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Breaking News::::::North Korea fires two short-range missiles (3:00 AM EDT) after testing nukes
- Thread in 'General' Thread starter Started by tbone95860,
- Start date
jpzx
Supporter
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We're fine.
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Obviously we mostly likely are...
Japan & South Korea on the other hand...
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HARMCITY45 wrote:
TBONE95860 wrote:
JPZx wrote:
We're fine.
Obviously we mostly likely are...
Japan & South Korea on the other hand...
exactly what I was thinking....
From the article I read earlier no one is defending N. Korea. China (suprisingly not happy from what I read), Japan, South Korea, UK, U.S.A., andthe whole U.N. are against them. If it goes that way they stand no chance. I don't know what Russia has said though.
And all N. Korea is trying to do is corner us into giving humanitarian aid or else.
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******ed north korea. the UN should just nuke the entire country of north korea.
REAPONS OF RASS DISTRUKSHEUN!
REAPONS OF RASS DISTRUKSHEUN!
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Originally Posted by finnns2003
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Originally Posted by aubstuh86
******ed north korea. the UN should just nuke the entire continent of north korea.
REAPONS OF RASS DISTRUKSHEUN!
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Obviously we mostly likely are...
Japan & South Korea on the other hand...
exactly what I was thinking....
From the article I read earlier no one is defending N. Korea. China (suprisingly not happy from what I read), Japan, South Korea, UK, U.S.A., and the whole U.N. are against them. If it goes that way they stand no chance. I don't know what Russia has said though.
And all N. Korea is trying to do is corner us into giving humanitarian aid or else
From the New York Times:
Russia also condemned the North's actions, saying they "seriously destabilize the situation in NortheastAsia."
http://www.nytimes.com/20...orld/asia/26nuke.html?hp
It looks like N.K. has gambled and lost.
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Originally Posted by aubstuh86
Originally Posted by finnns2003
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Hypocrites. America can't talk. American gov't, I mean. Didn't we test them no too long ago? And didn't we "allow" India to havenuclear weapons?
dendanskesimon
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If WWIII starts, Im taking my Jays and moving to some isolated cave in Africa where no one will bomb me, and coming back out of hiding only once one side hasbeen entirely nuked to death
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I'm not reading the OP. Why? Because it ain't like I can do a GAT DAMN thing about it. Igg is bliss... I just wanna get my glock in July and chill. Andif a nuke drops on my wig, it's whatever... that's life (well, death...but still). I be like that sometimes... all I know is that a preemptive strikewould be one trump DUMB idea.
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Exactly. Big brother at its best. "I can do all this stuff and you can't". I mean I'm not saying its cool to have these weaponsbut come on, how you playing world police when you can't even truthfully police yourself?
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ehhh
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exactly what I was thinking....
From the article I read earlier no one is defending N. Korea. China (suprisingly not happy from what I read), Japan, South Korea, UK, U.S.A., and the whole U.N. are against them. If it goes that way they stand no chance. I don't know what Russia has said though.
And all N. Korea is trying to do is corner us into giving humanitarian aid or else
From the New York Times:
Russia also condemned the North's actions, saying they "seriously destabilize the situation in Northeast Asia."
http://www.nytimes.com/20...orld/asia/26nuke.html?hp
It looks like N.K. has gambled and lost.
Thanks alot man. Looks like N. Korea is f'd.
lurkin2long
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i still believe 2010-2012 is gonna be very crazy.
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I know 99.9% of NT won't read this, but for the .1% who want to understand the dynamics ofUS/N. Korean relations, read this. Or at least read the underlined material.
Summarized:
each time the US used an aggressive policy topressure North Korea
into giving way, the latter became more recalcitrant. By contrast,when Washington
relied on a more cooperative attitude Pyongyang usually respondedwith
concessions. Tension on the Korean peninsula thus decreased onlywhen the
US adopted a 'give-and-take' diplomatic style in recognitionthat Pyongyang's
recalcitrance can, and should, be read as a bargaining tactic to getsomething in
return for giving up the nuclear option.
As usual, this situation comes as no surprise. But i'm almost willing to put money on it that Korea is not simply doing thisfor the sake of doing it. It is likely a response to US policy.
A rogue is a rogue is a rogue:
US foreign policy and the Korean nuclear crisis
ROLAND BLEIKER
We'll kill every son of a %@@#@ north of the forward edge of the battle area, and wewon't
retreat one inch.
US General James F. Hollingsworth, at the Korean DMZ,1974
We're a peaceful people … travelling south on that road, the people of the Northwould
see not a threat, but a miracle of peaceful development.
US President George W. Bush, at the Korean DMZ,2002
Dealing with communist North Korea has become one of the most difficult
challenges in global politics today. Totalitarian and reclusive, ideologically isolated
and economically ruined, it is the inherent 'other' in a globalized and neoliberal
world order. And yet North Korea goes on surviving, not least because its
leaders periodically rely on threats to gain concessions from the international
community. The latest such attempt was signalled in the autumn of 2002, when
Pyongyang admitted to a secret nuclear weapons programme and subsequently
withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Thereafter the
situation rapidly deteriorated. By early 2003 both the US and North Korea were
threatening each other with outright war. Even Japan, adopting its most militaristic
posture in decades, publicly contemplated the possibility of a pre-emptive
strike against North Korea.3
The dangers of North Korea's nuclear brinkmanship are evident. Miscalculation
or a sudden escalation of tension could precipitate a human disaster at any
moment. Equally dangerous, although much less evident, are the confrontational
and militaristic attitudes with which some of the key regional and global players,
most notably the United States, seek to contain the situation. The problems
associated with these approaches have been largely obscured by Washington's
apparent willingness to de-escalate the crisis through negotiations. 'I believe this
is not a military show-down,' stressed President George W. Bush. 'This is a
diplomatic show down.'4 Much has been made of the difference between this
tolerant approach and the far more aggressive stance taken in respect ofIraq,
where war was presented as the only possibility of preventing a dangerous
escalation towards the use by the Baghdad regime of weapons of massdestruction.
The situation was particularly paradoxical since Pyongyang publicly admittedto
its nuclear ambition and asked inspectors from the International AtomicEnergy
Agency (IAEA) to leave the country. Baghdad, by contrast, denied possessing
weapons of mass destruction and admitted inspectors for the specific purposeof
verifying its claims.5
The reluctance to use force against North Korea obscures the fact that US
foreign policy is guided by a largely consistent approach towards the phenomenon
of so-called 'rogue' states. That war was not advocated in Korea is a
reflection of diplomatic constraints and, above all, strategic limitations. South
Korea's then newly elected president, Roh Moo-hyun, strongly opposed a
military solution to the problem. Perhaps even more importantly, the consequences
of an escalation in Korea would be hard to contain. One of the world's
biggest cities, Seoul, is only 50 kilometres away from the heavily militarized
'Demilitarized Zone'(DMZ) that separates North Korea from the South. Even
if pre-emptive strikes were to neutralize North Korea's possible nuclear arsenal,
they would not be able to destroy all its conventional weapons. The latter alone
could easily trigger a second Korean war, with disastrous consequences on all
sides.
The purpose of this article is to examine the role of the United States in the
Korean nuclear crisis, for no aspect of the past and present dilemmas on the
peninsula can be addressed or even understood without recourse to the US.
This is why China repeatedly stressed that the latest nuclear crisis was primarily
an issue between North Korea and the United States.6 Kim Dae-jung, in his
final speech as South Korea's president, reiterated the same theme: 'more than
anything, dialogue between North Korea and the United States is the important
key to a solution.'7 A solution is, however, farfrom reach. Both the US and
North Korea see the other as a threat. And each has good reasons for doing so.
