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Towards a judgment call

The picture-perfect demolition of a 25-metre cooling tower at the Yongbyon nuclear complex in North Korea, carried out in a controlled exercise on June 27, has been widely hailed as a constructive step. It can potentially mark the beginning of a grand end-game in the denuclearisation of Korean peninsula, the agenda before six global and regional players in an ongoing diplomatic process.

The six are the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) or North Korea, the United States, China as the proactive host, South Korea, Japan, and Russia. And, a new wave of tough bargaining has now surfaced, with Japan making the first move. ‘Pacifist’ Tokyo views the neighbouring DPRK’s existing stockpile of nuclear weapons, small by all accounts, as nothing less than a “threat,” all the same. So, a top Japanese official, Tomohiko Taniguchi, called for the elimination of this stockpile. This, he emphasised, was a priority greater than the demolition of a peripheral tower amid a movie-style media fanfare.

As a result, the U.S., Japan’s long and close military ally, was jolted back to the basics. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then in Kyoto for a meeting of the elite Group of Eight powers, was harping on the need to end all of the DPRK’s nuclear “programmes.” But, in the rarefied air of diplomacy, the rollback or even the irreversible stoppage of a country’s nuclear weapons “programmes” do not ensure that its stockpile is destroyed as well.

Sensing the pitfall of such nuances, Ms. Rice soon put the U.S. record straighter. She now says that “at the end of this [six-party process], we have to have the abandonment of all [nuclear] programmes, weapons, and materials [by the DPRK].” And, while in Beijing on June 29, she praised China for continuing to play “a leading role” in the six-party process.

Significantly, the DPRK presented its “nuclear declaration” to China a day before triggering the “constructive implosion” of the Yongbyon cooling tower. However, this was a clear sequel to a meeting between North Korean negotiator Kim Kye-gwan and his U.S. counterpart Christopher Hill in Singapore on April 8. And, the DPRK then disclosed that they reached a “consensus” over a package of nuclear “declarations” in exchange for “political compensation.”

The primary demand for “compensation,” valid to this day, is that the DPRK’s security as “a military-first state” must be guaranteed. Insisting also that the U.S. or any coalition of powers should not destabilise the Kim Jong-il government in Pyongyang, the DPRK wants economic aid and conventional energy supplies. And, North Korea’s five dialogue partners have already promised these goodies under step-by-step agreements among the six parties. A relevant political norm is that “action” by North Korea towards its denuclearisation would be matched by “action” by the five in delivering these agreed supplies.

In a sharp comment, Pyongyang said on July 4 that further discussions under the six-party process could now take place “only when all participating countries precisely fulfil their duties” already specified. On this basis, the DPRK pledged to subject its “nuclear declaration” to international “verification.’ Progress in this regard, too, would be determined by the pace at which the five partners could rectify the current anomaly in the “action-for-action” format. The five partners had so far fulfilled only 40 per cent of their commitments, while the DPRK had already “disabled” 80 per cent of its nuclear facilities, it was emphasised.

Given such high stakes, three current and emerging trends are relevant to any future end-game in North Korea’s nuclear disarmament. For a start, the DPRK, mindful of its historical debt of gratitude to China, is keen on negotiating first with the U.S. to design the building blocks of a final deal on Korean denuclearisation under the six-party process. The U.S., of course, has sometimes kept its difficult talks with the DPRK on an even keel with the help of China. On the whole, though, some recent directions in the six-party process have been set by the DPRK-U.S. engagement. Their Singapore talks in April and the DPRK’s hand-over of voluminous “nuclear papers” to the U.S. in May point to this trend.

In this scenario, Pyongyang, harbouring historical grouses against Japan, is now distancing itself from South Korea too, ever since Lee Myung-bak assumed office in Seoul as a hawk on nuclear issues concerning the DPRK. Not long ago, Mr. Kim and Mr. Lee’s predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun, had agreed upon a general direction towards not only inter-Korean amity but also security architecture in Northeast Asia. The Kim-Roh accord is now in cold storage.

In contrast, U.S. President George W. Bush has, on learning about the DPRK’s presentation of a “nuclear declaration” to China, announced his intention to “reward” Mr. Kim. Under a due U.S. process, steps have been initiated to declassify the DPRK as a terror-sponsoring state and regard it no longer as an “enemy” for trading.

The second trend of relevance to the political future of Korean peninsula is also linked to the new dynamics in the U.S.-DPRK engagement. Disarmament experts like Jonathan Schell and others have portrayed scenarios of “the bomb in the mind” — the psychological aspirations of security-conscious states to possess nuclear weapons as deterrence.

Viewed in this perspective, critics argue that the U.S., in a bid to coerce North Korea to destroy all its nuclear facilities and programmes, may inadvertently allow it to possess a degenerating arsenal. The point is the nuclear arsenal, with a clear shelf-life, will be unusable after a period, if the DPRK’s “capabilities” to produce and modernise atomic weapons are totally destroyed. So, a judgment call awaits both the DPRK and the U.S.

The last but not the least trend in focus is the DPRK’s growing insistence that the U.S. nuclear umbrella over South Korea, if not also Washington’s similar and stronger commitment to Tokyo, will be out of place in a future scenario.

The possible role of Russia and global energy security issues may also come into play in Northeast Asia.

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