.
Negotiations have failed many times. North Korean decision-makers, understandably, have little enthusiasm for negotiating what they sincerely (and perhaps, correctly) see as their own death warrant.
It might be possible to negotiate a freeze of North Korea’s nuclear program and to buy Pyongyang’s willingness to stop nuclear development for a period of time. But such an agreement would entail allowing weapons and fissile material to remain in North Korea. This imperfect and controversial compromise is not possible now since neither North Korea nor the United States are particularly interested in such negotiations.
The general mood in Washington and other major Western capitals is in favour of a hard-line approach. The greatest hope is pinned on UN-approved sanctions. But this approach has even less chance of success.
To start with, no sanction regime is going to succeed without a sincere and unconditional endorsement from China, which now controls over 90 per cent of North Korea’s foreign trade. But despite being seriously annoyed by Pyongyang’s nuclear brinksmanship, Beijing is still very reluctant to join a sanctions regime.
Unlike their US colleagues, Chinese analysts understand that mild pressure will not prompt North Korean leaders to consider denuclearisation. Even if international sanctions deliver a blow to the country’s economy, North Korean decision-makers will not change their course. It will be the common people who pay the price — suffering, starving and, perhaps, dying in droves — while the government continues a course that elites consider vital for their state’s survival as well as their own.
China understands that only hard pressure will work with North Korea — the kind of pressure that focuses not on economic collapse, but rather revolt. If faced with this pressure, the North Korean elite might decide that discontinuing their nuclear program constitutes a lesser risk than the political consequences of such a crisis. But there is still good reason to believe that even in such a situation Pyongyang would ignore politics and continue with its nuclear policy.
From China’s point of view, it is risky to subject North Korea to such pressure. There is a high likelihood that such sanctions will provoke regime collapse, which China does not want. China doesn’t want civil war in a nearby nuclear-armed state, it doesn’t want a situation which might necessitate its own military and political involvement and it also doesn’t want Korea’s unification under the auspices of a successful, pro-US, democratic and nationalistic South Korea.
There are reasons to be sceptical about the recent hopes in Washington that the increased US military presence in the region, justified by North Korea’s bellicosity, will prompt China to change its attitude to Pyongyang. As demonstrated by the US’s recent decision to deploy Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile systems in South Korea and China’s subsequent hostile reaction, such attempts would push China in the opposite direction, making it more inclined to see North Korea as a strategic buffer against the United States.
This is all fairly pessimistic. But like it or not, it is time to learn to live with a nuclear North Korea. There is still a role for the international community to quietly promote changes which are likely to make North Korea less dangerous — such as through supporting Kim Jong Un’s regime drift towards the ‘developmental dictatorship’ model. But this will be slow, difficult to explain to the public and clearly imperfect. More attempts will be made to solve the nuclear issue through pressure and negotiation. But these attempts have little chance of success.
Andrei Lankov is a Professor at Kookmin University, Seoul, and Adjunct Research Fellow at the Australian National University.
Professor Lankov commendably joins a small, but growing, legion of prophets lamenting in the strategic wilderness at the idiocy dominating policy-discourse on the DPRK’s nuclear-and-ballistic-missile programmes. Blind repetation of failed policies is unlikely to suddenly bring success.
Besides, general belief notwithstanding, survivalist instincts are as fundamental drivers of policy in dictatorships as they are liberal-democracies. Also, elite-failings in some of the leading instances of the latter, apparent over the past decade, and consistently inconsistent application of ‘international law’ by system managers have engendered an atmosphere of such distrust that self-help has become key to regime-maintenance among the demonised.
This might explain why ‘rogue-states’ seek to survive the gentle ministrations of the noble. Pyongyang now knows that it cannot count on the protection of legal regimes to avoid externally imposed violent regime-change unless it can credibly deter such ‘decapitating’ strikes as have been planned and rehearsed by US-RoK forces in their joint drills over recent years. Its nuclear-and-delivery-system R&D is designed to erect a protective carapace which its enemies will not easily attack.