But each is also implicated in the production of this threat. The problem is that
these interactive dynamics are hard to see, for the West tends toproject a very
one-sided image of North Korea-one that sees it solely as a rogue outlaw,and
thus a source of danger and instability. Nicolas Eberstadt, forinstance, stresses
that 'North Korean policies and practices have accounted for most of the
volatility within the Northeast Asian region since the end of the Cold War.'8
Very few policy-makers, security analysts and journalists ever make the effort to
imagine how threats are perceived from the North Korean perspective, or consider
how these perceptions are part of an interactive security dilemma in which
the West, and US foreign policy in particular, is implicated as deeply as the
vilified regime in Pyongyang.
The central argument of this article is that the image of North Korea as a
'rogue state' severely hinders both an adequate understanding and apossible
resolution of the crisis. The rhetoric of rogue states is indicative of howUS
foreign policy continues to be driven by dualistic and militaristic Cold War
thinking patterns. The 'Evil Empire' may be gone; not sothe underlying need
to define safety and security with reference to an external threat that must be
warded off at any cost. Rogues are among the new threat-images that serve to
demarcate the line between good and evil. As during the Cold War, military
means are considered the key tool with which this line is to be defended. In the
absence of a global power that matches the US, this militaristic attitude has, if
anything, even intensified. Look at Washington's recent promulgation of a preemptive
strike policy against rogue states. The consequences of this posture are
particularly fateful in Korea, for it reinforces half a century of explicit and
repeated nuclear threats against the government in Pyongyang. The impact of
these threats has been largely obscured, not least because the highly technical
and specialized discourse of security analysis has enabled the US to present the
strategic situation on the peninsula in a manner that misleadingly attributes
responsibility for the crisis solely to North Korea's actions.
A brief disclaimer is in order at this point. I offer neither a comprehensive
review of the Korean security situation nor a detailed analysis of the latest
events. As a result, there will be little mention of some admittedly crucial issues,
such as the role of China or the increasingly problematic rift between Washington
and Seoul. Instead, I identify broad patterns of conflict and embark on a conceptual
engagement with some of the ensuing dilemmas. Focusing on underlying
trends inevitably entails glossing over nuances at times. For instance, there
are heated debates between hawks and doves within Washington's policy circles,
and as a result periods dominated by hard-line realist positions have alternated
with periods during which softer and more liberal policies prevailed. But the
persistent pattern of seeing North Korea as a rogue state is far more striking, and
in many ways far more significant, than the strategic policy manoeuvring that
takes place within these patterns. Focusing on the big picture also entails departing
from some of the conventions that prevail in the field of strategic and
security studies. Contrary to most treatments of the subject, I do not discuss the
technical aspects of nuclear and other weapons, except to show, as indicated
above, how these very discussions, jargon-ridden and inaccessible as they are to
any but military experts, often serve to stifle debate about some of the underlying
political and ethical issues.9
Patterns of action and reaction: the first nuclear crisis
The first nuclear crisis in Korea started to emerge in the early 1990s. Although
Pyongyang had signed the NPT in 1985, it seemed to have retained its ambition
to develop a nuclear weapons programme. That, at least, was the import of US
intelligence reports, which detected a plutonium processing plant in Yongbyon.
Various negotiation rounds followed. In 1992 North Korea agreed to have its
nuclear facility inspected by the IAEA. But only a few months later serious
disagreements over inspections became evident, and in March 1993 North
Korea declared its intention to withdraw from the NPT. Although Pyongyang
agreed a few weeks later to suspend its withdrawal, the peninsula was soon
plunged into an intense crisis. William Perry, then US Secretary of Defense,
considered the subsequent escalation the only time during his tenure when he
'believed that the US was in serious danger of a major war'.10As a result of
various interventions, such as a semi-private visit to Pyongyang by former US
president Jimmy Carter, a deal was reached. In an agreement signed in October
1994 Pyongyang consented to freeze its nuclear programme. In return, the US
promised a number of compensations, including the delivery of aid and heating
oil and the eventual construction of two light-water nuclear reactors that would
provide North Korea with energy sources.
One of the most revealing interpretations of the dynamics that led to the
crisis and its resolution was conducted by Leon Sigal. In a counter-reading of
US nuclear diplomacy towards North Korea in the years leading up to the crisis,
Sigal documents how coercive diplomacy brought Korea to the brink of war.
He writes of a US foreign policy pattern that discouraged cooperation and,
instead, promoted a 'crime-and-punishment approach' which constituted
North Korea above all as a threatening rogue state. While acknowledging the
numerous instances that would, indeed, give rise to such an image, Sigal also
deals with the interactive nature of the conflict. In a crucial passage he asks why,
if North Korea was allegedly so keen on developing nuclear weapons and had
numerous opportunities to do so, did it not simply go ahead and build bombs.
Sigal's answers highlight Washington's inability to recognize that North Korea
was playing 'tit-for-tat in nuclear diplomacy'.11 Some of Sigal's arguments have
become controversial. He has, for instance, been accused of downplaying
North Korea's failure to uphold its obligations. That may well be the case; but
at a more fundamental level Sigal is nevertheless able to reveal a striking empirical
pattern:each time the US used an aggressive policy topressure North Korea
into giving way, the latter became more recalcitrant. By contrast,when Washington
relied on a more cooperative attitude Pyongyang usually respondedwith
concessions. Tension on the Korean peninsula thus decreased onlywhen the
US adopted a 'give-and-take' diplomatic style in recognitionthat Pyongyang's
recalcitrance can, and should, be read as a bargaining tactic to getsomething in
return for giving up the nuclear option.12
From detente to the second nuclear crisis
Once that first nuclear crisis was solved in 1994, all parties concerned embarked
on a more cooperative route. The inauguration of Kim Dae-jung as South
Korea's president in early 1998 signalled the advent of a policy that was more
conciliatory, or at last more willing to engage the arch-enemy across the dividing
line. The US administration under President Clinton was strongly supportive of
this approach. Of particular significance here is an official policy review,
conducted by then former Defense Secretary Perry. In some respects the report
advocated little new. It called for a realist approach based on 'a hard-headed
understanding of military realities', which, translated into practice, meant no
changes to Washington's 'strong deterrent posture towards the Korean Peninsula'.
Not surprisingly, the Perry Report located the main threat in North
Korea's ambition to acquire nuclear weapons or to develop, test and deploy
long-range missiles. 'The United States must, therefore, have as its objective
ending these activities.'13 At the same time,though, the Perry Report called for
a fundamental review of US policy towards Pyongyang, advocating a position
that rests not only on military deterrence, but also on a 'new, comprehensive
and integrated approach' to negotiations with North Korea.14In some sense the
report sought to promulgate the very tit-for-tat approach that Sigal found
missing during the early days of the Clinton administration. The new policy still
revolved around a strong defensive posture and an inherent distrust of North
Korea, but it also foresaw the possibility of rewarding Pyongyang for concessions.
In this respect the Perry Report signified a remarkable departure from
the US position of viewing rogue states as inherently evil, irrational and
incapable of compromising.
The more nuanced policy attitudes in Washington and Seoul soon led to
several breakthroughs, including the lifting of restrictions on trade with,investment
in and travel to North Korea. Pyongyang responded in turn with a variety
of gestures, such as a gradual (although still very timid) opening of itsborders,
agreements on family exchanges with the South and a tuning down of itshostile
rhetoric. The process of detente culminated in June 2000 with a historicsummit
meeting between the two Korean heads of state, Kim Jong-il and Kim Daejung.
The symbolic significance of this meeting cannot beoverestimated. Bruce
Cumings goes as far as arguing that 'Bill Clinton and the two Korean leaders did
more to lessen tensions in Korea than all the heads of state going back to the
country's division in 1945.'15 Others wouldundoubtedly disagree, interpreting
Clinton's approach to North Korea as a dangerous policy of appeasement,
which needed to be rectified with a return to a more principled form of realpolitik.
In any event, detente in Korea did not last long. It was soon replaced
with a return to familiar Cold War thinking patterns and conflict-prone
behaviour.
