FAUSTIAN BARGAIN WITH NORTH KOREA IN THE OFFING? (FOR PUBLICATION ON SUNDAY THE 20^TH FEBRUARY 2005)

By Kazi Anwarul Masud (former Secretary and ambassador)

Once again like a recurring nightmare North Korean public acknowledgement that it possesses nuclear weapons and is pulling out of the six nation talks on North Korean denuclearization has put the problem ridden world in a difficult situation. Apparently the North Korean move to strengthen her nuclear capability is to counter an alleged American plot to overthrow the present regime in DPRK. Though President Bush in his State of the Union address made only a passing reference to US engagement with Asian countries “to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambition”, a climb down from his speech last year in which he described the country as a member of the axis-of-evil, North Koreans were reportedly unhappy over Condolleeza Rice’s branding of North Korea as an “out post of tyranny” during her confirmation hearing as the new Secretary of State. While visiting Europe in her new capacity very recently she voiced her apprehension that North Koreans were “only deepening their isolation because every one in the international community, and most especially North Korea’s neighbors, have been very clear that there needs to be no nuclear weapons in the Korean peninsula in order to maintain stability in that region”. She assured North Korea that the US had no intention to attack that country, the last out post of Stalinism, an Orwellian nightmare for its hapless citizens, a regime that thrives on asphyxiation of its people and feeds on Draculian xenophobic nationalism in a world where sovereignty is being increasingly pooled for politico-economic betterment of the people. This pursuit of xenophobic nationalism stands in stark contrast to President Bush’s promise that America will stand with her allies of freedom to support democratic movements with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world. Though President Bush’s promise to usher in democratic movement was primarily aimed at the Middle East yet his attention did not waver from countries like DPRK which posed clear and present danger to international peace and security   as DPRK had not yet graduated from its axis-of-evil status to a country with internationally acceptable level of civilized conduct. North Korean behavior only strengthened 1999 Richard Armitage (former Deputy Secretary of State) Report that concluded that brinkmanship paid. The Report warned that the 1994 Agreed Framework concluded with the Clinton administration providing for freezing existing North Korean nuclear program in exchange of two light water nuclear reactors and half a million tons of heavy water annually had only created a cycle that would lead Pyongyang to believe that it could extract concessions. Paul Wilfowitz (currently Deputy Secretary of Defense) had expressed doubts that a regime which cared so little for its own people would be willing to give up its ultimate weapons of blackmail in exchange of power reactors.

Despite Ellen Bork’s (of The New American Century) skeptical conclusion that due to divergent Sino-American interests in North Korea US should remove China from the list of countries for “constructive engagement” for solution of such crisis; China wants a nuclear free Korean Peninsula, and is concerned that a nuclear North Korea could trigger a chain of nuclearisation of South Korea, Japan and Taiwan adversely affecting Chinese core security interests. China is also acutely aware that should North Korea prove to be right in its belief of “an invariable ambition of the US to invade DPRK and dominate Asia with the Korean peninsula as the spring board” then it may be faced with American troops stationed on its border. Paradoxically China may also find it uncomfortable with a unified Korea with the North armed with nuclear weapons and the South with its affluence. This, however, may not be necessarily so if one were to consider that the unified Germany with continued membership of NATO posed not only no threat to Russia but became the largest creditor which perhaps was an expression of gratitude by Helmut Kohl to Mikhail Gorbachev for not obstructing the unification of Germany. The Russo-German detente found further expression in their opposition (along with other countries) in the UNSC to Anglo-US invasion of Iraq.

Bush administration has rejected outright the most recent demand of DPRK for direct talks with the US outside the six-nation negotiation on the ground that the matter is not a bilateral one but of regional concern. A few days earlier Condoleeza Rice while on her European tour assured that “North Koreans should have no reason to believe that any one wants to attack them. The President of the United States said in South Korea that the US has no intention to attack North Korea (and) they can have multilateral security assurances if they will make the important decision to give up their nuclear weapons program”. Yet one should be reminded of President Bush’s unequivocal declaration of May 2003 that “we will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea. We will not give in to blackmail. We will not settle for anything less than complete, verifiable, and irreversible elimination of North Korean nuclear program”.