In short, as freshman political scientists know, motivation is what drives politics, even the inter-state variety. Professor Lankov is to be commended for reminding us of this simple, all-but-obvious and glaring truth.
Andrei Lankov advises us that we should learn to live with a nuclear NK. North Korea is a murderous mafia state only interested in its ruling elite and has caused the death of millions of its own citizens. It allows no human rights or freedoms for the people of NK. Also something like half the people are malnourished and only have electricity for a few hours a week. NK does not have a right to nuclear weapons, and does not need them to defend their country. They have a 1.2 million man army along with chemical and biological weapons, no one is going to invade North Korea. China can easily apply pressure on NK, try closing the oil pipeline for a few days and see how that works. China does not want the Chinese people to witness the collapse of a communist government as it would have implications for the Chinese Communist Party. Lankov is advocating the removal of sanctions along with billions in aid for the North to effect a freeze that the North will cheat on. This was tried for ten years by South Korea, where they traded with the North and gave them 7-10 in aid. It was a complete and utter disaster and the money went to pay for the nuclear weapons that threaten the South. If the world follows the advise of Mr Lankov and learns to live with NK nuclear weapons, they may also have to learn to die from those weapons. That is one classroom I would like to avoid.
Thanks for an informative and interesting, albeit very sober, analysis. I had not read anywhere else about how Kim, et al would view events in Libya or Ukraine in this way. I’d tend to agree that as long as China is not willing to pressure the DPRK much more aggressively then the situation will continue along as it has been. I hope, however, that Kim, et al do not do anything foolish with these weapons they are developing. He could force the USA to take action it really does not wish to it he uses one or more of these weapons. Or if he sells one to a non-state terrorist group who then attacks the USA or some other Western country.
I agree with Mr. Lankov on learning to live with a nuclear North Korea. If regime change was to be attempted, the opportune time to do so has passed. To currently pursue regime change through a hard-line approach would be catastrophic.
Even if China came on board with the international community to pressure North Korea and cut off the aid which props it up as a buffer zone, the Kim regime has proven that it is willing to take wild risks and all that pressure may push it towards actually turning its threats into desperate and damaging action which would result in the outbreak of incalculable war.
Even without military action or use of nuclear weapons by North Korea, the event of collapse of the Kim regime, by revolt or any other means, would create a confusing scramble by China, South Korea, the U.S., and perhaps Russia to fill the power vacuum left behind.
Mixing the issue of human rights abuse in North Korea with nuclear proliferation only serves to confuse and impede progress on both issues. Nuclear weapons pose a greater threat to the world outside North Korea than a repressive regime does to the comparatively few million living inside it. Also, a hard-line approach of sanctions and isolation would only hurt the North Korean commoners and most of the population would be starving by the time it affected the elites, military and government.
Past diplomatic efforts failed because of insincerity on all sides, not just North Korea’s. The U.S.’s inability to uphold its end of the Agreed Framework and successive deals only built North Korean mistrust and supported investment in nuclear weapons. And South Korea’s Sunshine Policy cannot have been expected to work for nuclear disarmament when the greatest threat to North Korea is the U.S., not South Korea. If, as Mr. Lankov suggests, North Korean security concerns can be alleviated and it can be pushed to focus on economic development under a “developmental dictatorship” model, stability in Northeast Asia can be maintained and the nuclear issue can be revisited under less tense circumstances.
The key to defusing the nuclear crisis in the Korean Peninsula is in he hands of the United States and North Korea, not any other countries. The two sides should negotiate to seek settlement to their disputes to ease the crisis. For the United States, that means changing its hostile policy toward North Korea. For North Korea, it means showing sincerity to abandon its nuclear weapon program.The two sides have just completed a secret meeting in Malaysia. Let’s wait to see what the outcome is.