According to conventional media and policy accounts, the second nuclear
crisis emerged suddenly in the autumn of 2002. The official and largely accepted
storyline is perfectly captured by a passage in one of Europe's leading news
magazines. Writing in February 2003, the author presents the crisis as follows:
The dispute over Pyongyang's nuclear programme began in October last year. North
Korea admitted that it had secretly pursued plans for enriching uranium. Then the
government threw international inspectors out of the country and withdrew from the
nuclear nonproliferation treaty.16
North Korea's admission came as a shock to the international community. It
was described as 'the mother of all confessions'.17Fears increased dramatically a
few months later, when Pyongyang officially announced that it would restart its
nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. US intelligence assessments concluded that North
Korea might be able to turn out enough plutonium to produce five nuclear
weapons by the summer.18 Add to this a renewedintensification of North
Korea's hostile rhetoric, including threats to turn Seoul into a 'sea of fire', and
you have a full-blown crisis on the peninsula. The overall verdict thus seemed
clear: 'Pyongyang is responsible for the crisis that has ensued because it broke the
earlier agreement to scrap its nuclear program in return for energy assistance.'19
Or so goes the prevalent interpretation of events. But one could, and indeed
should, stress exactly the same point as Sigal did with respect to the first nuclear
crisis: 'the standard account is wrong.'20 Thisis not to say that the above events
did not occur, or that North Korea's nuclear weapons programme does not
pose a serious threat to regional and world peace. Rather, the point is that the
official account is, at minimum, a one-sided and highly inadequate portrayal of
events.The crisis did not emerge out of the blue in October 2002, norcan it be
attributed solely to North Korea's actions, highly problematic as theyundoubtedly
are. Like any crisis, this one resulted from a sustained interaction of
threat perceptions, actions and reactions to them. It was rootedin entrenched
antagonisms and established conflict patterns, involving a variety of different
actors, each playing its role in constituting the crisis.
Before going on it must be stressed that the task of this article is not to explore
in detail the role of these perceptions. There is already an extensive literature on
the subject.21 Applying this body of knowledge to theKorean peninsula would
go far beyond what is possible in the space available here. Accordingly I will
examine threat perceptions only as far as is necessary to demonstrate that the
rhetoric of rogue states obstructs an adequate understanding of the security
situation in Korea.
The role of American nuclear threats
Let us, for the sake of understanding the interactive dimensions of the crisis,
contemplate for a moment how it must have appeared from the vantage point
of North Korea's decision-makers. The first and undoubtedly most striking
feature to notice from Pyongyang would be the long and unbroken period of
American nuclear hegemony in East Asia. Equally obvious and understandable
is that this hegemonic practice would have been-and indeed was-interpreted
as a clear threat to North Korea's security.
The US remains the only nation ever to have used nuclear weapons in a
combat situation, and this in very close proximity to Korea, in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. During the Korean War the US entertained employing nuclear
weapons against North Korea and China as part of its 'massive retaliation'
doctrine. General Douglas MacArthur specifically requested permission to use
26 nuclear bombs to attack specifically designated targets. His successor, General
Matthew Ridgeway, renewed the request. In the end no nuclear weapons were
used, although the newly inaugurated president, Dwight Eisenhower, hinted in
1953 that the US would employ them in the event of the armistice negotiations
failing to make progress.22 Soon after the Korean War,in January 1958, the US
introduced ground-based nuclear weapons to South Korea, which constituted a
direct violation of the armistice agreement.23 Thismove did not occur in
response to a specific North Korean threat, but was part of a more general
worldwide reorganization of American military strategy.24 The weapons were
kept close to the border with the North. Don Oberdorfer even reported that
'nuclear warheads had been flown by helicopter almost routinely to the edge of
the DMZ in training exercises.'25 The very natureof these exercises was a public
threat to North Korea. Consider, for instance, how the yearly joint manoeuvres
between the US and South Korea, named 'Team Spirit', revolved around an
unnecessarily aggressive north-bound scenario. They stressed, as Moon Chungin
puts it, 'bold and vigorous strikes into the enemy's rear' as part of an overall
'offensive military strategy'.26
The deployment of American nuclear weapons in South Korea was an
important element of American nuclear hegemony in the Pacific. It was one of
the central military components around which regional security alliances were
formed. Peter Hayes stresses that this nuclear strategy remained a 'completely
unilateral American activity'.27 Neither SouthKorea nor any other US ally was
given a say in operational decisions, which always remained under the sole control
of Washington. Moreover, North Korea has never consented to the deployment
of nuclear weapons on its soil, either by the Soviet Union or by China. It
has not even accommodated foreign military personnel, at least not after the last
Chinese troops left in 1958.28 This contrasts quitesharply to the continued
presence of US soldiers in South Korea-almost 40,000 at the time of writing.
American nuclear weapons were withdrawn from South Korea in the early
1990s. Analyses differ on the exact reasons for this withdrawal. Donald Gregg,
then US ambassador to South Korea, suggests that it was a gesture of goodwill
designed to facilitate negotiations with North Korea.29 Other US officials
indicate that it was a more tactical move, linked to experiences in the first Gulf
War that suggested high-yield conventional weapons might actually be more
useful than nuclear ones in the context of a controllable regional battlefield.30
Be that as it may, the withdrawal of American nuclear warheads from Korean
soil hardly removed the nuclear threat from the peninsula. Long-range US
nuclear missiles could still easily reach North Korea-a fact of which Pyongyang
was frequently reminded, both directly and less directly.
The interactive dynamic of the nuclear crisis
American nuclear threats towards Pyongyang intensified again whenWashington's
Korea policy became more hawkish with the inauguration of President
George W. Bush. In his State of the Union Address of February2002, Bush
singled out North Korea as one of three nations belonging to an 'axis of evil',
citing as evidence Pyongyang's export of ballistic missile technology and its
lingering ambition to become a nuclear power.31 Thissudden turnaround in
American foreign policy, which sharply reversed the more conciliatory approach
pursued during the Clinton administration, can be seen as the origin of the
present nuclear crisis in Korea just as well as any actions or announcements by
Pyongyang. In June 2002 details became public of a Nuclear Posture Review,
according to which a key plank of the new US strategic doctrine was the
possibility of making pre-emptive nuclear strikes against terrorists and rogue
states. North Korea was explicitly cited with regard to two possible scenarios:
countering an attack on the South and halting the proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction. Mention was made, for instance, of 'using tactical nuclear
weapons to neutralize hardened artillery positions aimed at Seoul, the South
Korean capital'.32 A few months later Washingtonmade its threats official. The
new National Security Strategy, released in September 2002, outlined in detail
the legitimacy of pre-emptive strikes and how they would be employed as a way
to 'stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or
use weapons of mass destruction against the United States'.33
Faced with a sudden intensification of American nuclear threats, it ishardly
surprising that Pyongyang reacted angrily and called Washington officials'nuclear
lunatics'.34 Nor is itsurprising that Pyongyang is reluctant to give up its nuclear
option, for it could serve as a credible deterrent against a US attack. Indeed,the
desire for such a deterrent only mirrors the attitude and behaviour of theUS.
Declassified intelligence documents, which became available after thecollapse
of communist regimes in eastern Europe, do indeed reveal that from the 1980s
on North Korea perceived itself as increasingly weak and vulnerable toexternal
attacks.35 This is why theprime objective of the government in Pyongyang has
moved, as many commentators now recognize, from forcible unification of the
peninsula to the simple task of regime survival.36 But very few Western decisionmakers
have the sensitivity to recognize these factors and take them into
account when formulating their policies. Donald Gregg is a rare example of a
senior American diplomat who acknowledges that 'the US scares North Korea.'37
But even he could make such an admission in public only once he had retired
from all his official functions.
In view of the above reinterpretation of events, the question ofresponsibility
for the recurring nuclear crises in Korea becomes very blurred. Onecould point
out, as several commentators have done, that before October 2002 North Korea
had by and large complied with the terms of the 1994 agreement. This wasconfirmed
not only by the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization,
but also by CIA director George J. Tenet, who gave a respective testimony to
Congress on 19 March 2002.38 The 'mother of all confessions' does, of course,
put this interpretation in perspective. But it is still unclear when and to what
extent North Korea secretly restarted its nuclear weapons programme. Itis
undisputed, however, that the US did not live up to the AgreedFramework.
