North Korean nuclear weapons

Naval War College Review, Wntr, 2004 by Dennis B. Wilson

Madame:

Dr. Jonathan D. Pollack's article "The United States, North Korea, and the End of the Agreed Framework" (Summer 2003) was well researched and well written. The author has obviously studied his material and understands his subject. Yet the entire article read as little more than a long apology for the actions of the North Korean government in seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, something that it had supposedly forsworn in 1985 through the signing of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and more specifically through the adoption of the 1992 Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

I will leave it to persons more familiar with the problem than I am to defend the actions of the Bush administration in reacting to the revelations that North Korea had begun the enrichment of uranium in light of the 1994 Agreed Framework. My sole purpose is to use that uranium enrichment program as an example of the incomplete consideration of an issue leading to a questionable conclusion of benign intentions on the part of North Korea. Dr. Pollack seeks to explain away the uranium enrichment program as having "an entirely legitimate civilian purpose--[enrichment facilities] provide the means for fabricating the low-enriched uranium ... to power light-water reactors." Dr. Pollack then goes on to analyze in considerable detail whether the uranium enrichment capability was sufficient to produce one or a number of uranium-fueled weapons and concludes that it was unlikely to do so. Dr. Pollack mentions, but seems to attach no importance to, the fact that the Pakistani nuclear weapons program tested a uranium-fueled weapon and that Pakistan may have provided assistance to the North Korean program.

Despite the considerable doubt cast by Dr. Pollack on the capability of North Korea's enrichment program to produce fuel for a weapon, there is no analysis whatsoever of whether the North Korean uranium enrichment program would ever produce light-water reactor fuel in meaningful quantities. A more complete consideration would have contained such an analysis, and I do not know what conclusions it would have reached. One thing is certain. In light of the incredibly low prices of enriched uranium on the world market, developing a capacity to enrich uranium for electricity production makes all the economic sense of a capacity to produce seawater. The U.S. Department of Energy would probably agree to give North Korea light water reactor fuel, since it is presently "blending down" highly enriched uranium from the Russian weapons stockpile to make such fuel.

The article's overall tone is one of moral equivalence between the United States and North Korea. For example, in what sense can North Korea be said to have "reacted" to U.S. intelligence findings about its program? As if the North Korean leadership didn't know what it was doing before U.S. officials told them? A more accurate approach might phrase it as a North Korean reaction to having been caught doing what it sought to keep secret.

The situation with North Korea reflects a serious dilemma for policy makers, but one that the article leaves unexplored, in light of its clear endorsement of the 1994 Agreed Framework. The United States seeks to prevent North Korea from developing or acquiring nuclear weapons. North Korea wants to acquire nuclear weapons, probably for purposes of blackmail, but possibly for sale to terrorist groups. Negotiations are undertaken and an agreement reached in which North Korea appears to have agreed not to develop or acquire nuclear weapons and is compensated for not doing so. North Korea then begins secret activities probably intended to develop nuclear weapons. What should the appropriate U.S. response be? Dr. Pollack's response, as best I can divine it, is to engage in further negotiations and (presumably) further compensate North Korea to forgo activities that the United States believed North Korea had already agreed not to undertake. Yet Dr. Pollack notes that one of North Korea's objectives is to be treated as an "equal" of the United States, something it certainly achieved in the context of his article. Since equality in negotiations is one of North Korea's objectives, it has every incentive to breach existing agreements so that it can provoke further negotiations demonstrating its equality with the United States. It is not terribly difficult to predict how this process will end. North Korea will have its "feeling" of equality with the United States, nuclear weapons, and compensation throughout the process. The only conceivable gain in such an arrangement is delay, and it is not clear whether delay favors the United States or North Korea.

Many commentators on the difference between Anglo-American and Asian business practices and legal systems remark that the different cultures view contracts in a different light. The Anglo-American view is that they are relatively final arrangements, meant to be respected and referred to in governing the subsequent conduct of the parties. The Asian view is that they are simply way stations in an ongoing relationship and subject to wide interpretation and renegotiation when the situation changes, even if the change is the desire of one party not to adhere to the agreement. If that is the case, the entire notion of the United States reaching agreements meant to be respected with North Korea is probably fundamentally flawed. Making North Korea a regional issue (which I believe to be the present policy of the Bush administration) is probably the better option. It denies the North Koreans their objective of equality with the United States in negotiations. It places the problem in the hands of regional actors (South Korea, Japan, the People's Republic of China, and Russia), who will be threatened sooner by North Korean nuclear weapons than will the United States. It will involve negotiations and agreements between cultures that share a similar attitude toward their obligations. Finally, it will demonstrate to that portion of the world that cares that the United States does not seek to be the final arbiter of all international relations. It does raise the specter that North Korea will develop nuclear weapons and seek to sell them to terrorists, or otherwise threaten the United States directly. But U.S. intervention at that stage, to protect itself from terrorist attack or other nuclear threat, however bloody and destructive, will be as a result of the failure of those states with the most influence over North Korea and those states most directly impacted by war.