Though US and regional powers’ views on North Korean question coincide, a larger issue of future Sino-American relationship may have direct relevance to the current situation. President Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brezinski thinks that in the near future China is unlikely to challenge the US militarily and will remain focused on economic development and winning acceptance as a great power. Despite Taiwan issue Brezinski considers it unlikely that China will adopt a confrontational policy that could disrupt its phenomenal economic growth and also shake the grip of the communist party over the Chinese people. But Professor John Mearsheimer (of Chicago University) believes that China is likely to dominate Asia in the same way that the US dominated the Western Europe. He believes that an increasingly powerful China is likely to push the US out of Asia as the US pushed the European great powers out of western hemisphere. Professor Marsheimer theorizes that mightiest states attempt to establish hegemony in their region while making sure that no rival great power dominates another region. The great power, he adds, do not merely want to be the strongest power, their ultimate aim is to be the hegemon—the only great power in the system. It should, however, be noted that hegemony is a consensual order which can decline as a result of legitimacy deficit of the hegemon though its coercive powers remain intact or even can increase. As Iraq invasion has amply proved Bush administration’s emphasis on “hard power” as defined by Harvard Professor Joseph Nye in terms of military and economic powers as opposed to “soft power” in terms of values, culture, ideology and institutions has cost the US the possibility of assuming the role of global hegemon despite its unchallengeable military prowess. Mearsheimer argues that China thirty years from now with a much larger GDP and a more formidable army may try to push the US out of Asia—an argument dismissed by Brezinski as China’s neighbors including India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Russia and Vietnam may join the US to contain the Chinese power. Echoing Brezinski Thomas Donnelly (of the American Enterprise Institute) believes that while China has the potential to become the canonical “global peer” of the US the global “correlation of forces” is in favor of American preeminence. While all these futuristic scenarios are in the realm of speculation it is unlikely that in the North Korean case China would dissociate itself from its stated position of denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

The question that agitates many minds is why North Korea is so insistent on acquiring nuclear weapons so vehemently opposed by the international community. Political analyst Philip Saunders provides several scenarios. In his first scenario the North Korean leaders have already decided that possession of nuclear weapons is essential for their survival. They also believe that had Saddam Hussein possessed WMD then the Anglo-American forces would not have dared to attack Iraq. In Saunders’ second scenario DPRK would be willing to barter away their nuclear weapons in exchange of iron clad guarantee that the US would not attack DPRK to effect a regime change. In the third scenario DPRK would like to possess both the nuclear weapons and also have normal relations with the US and regional powers. Such a case would mean international recognition of DPRK as a nuclear power. It would also mean that possession of WMD is the surest way to ensure sovereignty, nullify NPT and subsequent non-proliferation measures.

How would then the US as the global hegemon deal with crisis like that of North Korean nuclearisation? British historian Nial Ferguson (Colossus: The Price of American Empire-2004) would like the US, like the UK before it, to act as an empire. Ferguson perhaps goes beyond the neo-cons of Bush administration and observes that if the US does not embrace history’s charge and acknowledges itself as an empire the world could suffer “ a new Dark Age of warring empires and religious fanaticism…of economic stagnation and retreat of civilization into a few fortified enclaves”. He argues that if the US had sent more troops to Iraq and conducted a more aggressive campaign of fighting the “insurgents”, as past successful empires were not afraid to use the forces at their disposal, then the Iraqi situation would not have turned into a quagmire that it has. Ferguson’s argument that the US should have acted as the British had done in the centuries gone by falters on the ground of changed realities in the world after the Second World War. Had the strategy used by the Roman empire centuries back been possible to day then Colin Powell in his most recent article in Foreign Policy magazine would not have stressed on the need for “economic development in the world’s poorest societies” because democracy, development and security are inextricably linked with one another. Powell rightly observes that poverty breeds frustration and resentment used by “ideological entrepreneurs” for recruiting terrorists and that no nation “can assure the safety of its people as long as economic desperation and injustice can mingle with tyranny and fanaticism”. The enemy shrouded in the mystery of many identities like a chameleon, a non-state actor nursing vitriolic hatred for democratic values on the pretext that their adornment will be in contradistinction of “purist” interpretation of scriptural literalism, in the words of Condoleeza Rice, “are swimming against the tide of human spirit (and) and dwelling on the outer fringes of a great religion they are in revolt against the future”.

Besides them the world also has aberrant nations like North Korea who being on the brink of failure would like to blackmail the world with apocalyptic disorder. Now that the second Bush administration appears to have taken initiative to mend fences with transatlantic partners derided by Robert Kagan as Americans being from Mars and the Europeans coming from Venus and by Donald Rumsfeld as “old Europe” about  those countries who differed with Anglo-American plan to invade Iraq without UNSC sanction; Condoleza Rice during her first visit to Europe as Secretary of State has conveyed the resolve of President Bush to strengthen transatlantic ties.

One hopes that Nial Ferguson’s Colossus would be willing to listen to European wisdom distilled through centuries of war and peace in order to find solutions to the interwoven threats we face today in terms of terrorism, proliferation of WMD, regional conflicts, failed states and organized crimes. But if DPRK continues to be obstinate in pursuing its nuclear ambition then the world may be faced with a country, in Richard Perle’s words, as “the nuclear breadbasket of the world or at least the underworld of failed states and terrorists”. In that case the Bush administration would have to make its final determination as to whether to accept DPRK proposal for bilateral talks or to insist on six nations talks which the North Koreans appear to have rejected for now. In the ultimate analysis the global powers would have to decide whether diplomatic and economic engagements with aberrant nations would suffice to nip in the bud emerging Frankensteins or should the UNSC decide that enough is enough and that global peace and security can not be held hostage in the hands of few out law regimes.