Construction of the two light-water reactors promised to North Korea wasfive
years behind schedule. Long before the most recent crisis unfolded, thepromised
annual fuel deliveries came under increasing threat because of high oil
prices and opposition from influential conservative elements within the US
Congress.39 Perhaps mostimportantly, the very existence of longstanding
American nuclear threats against North Korea is not only contrary to thespirit
of the 1994 agreement, but also a direct violation of the internationalnonproliferation
regime, which states that 'countries without nuclear weapons must
not be threatened by those who possess them.'40
The point is not to attribute responsibility for the re-emergence of a nuclear
crisis on the peninsula. Both the US and North Korea have done a great deal to
fuel each other's fears. But decision-makers in Washington haveclearly not been
sufficiently aware of their own role in generating fears andcounter-reactions.
Nor have they learned much from the lesson of the first nuclear crisis. Consider,
for instance, how the US has quickly forgotten, or ignored, a number ofrather
striking concessions that Pyongyang made in the period leading up to the
second crisis. North Korea started to open up its borders; it accommodatedseveral
hundred representatives of foreign aid organizations; increased cooperation
with (capitalist) Russia; sought to normalize relations with Japan; and enteredinto
diplomatic relations with a dozen Western countries. There were stepstowards
domestic reform, such as the introduction of quasi-market principles and theopening
of special economic zones. There was also progress towards a rapprochement
with the South, most notably in domains such as family exchange visits,business
contacts and cultural programmes. Pyongyang started to clear mines in theDMZ
and worked towards establishing road and railway links with the South. North
Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, even publicly agreed to a continuousdeployment
of US troops in South Korea. He stressed that their presence is a threat onlyas
long as the relationship between North Korea and the US remainshostile.41
This in itself could be seen as the 'mother of all concessions', for theremoval of
US troops had been one of North Korea's key demands for decades.42
Instead of appreciating and building on these concessions, US foreign policy
towards North Korea focused on Pyongyang's lingering nuclearambition. But
not everyone believed Pyongyang when it declared in October 2002 that it had
never ceased its nuclear programme. The Russian foreign minister, for instance,
called the admission a North Korean tactical 'manoeuvre'.43Neither claim can be
empirically verified, but that is not the main point. More important is the fact
that the US failed to pay attention to a series of rather obvious North Korean
gestures long before the crisis was acknowledged as such in October. North
Korea's anxiety began to grow with President Bush's 'axis of evil' speech in
February. An official North Korean spokesperson, Kim Myong Chol, then told
a New York Times journalist, Nicholas Kristof, that heforesaw 'a crisis beginning
in the latter half of this year'. North Korea, he suggested, 'will respond to the
breakdown of the nuclear deal . . . by starting its nuclear program and resuming its
missiles tests'.44 That is, of course, preciselywhat happened eight months later.
It is striking how closely North Korea's approach in 2002-3 paralleled its
behaviour during the crisis of 1993-4. Pyongyang most likely assumed, as it did
a decade earlier, that a hard-line US administration would not engage in serious
dialogue until North Korea threatened to withdraw from the NPT. Scott Snyder,
in an extensive study of Pyongyang's approach during the first crisis, speaks of a
'crisis-oriented negotiation style' that is rooted in North Korea's particular historical
experience, most notably the role that some of its leaders played in guerilla
activities against the Japanese colonial occupation. Snyder writes of a remarkably
rational and entirely consistent approach-one that relies on 'threats, bluff, and
forms of blackmail to extract maximal concession from a negotiating counterpart'.45
Even the dramatic language that shocked the world media in early 2003 was
entirely predictable. The apocalyptic threat to turn Seoul into a 'sea of fire', for
instance, was literally a rehearsed metaphor from the first crisis.46It is part of an
all-too-predictable emotional vocabulary that has prevailed in North Korea's
press for decades. Once translated into standard English it is not very different
from the more rationally expressed US threat of pre-emptive nuclear strikes.
One can agree or disagree with North Korea's dramatic brinkmanship tactic,
but one cannot ignore its deeply entrenched existence without risking dangerous
miscalculation. At minimum, doing so prevents us from recognizing how
Pyongyang may be using its last bargaining chip, its nuclear potential, as away
of entering into dialogue with the US. In case this was not clearfrom North
Korea's behaviour during the first crisis, Kim Myong Chol stressed the same
point again in the above mentioned conversation with Nicholas Kristof. In
February 2002, several months before the crisis escalated, Kim pointed out that
'North Korea cannot kill the heavy-weight champion, the U.S. But it can
maim one of his limbs, and so the heavyweight champion will not want to fight.
That is the North Korean logic.'47 The logic may beflawed, as Kristof notes,
but it is entirely consistent with Pyongyang's attitude during the first crisis. It
demonstrates that Pyongyang had no interest in a military confrontation with
the US. Indeed, North Korea's press repeatedly stressed that the firstnuclear
crisis 'was settled through negotiations' and that this proved the presentissue
could be solved in the same manner.48Pyongyang wanted guarantees and
concessions. And its demands were not particularly outrageous. For years
Pyongyang has requested a non-aggression pact as well as bilateralnegotiations
with the US, leading to a normalization of the relationship between the two
countries, or at least to a recognition of each other'ssovereignty.49 The US, by
contrast, has always preferred multilateral negotiations and demanded North
Korean disarmament prior to a normalization ofrelations.
Despite numerous and obvious signs, and despite detailed and insightful
studies of North Korea's previous negotiation behaviour, in 2003 US decisionmakers
repeated exactly the same mistakes made during the first crisis: they
believed that by demonizing North Korea as an evil rogue state they could force
Pyongyang into concessions. Whether this policy resulted from ignorance or
specific design remains open to debate. The bottom line is that the USposition
was firm: 'America and the world will not be blackmailed,' stressedPresident
Bush in his 2003 State of the Union Address.50 The result was predictable:
Pyongyang became more recalcitrant. A new nuclear crisis started to takehold
of the Korean peninsula.
Mutual crisis diplomacy, or the contradictions of hawk engagement
The conflict pattern had been set long before the latest crisis unfolded. Several
scholars, most notably Bruce Cumings and Hazel Smith, have for years drawn
attention to Washington's inability to see North Korea as anything but a dangerous
and unpredictable rogue state.51 A look at the deeplyembedded nature of this
policy attitude is thus in order, even if it entails a brief detour from the immediate
issue of Korean security. Central here is the transition from the Cold War
to a new world order. While the global Cold War power structures collapsed
like a house of cards, the mindsets that these structures produced turned out to
be far more resilient. Cold War thinking patterns remain deeply entrenched in
US foreign policy, not least because virtually all of its influential architects rose
to power or passed their formative political years during the Cold War. As a
result, security has in essence remained a dualistic affair: an effort to protect a
safe inside from a threatening outside. Once the danger of communism had
vanished, security had to be articulated with reference to a new Feindbild, a new
threatening other that could provide a sense of identity, order and safety at
home. 'I'm running out of demons. I'm running out of villains,' said US general
Colin Powell in 1991. 'I'm down to Castro and Kim Il Sung.'52
Rogue states were among the new threat images that rose to prominence
when Cold War ideological schism gave way to a more blurred picture ofglobal
politics.53 And North Koreabecame the rogue par excellence the totalitarian
state that disregards human rights and aspires to possess weapons of mass
destruction; the one that lies outside the sphere of good and is to bewatched,
contained and controlled. But there is far more to this practice of'othering'
than meets the eye. Robert Dujarric hits the nail on the head whenidentifying
why some of the key rogue states, such as North Korea, Iraq, Iran or Libya,are
constituted as 'rogue' by the US. It cannot be their authoritarian natureand
their human rights violations alone, for many other states, including SaudiArabia
and Egypt, have an equally appalling record. Nor can it be that theypossess or
aspire to possess weapons of mass destruction. Otherwise states like India,Pakistan
or Israel would be constituted as rogues too. Dujarric stresses that roguestates
above all share one common characteristic: 'they are small or mediumnations
that have achieved some success in thwarting American policy.'54
The tendency to demonize rogue states considerably intensified following the
terrorist attacks on New York and Washington of 11 September 2001. For some
policy-makers and political commentators, the American reaction to these events
signified a fundamentally new approach to foreign policy. US Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld heralds the arrival of 'new ways of thinking and new ways of
fighting'.55 Stephen Walt, likewise, speaks of'the most rapid and dramatic change
in the history of US foreign policy'.56 Significantchanges did, indeed, take
place. The inclusion of a preventive first-strike option, for instance, is a radical
departure from previous approaches, which revolved around a more defenceoriented
military policy. But at a more fundamental, conceptual level, there is
far more continuity than change in the US position. Indeed, one can clearly detect a
strong desire to return to the reassuring familiarity of dualistic and militaristic
thinking patterns that dominated foreign policy during the Cold War. The new
US foreign policy re-established the sense of order and certitude that had
existed during the Cold War: an inside/outside world in which, according to
the words of President George W. Bush, 'you are either with us or against us.'57
Once again, the world is divided into 'good' and 'evil'; once again, military
means occupy a key, if not the only, role in protecting the former against the
latter. 'The opposition between good and evil is not negotiable,' Allan Bloom
noted at the time of Ronald Reagan's presidency. It is a question of principles,
and thus 'a cause of war'.58 Expressed in otherwords, the rhetoric of evil moves
the concept of rogue states into the realm of irrationality. 'Evil' is in essence a
term of condemnation for a phenomenon that can neither be fully comprehended
nor addressed other than through militaristic forms of dissuasion and
retaliation. This is why various commentators believe that the rhetoric of evil is
an 'analytical cul de sac' that prevents, rather than encourages, understanding.
