North Korea explodes a controversy

A controversy exploded recently when North Korea detonated a nuclear device. International condemnation rained down on Pyongyang. The UN Security Council unanimously imposed sanctions against the country. However, North Korea deemed the sanctions a declaration of war. The key player appears to be China, as it's the leading trade partner and most important ally of the isolated North Korean regime. By many accounts, Chinese suspicious of their one-time close ally appears to be growing.

Presidential aspirant Sen. John McCain and other conservatives blame then-President Bill Clinton's 1994 deal with North Korea for the present situation.

Critics called it appeasement. But bribing countries to do what we want is hardly new. How else to explain the Bush administration's cozying up to the monstrous regimes in Equatorial Guinea and Uzbekistan?

Another former presidential aspirant, Sen. John Kerry, rubbished his colleague's remarks. "The truth is the Clinton administration knew full well they didn't have a perfect agreement. But at least they were talking. At least we had inspectors going in and we knew where the [nuclear fuel] rods were. This way, we don't know where the rods are. The rods are gone. There are no inspectors. Ask any American which way is better," Kerry said.

Other Clinton critics say that the real problem with the 1994 deal was bilteral, rather than multilateral.

Those involved with negotiating the 1994 deal said that it was actually a success, not a failure. Robert L. Gallucci, the chief negotiator of the accord and now dean of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, said it is a "ludicrous thing" to say that the Clinton agreement failed. For eight years, the Agreed Framework kept North Korea's five-megawatt plutonium reactor frozen and under international inspection, while North Korea did not build planned 50- and 200-megawatt reactors. If those reactors had been built and running, he said, North Korea would now have enough plutonium for more than 100 nuclear weapons.

The failure, he says, occurred when the Bush administration changed the policy. North Koreans complained bitterly that the United States was the chief violator of the pact because the reactors were years behind in construction and because promises to end hostile relations and normalize ties were not fulfilled.

Clearly, the Bush administration's aggressive militarism pushed North Korea to speed up its nuclear research. The regime saw what's happened to fellow 'Axis of Evil' country Iraq and that some on the far right are demanding the same fate for the third 'Axis of Evil' nation Iran. Who can blame Pyongyang for seeking a nuclear deterrence?

Though the Clinton administration's tepid response to the 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan certainly did nothing to discourage future nuclear aspirants.

Why would a nuclear North Korea be a problem? Some on the left make the mistake of thinking that just because the Bush administration is demonizing North Korea that this situation is necessarily overblown. Others contend that North Korea is a sovereign country and can have nukes if they want.

I'm not convinced that North Korean strongman Kim Jong-Il is crazy, as neo-conservatives describe anybody they want to invade. A nuclear deterrence for North Korea is perfectly rational given the Bush administration's rhetorical belligerence has often been followed by the military version.

The Dear Leader may be narcissitic and dangerous and probably eccentric. But irrational? I doubt it.

And the regime's rationality is my main concern.

The regime is extremely strapped for cash because they are wasting it all on their hugely bloated military. What does a rational man do when he has no money? He seeks ways to earn some.

What's a good way for a corrupt regime to earn a lot money? By selling nuclear weapons material or technology to rogue, non-state entities.

I do not think the regime in Pyongyang is foolish enough to actually use nuclear weapons against the US or South Korea or Japan. But I think they are desperate enough to sell them to al-Qaeda operatives or other terrorists. That's far more dangerous.

In international geo-politics, the most disturbing thing is unpredictability. The Soviet Union may have been 'The Evil Empire' but they acted in a way that was entirely predictable for a giant state power. This is why Ronald Reagan, who'd so demonized the USSR, was able to negotiate with them. The Cuban Missle Crisis erupted when the Soviets acted in an unpredictable way next door to the US.

State actors, even isolated ones like North Korea, are generally bound to a code of conduct in their relations with other state actors. When non-state actors get involved, it's much more unpredictable because they don't, as they say, have a return address.

The question now is what can be done to reign in North Korea, to ensure they don't sell their nuclear technology to al-Qaeda or other malicious actors.

I'm not sure there's a good answer to that question. I think international sanctions are a good temporary step. They should've been applied to Pakistan and India after their tests but that didn't happen. But given how isolated Pyongyang is already, I'm not sure how much more economic leverage can be placed on them.

Ultimately, the best way to reign in North Korea is to basically bring them back into the international system. This is where the Clinton administration really erred. Offer them a non-aggression pact. Restore diplomatic relations with them. Encourage them to sit down for peace talks with South Korea (with whom they are officially still at war). Perhaps try to pry the country open with the carrot of World Trade Organization membership. But only on the condition that they agree not to sell their nuclear technology and allow UN weapons into the country.

The trouble with this is that it's very difficult to enforce the North Korean part of the bargain. Even a high-ranking official in Pakistan, a nominal US ally, was guilty of illegally transferring nuclear technology. And that's a far less secretive country.

But as problematic as this solution is, I haven't heard anything better.

Bush administration bullying is increasingly leading to defiance, not submission. It's long past time to try something else. I'm highly skeptical that Bush's entourage would ever let him pursue such a course of action with North Korea; these are the guys that patented defamatory phrases like 'cut and run' and 'defeatocrats' to describe anyone who believes that militarism should be option number one for every problem.

Yet if you can believe it, that is exactly what his administration tried with another rogue state recently. The US re-established diplomatic relations with Libya earlier this year. It just goes to show the president and his advisors can make diplomacy work if they actually get serious about it.


Update: some hawks that if the international community simply cuts off food aid, it will starve North Koreans into an insurrection that would topple the Kim regime. This is non-sensical.

For one thing, there is little food aid going into North Korea anymore anyway; the regime didn't like so many foreigners running around the country so it kicked them out.

But moral questions aside, 'the starvation will lead to regime change theory' doesn't make sense. A hungry man may be an angry, as Bob Marley sang, but a starving man doesn't have enough energy to be angry. If you want to forment a revolt from within, you need to empower the people, not weaken them to near death.

Several countries have suffered famines or hunger emergencies in recent years. Niger, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe come to mind immediately. Not a single one of those famines lead to a public uprising that toppled the government in place.

There have been many popular uprisings that toppled governments in recent years. Such as Serbia, the Phillipines and Ivory Coast. In all of these countries, the people were for the most part at least moderately well-fed.

NPR has a good piece on how political change is the last thing on the mind of North Koreans.