Some go as far as arguing that a rhetoric of evil entails an 'evasion of accountability',
for the normative connotations of the term inevitably lead to policy
positions that 'deny negotiations and compromise'.59How is it, indeed, possible
to negotiate with evil without being implicated in it?
The contradictions between the rhetoric of evil and the requirements for dialogue
have become particularly evident during the most recent nuclear crisis in Korea.
All top US officials publicly stressed one common theme: that 'there is no reason
why discussion about confidence-building measures cannot take place with
Pyongyang.'60 At the very same time, though, theprojection of threats towards
North Korea was carefully maintained, even intensified. 'All options are on the
table,' including military action, stressed President Bush.61Powell, likewise, underlined
that 'no military option's been taken off the table.'62The assumption behind
this approach is that including North Korea in an 'axis of evil' does not necessarily
preclude the possibility of engaging it in dialogue. Indeed, the assumption
is that threats will induce dialogue. William Safire expresses this strategy in
blunt but entirely appropriate words: 'We make clear to weapons traders in the
North that their illicit nuclear production is vulnerable to air attack from a nation
soon to show its disarmament bona fides in Baghdad … That readiness will
bring about what diplomats call "fruitful, regional, multilateral negotiation".'63
'Hawk engagement' has emerged as a term to describe the new and much
tougher US stance.64 It is striking how much thispolicy position resembles
North Korea's vilified tactic of nuclear brinkmanship. Just as Pyongyang does,
Washington explicitly threatens the opponent it allegedly wants to engage in
dialogue. And it advances policies that intentionally create a crisis in order to
win concessions from its arch-enemy. As a result, it is not surprising that the few
contacts which have taken place between the US and North Korea can hardly
be called negotiations, let alone fruitful ones. Consider the famous encounter
that took place in Pyongyang in October 2002, during which North Korean
officials made the 'mother of all confessions'. The US team, led by envoy James
Kelly, was the most senior group of American officials to visit North Korea
since the inauguration of President Bush and his adoption of a more confrontational
policy. Pyongyang was clearly hoping for a resumption of dialogue, but
instead encountered a US team acting in what they perceived was a highly
'arrogant manner'. Even Western diplomats who observed the events agreed.
'These were not negotiations,' stressed one of them. 'Kelly immediately started
with accusations.'65 The next day North Koreanofficials predictably returned
to their own well-practised crisis diplomacy. They upped the ante and admitted
to a nuclear weapons programme, fictive or not.
The concealing power of security expertise
Why is it so difficult to deal with, or even recognize, the interactive dynamics of
security dilemmas? Why is it still possible to present as rational and credible the
view that North Korea alone is responsible for yet another nuclear crisis on the
peninsula? And why have militaristic approaches to security come to be seen as
the only realistic way of warding off the perceived threat, even though they are
quite obviously implicated in the very dynamic that led to its emergence in the
first place?
Answers to these complex questions are, of course, not easy to find. I certainly
do not pretend to offer them here. But at least some aspects can be understood
by observing the central role that defence analysis plays in the articulation of
security policy. The latter has in essence been reduced to discussions about
military issues which, in turn, are presented in a highly technical manner.
Consider a random example from one of many recent 'expert' treatises on
North Korea's missile programme:
If North Korea launches a ballistic missile attack on South Korean airfields andharbors,
it could seriously impede Flexible Deterrence Options (FDO) operations by US forces.
The argument has been made that even if the North uses ballistic missiles, the accuracy
or circular error probable (CEP) of the Rodong-1 (about 1 km) is such that it would not
be able to undertake airstrike missions.66
A fundamental paradox emerges: 0n the one hand, an array of abstract
acronyms and metaphors has removed our understanding of security issues further
and further from the realities of conflict and war. On the other hand, we have
become used to these distorting metaphors to the point that the language of
defence analysis has become the most accepted-and by definition most credible
and rational-way of assessing issues of security. The ensuing practices of political
legitimization provides experts-those fluent in the techno-strategic language
of abstraction-not only with the knowledge, but also with the moral authority
to comment on issues of defence.67
Experts on military technologies have played an essential role in constructing
North Korea as a threat and in reducing or eliminating from our purview the
threat that emanates from the US and South Korea towards the North. The
political debate over each side's weapons potential, for instance, is articulated in
highly technical terms. Even if non-experts manage to decipher the jargonpacked
language in which defence issues are presented, they often lack the
technical expertise to verify the claims thus advanced, even though those claims
are used to legitimize important political decisions. As a result, the technostrategic
language of defence analysis has managed to place many important
security issues beyond the reach of political and moral discussions.
For decades, the US and South Korea have argued that the military balance
on the peninsula represents one of the most severe imbalancesin military power
anywhere in the world.68 During the late 1980s, forinstance, North Korean
troops were said to outnumber South Koreans by 840,000 to 650,000, with the
North enjoying an even greater advantage in tanks, aircraft and naval forces.69
The South Korean Defense White Paper at the time argued that its military
power was only 65 per cent of North Korea's, and that a military balance would
not be reached until after the year 2000.70 But on theeve of the year 2000 the
refrain remained exactly the same. The 1999 Defense White Paper still insisted
that 'North Korea has the quantitative upper hand in troops and weaponry, and
it possesses strong capabilities of conducting mobile warfare designed to succeed
in a short-term blitzkrieg.'71 Virtually allofficial defence statistics present a
seemingly alarming North Korean presence. They juxtapose, for instance, North
Korea's 1,170,000 standing forces against the 690,000 of the South, its 78 brigades
against the 19, its 23,001 armoured vehicles against the 2,400, its 50 submarines
against 6, etc., etc., etc.72
Articulated from the privileged vantage point of the state, the strategic studies
discourse acquires a degree of political and moral authority that goes far beyond
its empirically sustainable claims. For years scholars have questioned the accuracy
of the calculations and the political conclusions derived from them. Already in
the 1980s, critics pointed out that the official statistics compare quantity, not
quality, and that in terms of the latter the South enjoys a clear strategic advantage
over the North, even without including American nuclear and other weapons
stationed in or (possibly) directed towards the Korean peninsula.73These critiques
have intensified in recent years. In a detailed study of the subject,Moon
Chung-in argues that even without US nuclear support, 'South Korea isfar
superior to the North in military capacity', citing major quality differencesin
such realms as communication, intelligence, electronic warfare andcutting-edge
offensive weapons systems.74 Sigal, likewise, points out that the much feared onemillion-
man North Korean army is largely a fiction. About half of them, he
estimates, are either untrained or soldier-workers engaged in civilconstruction.
Many of North Korea's tanks and aircraft are obsolescent, leaving its'ground
forces and lines of supply vulnerable to attack from the air'.75 Humanitarian
workers, who have gained access to much of North Korea's territory inrecent
years, paint a similar picture. They stress, for instance, that 'the few tanksseen
on the road cannot get from one village to the next without breaking down or
running out of fuel.'76
The political manipulation of defence expenditure statistics perfectly illustrates
how technical data are used to project threats in a particular manner. Policymakers
and security experts keep drawing attention to North Korea's excessive
military expenditures. And excessive they are indeed, averaging 27.5 per cent of
GDP over the past few years and reaching a staggering 37.9 per cent in 1998, at
a time when the country was being devastated by famine.77 Seoul's defence
expenditure seems much more modest in comparison, at a mere 3.5 per cent of
GDP. But when one compares the respective expenditures in absolute terms,
which is hardly ever done in official statistics, then the picture all of a sudden
looks very different. Given its superior economy, the 3.5 per cent of GDP that
Seoul spends on its military amounts to more than twice as much as the Northern
Korean expenses, no matter how excessive the latter appear in terms of percentage
of GDP.78 One does not need to be fluent in thetechno-strategic
language of security analysis to realize that over the years this unequal pattern of
defence spending has created a qualitative imbalance of military capacities on
the peninsula. And yet, the myth of the strong North Korean army, of 'the
world's third largest military capability', is as prevalent and as strongly hyped as
ever.79
Conclusion
This article has examined the underlying patterns that shaped the two Korean
nuclear crises of the last decade. In each case, in 1993-4 and in 2002-3, the crisis
allegedly emerged suddenly and was largely attributed to North Korea's
problematic behaviour, most notably to its nuclear brinkmanship. But a more
thorough analysis of the events reveals a far more complex picture. Given the
deeply entrenched antagonistic Cold War atmosphere on the peninsula, the
most recent crisis hardly comes as a surprise. Indeed, a crisis is always already
present: the question is simply when and how it is perceived and represented as
such.
Responsibility for the nuclear crisis is equally blurred. North Korea
undoubtedly bears a large part of it. Pyongyang has demonstrated repeatedly
that it does not shy away from generating tension to promote its own interests,
particularly when the survival of the regime is at stake. Even a primitive North
Korean nuclear programme poses a grave threat to the region, not least because
it could unleash a new nuclear arms race. But Pyongyang's actionshave not
taken place in a vacuum. They occurred in response to internal as well as
external circumstances. The central point to keep in mind here is that North
Korea has been subject to over half a century of clear and repeated American
nuclear threats. Few decision-makers and defence analysts realizethe extent to
which these threats have shaped the security dilemmas on the peninsula.
If one steps back from the immediate and highly emotional ideological
context that still dominates security interactions on the peninsula, then the
attitude and behaviour of North Korea and the US bear striking similarities.
Both have contributed a great deal to each other's fears. Both have also used
their fears to justify aggressive military postures. And both rely on a strikingly
similar form of crisis diplomacy. But the ensuing interactive dynamics are largely
hidden behind a rationalized security policy that presents threats in a onedimensional
manner. The image of North Korea as an evil and unpredictable
rogue state is so deeply entrenched that any crisis can easily be attributed to
Pyongyang's problematic actions, even in the face of contradictory evidence.
Keeping up this image, and the threat projections that are associated with it,
requires constant work. The specialized discourse on security and national defence
contributes to the performance of this task. It presents threats in a highly technical
manner and in a jargon-ridden language that is inaccessible to all but a few military
experts. As a result, a very subjective and largely one-sided interpretation of
security dilemmas has come to be accepted as real and politically legitimate.
Articles on defence issues usually end with policy recommendations. Not so
this one, even though much could be said about a great many crucial issues,
such as the possibility of involving China as a way of reaching a compromise
between Pyongyang's insistence on bilateral negotiations and Washington's
preference for a multilateral approach. But trying to identify the underlying
patterns of Korea's security dilemmas seems a big enough task on its own. This
conclusion, then, takes on a more modest tone and merely draws attention to
the type of mindset with which the challenges ahead may be approached more
successfully. Required more than anything is what Gertrude Stein sought to
capture through the metaphor that served as a model for the title of this article:80
the political and moral obligation to question the assumption that something is
how it is and how it has always been; the need to replace old and highly
problematic Cold War thinking patterns with new and more sensitive attempts
to address the dilemmas of Korean security.
Summarized:
each time the US used an aggressive policy topressure North Korea
into giving way, the latter became more recalcitrant. By contrast,when Washington
relied on a more cooperative attitude Pyongyang usually respondedwith
concessions. Tension on the Korean peninsula thus decreased onlywhen the
US adopted a 'give-and-take' diplomatic style in recognitionthat Pyongyang's
recalcitrance can, and should, be read as a bargaining tactic to getsomething in
return for giving up the nuclear option.
As usual, this situation comes as no surprise. But i'm almost willing to put money on it that Korea is not simply doing thisfor the sake of doing it. It is likely a response to US policy.
A rogue is a rogue is a rogue:
US foreign policy and the Korean nuclear crisis
ROLAND BLEIKER
We'll kill every son of a %@@#@ north of the forward edge of the battle area, and wewon't
retreat one inch.
US General James F. Hollingsworth, at the Korean DMZ,1974
We're a peaceful people … travelling south on that road, the people of the Northwould
see not a threat, but a miracle of peaceful development.
US President George W. Bush, at the Korean DMZ,2002
Dealing with communist North Korea has become one of the most difficult
challenges in global politics today. Totalitarian and reclusive, ideologically isolated
and economically ruined, it is the inherent 'other' in a globalized and neoliberal
world order. And yet North Korea goes on surviving, not least because its
leaders periodically rely on threats to gain concessions from the international
community. The latest such attempt was signalled in the autumn of 2002, when
Pyongyang admitted to a secret nuclear weapons programme and subsequently
withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Thereafter the
situation rapidly deteriorated. By early 2003 both the US and North Korea were
threatening each other with outright war. Even Japan, adopting its most militaristic
posture in decades, publicly contemplated the possibility of a pre-emptive
strike against North Korea.3
The dangers of North Korea's nuclear brinkmanship are evident. Miscalculation
or a sudden escalation of tension could precipitate a human disaster at any
moment. Equally dangerous, although much less evident, are the confrontational
and militaristic attitudes with which some of the key regional and global players,
most notably the United States, seek to contain the situation. The problems
associated with these approaches have been largely obscured by Washington's
apparent willingness to de-escalate the crisis through negotiations. 'I believe this
is not a military show-down,' stressed President George W. Bush. 'This is a
diplomatic show down.'4 Much has been made of the difference between this
tolerant approach and the far more aggressive stance taken in respect ofIraq,
where war was presented as the only possibility of preventing a dangerous
escalation towards the use by the Baghdad regime of weapons of massdestruction.
The situation was particularly paradoxical since Pyongyang publicly admittedto
its nuclear ambition and asked inspectors from the International AtomicEnergy
Agency (IAEA) to leave the country. Baghdad, by contrast, denied possessing
weapons of mass destruction and admitted inspectors for the specific purposeof
verifying its claims.5
The reluctance to use force against North Korea obscures the fact that US
foreign policy is guided by a largely consistent approach towards the phenomenon
of so-called 'rogue' states. That war was not advocated in Korea is a
reflection of diplomatic constraints and, above all, strategic limitations. South
Korea's then newly elected president, Roh Moo-hyun, strongly opposed a
military solution to the problem. Perhaps even more importantly, the consequences
of an escalation in Korea would be hard to contain. One of the world's
biggest cities, Seoul, is only 50 kilometres away from the heavily militarized
'Demilitarized Zone'(DMZ) that separates North Korea from the South. Even
if pre-emptive strikes were to neutralize North Korea's possible nuclear arsenal,
they would not be able to destroy all its conventional weapons. The latter alone
could easily trigger a second Korean war, with disastrous consequences on all
sides.
The purpose of this article is to examine the role of the United States in the
Korean nuclear crisis, for no aspect of the past and present dilemmas on the
peninsula can be addressed or even understood without recourse to the US.
This is why China repeatedly stressed that the latest nuclear crisis was primarily
an issue between North Korea and the United States.6 Kim Dae-jung, in his
final speech as South Korea's president, reiterated the same theme: 'more than
anything, dialogue between North Korea and the United States is the important
key to a solution.'7 A solution is, however, farfrom reach. Both the US and
North Korea see the other as a threat. And each has good reasons for doing so.
But each is also implicated in the production of this threat. The problem is that
these interactive dynamics are hard to see, for the West tends toproject a very
one-sided image of North Korea-one that sees it solely as a rogue outlaw,and
thus a source of danger and instability. Nicolas Eberstadt, forinstance, stresses
that 'North Korean policies and practices have accounted for most of the
volatility within the Northeast Asian region since the end of the Cold War.'8
Very few policy-makers, security analysts and journalists ever make the effort to
imagine how threats are perceived from the North Korean perspective, or consider
how these perceptions are part of an interactive security dilemma in which
the West, and US foreign policy in particular, is implicated as deeply as the
vilified regime in Pyongyang.
The central argument of this article is that the image of North Korea as a
'rogue state' severely hinders both an adequate understanding and apossible
resolution of the crisis. The rhetoric of rogue states is indicative of howUS
foreign policy continues to be driven by dualistic and militaristic Cold War
thinking patterns. The 'Evil Empire' may be gone; not sothe underlying need
to define safety and security with reference to an external threat that must be
warded off at any cost. Rogues are among the new threat-images that serve to
demarcate the line between good and evil. As during the Cold War, military
means are considered the key tool with which this line is to be defended. In the
absence of a global power that matches the US, this militaristic attitude has, if
anything, even intensified. Look at Washington's recent promulgation of a preemptive
strike policy against rogue states. The consequences of this posture are
particularly fateful in Korea, for it reinforces half a century of explicit and
repeated nuclear threats against the government in Pyongyang. The impact of
these threats has been largely obscured, not least because the highly technical
and specialized discourse of security analysis has enabled the US to present the
strategic situation on the peninsula in a manner that misleadingly attributes
responsibility for the crisis solely to North Korea's actions.
A brief disclaimer is in order at this point. I offer neither a comprehensive
review of the Korean security situation nor a detailed analysis of the latest
events. As a result, there will be little mention of some admittedly crucial issues,
such as the role of China or the increasingly problematic rift between Washington
and Seoul. Instead, I identify broad patterns of conflict and embark on a conceptual
engagement with some of the ensuing dilemmas. Focusing on underlying
trends inevitably entails glossing over nuances at times. For instance, there
are heated debates between hawks and doves within Washington's policy circles,
and as a result periods dominated by hard-line realist positions have alternated
with periods during which softer and more liberal policies prevailed. But the
persistent pattern of seeing North Korea as a rogue state is far more striking, and
in many ways far more significant, than the strategic policy manoeuvring that
takes place within these patterns. Focusing on the big picture also entails departing
from some of the conventions that prevail in the field of strategic and
security studies. Contrary to most treatments of the subject, I do not discuss the
technical aspects of nuclear and other weapons, except to show, as indicated
above, how these very discussions, jargon-ridden and inaccessible as they are to
any but military experts, often serve to stifle debate about some of the underlying
political and ethical issues.9
Patterns of action and reaction: the first nuclear crisis
The first nuclear crisis in Korea started to emerge in the early 1990s. Although
Pyongyang had signed the NPT in 1985, it seemed to have retained its ambition
to develop a nuclear weapons programme. That, at least, was the import of US
intelligence reports, which detected a plutonium processing plant in Yongbyon.
Various negotiation rounds followed. In 1992 North Korea agreed to have its
nuclear facility inspected by the IAEA. But only a few months later serious
disagreements over inspections became evident, and in March 1993 North
Korea declared its intention to withdraw from the NPT. Although Pyongyang
agreed a few weeks later to suspend its withdrawal, the peninsula was soon
plunged into an intense crisis. William Perry, then US Secretary of Defense,
considered the subsequent escalation the only time during his tenure when he
'believed that the US was in serious danger of a major war'.10As a result of
various interventions, such as a semi-private visit to Pyongyang by former US
president Jimmy Carter, a deal was reached. In an agreement signed in October
1994 Pyongyang consented to freeze its nuclear programme. In return, the US
promised a number of compensations, including the delivery of aid and heating
oil and the eventual construction of two light-water nuclear reactors that would
provide North Korea with energy sources.
One of the most revealing interpretations of the dynamics that led to the
crisis and its resolution was conducted by Leon Sigal. In a counter-reading of
US nuclear diplomacy towards North Korea in the years leading up to the crisis,
Sigal documents how coercive diplomacy brought Korea to the brink of war.
He writes of a US foreign policy pattern that discouraged cooperation and,
instead, promoted a 'crime-and-punishment approach' which constituted
North Korea above all as a threatening rogue state. While acknowledging the
numerous instances that would, indeed, give rise to such an image, Sigal also
deals with the interactive nature of the conflict. In a crucial passage he asks why,
if North Korea was allegedly so keen on developing nuclear weapons and had
numerous opportunities to do so, did it not simply go ahead and build bombs.
Sigal's answers highlight Washington's inability to recognize that North Korea
was playing 'tit-for-tat in nuclear diplomacy'.11 Some of Sigal's arguments have
become controversial. He has, for instance, been accused of downplaying
North Korea's failure to uphold its obligations. That may well be the case; but
at a more fundamental level Sigal is nevertheless able to reveal a striking empirical
pattern:each time the US used an aggressive policy topressure North Korea
into giving way, the latter became more recalcitrant. By contrast,when Washington
relied on a more cooperative attitude Pyongyang usually respondedwith
concessions. Tension on the Korean peninsula thus decreased onlywhen the
US adopted a 'give-and-take' diplomatic style in recognitionthat Pyongyang's
recalcitrance can, and should, be read as a bargaining tactic to getsomething in
return for giving up the nuclear option.12
From detente to the second nuclear crisis
Once that first nuclear crisis was solved in 1994, all parties concerned embarked
on a more cooperative route. The inauguration of Kim Dae-jung as South
Korea's president in early 1998 signalled the advent of a policy that was more
conciliatory, or at last more willing to engage the arch-enemy across the dividing
line. The US administration under President Clinton was strongly supportive of
this approach. Of particular significance here is an official policy review,
conducted by then former Defense Secretary Perry. In some respects the report
advocated little new. It called for a realist approach based on 'a hard-headed
understanding of military realities', which, translated into practice, meant no
changes to Washington's 'strong deterrent posture towards the Korean Peninsula'.
Not surprisingly, the Perry Report located the main threat in North
Korea's ambition to acquire nuclear weapons or to develop, test and deploy
long-range missiles. 'The United States must, therefore, have as its objective
ending these activities.'13 At the same time,though, the Perry Report called for
a fundamental review of US policy towards Pyongyang, advocating a position
that rests not only on military deterrence, but also on a 'new, comprehensive
and integrated approach' to negotiations with North Korea.14In some sense the
report sought to promulgate the very tit-for-tat approach that Sigal found
missing during the early days of the Clinton administration. The new policy still
revolved around a strong defensive posture and an inherent distrust of North
Korea, but it also foresaw the possibility of rewarding Pyongyang for concessions.
In this respect the Perry Report signified a remarkable departure from
the US position of viewing rogue states as inherently evil, irrational and
incapable of compromising.
The more nuanced policy attitudes in Washington and Seoul soon led to
several breakthroughs, including the lifting of restrictions on trade with,investment
in and travel to North Korea. Pyongyang responded in turn with a variety
of gestures, such as a gradual (although still very timid) opening of itsborders,
agreements on family exchanges with the South and a tuning down of itshostile
rhetoric. The process of detente culminated in June 2000 with a historicsummit
meeting between the two Korean heads of state, Kim Jong-il and Kim Daejung.
The symbolic significance of this meeting cannot beoverestimated. Bruce
Cumings goes as far as arguing that 'Bill Clinton and the two Korean leaders did
more to lessen tensions in Korea than all the heads of state going back to the
country's division in 1945.'15 Others wouldundoubtedly disagree, interpreting
Clinton's approach to North Korea as a dangerous policy of appeasement,
which needed to be rectified with a return to a more principled form of realpolitik.
In any event, detente in Korea did not last long. It was soon replaced
with a return to familiar Cold War thinking patterns and conflict-prone
behaviour.
According to conventional media and policy accounts, the second nuclear
crisis emerged suddenly in the autumn of 2002. The official and largely accepted
storyline is perfectly captured by a passage in one of Europe's leading news
magazines. Writing in February 2003, the author presents the crisis as follows:
The dispute over Pyongyang's nuclear programme began in October last year. North
Korea admitted that it had secretly pursued plans for enriching uranium. Then the
government threw international inspectors out of the country and withdrew from the
nuclear nonproliferation treaty.16
North Korea's admission came as a shock to the international community. It
was described as 'the mother of all confessions'.17Fears increased dramatically a
few months later, when Pyongyang officially announced that it would restart its
nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. US intelligence assessments concluded that North
Korea might be able to turn out enough plutonium to produce five nuclear
weapons by the summer.18 Add to this a renewedintensification of North
Korea's hostile rhetoric, including threats to turn Seoul into a 'sea of fire', and
you have a full-blown crisis on the peninsula. The overall verdict thus seemed
clear: 'Pyongyang is responsible for the crisis that has ensued because it broke the
earlier agreement to scrap its nuclear program in return for energy assistance.'19
Or so goes the prevalent interpretation of events. But one could, and indeed
should, stress exactly the same point as Sigal did with respect to the first nuclear
crisis: 'the standard account is wrong.'20 Thisis not to say that the above events
did not occur, or that North Korea's nuclear weapons programme does not
pose a serious threat to regional and world peace. Rather, the point is that the
official account is, at minimum, a one-sided and highly inadequate portrayal of
events.The crisis did not emerge out of the blue in October 2002, norcan it be
attributed solely to North Korea's actions, highly problematic as theyundoubtedly
are. Like any crisis, this one resulted from a sustained interaction of
threat perceptions, actions and reactions to them. It was rootedin entrenched
antagonisms and established conflict patterns, involving a variety of different
actors, each playing its role in constituting the crisis.
Before going on it must be stressed that the task of this article is not to explore
in detail the role of these perceptions. There is already an extensive literature on
the subject.21 Applying this body of knowledge to theKorean peninsula would
go far beyond what is possible in the space available here. Accordingly I will
examine threat perceptions only as far as is necessary to demonstrate that the
rhetoric of rogue states obstructs an adequate understanding of the security
situation in Korea.
The role of American nuclear threats
Let us, for the sake of understanding the interactive dimensions of the crisis,
contemplate for a moment how it must have appeared from the vantage point
of North Korea's decision-makers. The first and undoubtedly most striking
feature to notice from Pyongyang would be the long and unbroken period of
American nuclear hegemony in East Asia. Equally obvious and understandable
is that this hegemonic practice would have been-and indeed was-interpreted
as a clear threat to North Korea's security.
The US remains the only nation ever to have used nuclear weapons in a
combat situation, and this in very close proximity to Korea, in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. During the Korean War the US entertained employing nuclear
weapons against North Korea and China as part of its 'massive retaliation'
doctrine. General Douglas MacArthur specifically requested permission to use
26 nuclear bombs to attack specifically designated targets. His successor, General
Matthew Ridgeway, renewed the request. In the end no nuclear weapons were
used, although the newly inaugurated president, Dwight Eisenhower, hinted in
1953 that the US would employ them in the event of the armistice negotiations
failing to make progress.22 Soon after the Korean War,in January 1958, the US
introduced ground-based nuclear weapons to South Korea, which constituted a
direct violation of the armistice agreement.23 Thismove did not occur in
response to a specific North Korean threat, but was part of a more general
worldwide reorganization of American military strategy.24 The weapons were
kept close to the border with the North. Don Oberdorfer even reported that
'nuclear warheads had been flown by helicopter almost routinely to the edge of
the DMZ in training exercises.'25 The very natureof these exercises was a public
threat to North Korea. Consider, for instance, how the yearly joint manoeuvres
between the US and South Korea, named 'Team Spirit', revolved around an
unnecessarily aggressive north-bound scenario. They stressed, as Moon Chungin
puts it, 'bold and vigorous strikes into the enemy's rear' as part of an overall
'offensive military strategy'.26
The deployment of American nuclear weapons in South Korea was an
important element of American nuclear hegemony in the Pacific. It was one of
the central military components around which regional security alliances were
formed. Peter Hayes stresses that this nuclear strategy remained a 'completely
unilateral American activity'.27 Neither SouthKorea nor any other US ally was
given a say in operational decisions, which always remained under the sole control
of Washington. Moreover, North Korea has never consented to the deployment
of nuclear weapons on its soil, either by the Soviet Union or by China. It
has not even accommodated foreign military personnel, at least not after the last
Chinese troops left in 1958.28 This contrasts quitesharply to the continued
presence of US soldiers in South Korea-almost 40,000 at the time of writing.
American nuclear weapons were withdrawn from South Korea in the early
1990s. Analyses differ on the exact reasons for this withdrawal. Donald Gregg,
then US ambassador to South Korea, suggests that it was a gesture of goodwill
designed to facilitate negotiations with North Korea.29 Other US officials
indicate that it was a more tactical move, linked to experiences in the first Gulf
War that suggested high-yield conventional weapons might actually be more
useful than nuclear ones in the context of a controllable regional battlefield.30
Be that as it may, the withdrawal of American nuclear warheads from Korean
soil hardly removed the nuclear threat from the peninsula. Long-range US
nuclear missiles could still easily reach North Korea-a fact of which Pyongyang
was frequently reminded, both directly and less directly.
The interactive dynamic of the nuclear crisis
American nuclear threats towards Pyongyang intensified again whenWashington's
Korea policy became more hawkish with the inauguration of President
George W. Bush. In his State of the Union Address of February2002, Bush
singled out North Korea as one of three nations belonging to an 'axis of evil',
citing as evidence Pyongyang's export of ballistic missile technology and its
lingering ambition to become a nuclear power.31 Thissudden turnaround in
American foreign policy, which sharply reversed the more conciliatory approach
pursued during the Clinton administration, can be seen as the origin of the
present nuclear crisis in Korea just as well as any actions or announcements by
Pyongyang. In June 2002 details became public of a Nuclear Posture Review,
according to which a key plank of the new US strategic doctrine was the
possibility of making pre-emptive nuclear strikes against terrorists and rogue
states. North Korea was explicitly cited with regard to two possible scenarios:
countering an attack on the South and halting the proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction. Mention was made, for instance, of 'using tactical nuclear
weapons to neutralize hardened artillery positions aimed at Seoul, the South
Korean capital'.32 A few months later Washingtonmade its threats official. The
new National Security Strategy, released in September 2002, outlined in detail
the legitimacy of pre-emptive strikes and how they would be employed as a way
to 'stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or
use weapons of mass destruction against the United States'.33
Faced with a sudden intensification of American nuclear threats, it ishardly
surprising that Pyongyang reacted angrily and called Washington officials'nuclear
lunatics'.34 Nor is itsurprising that Pyongyang is reluctant to give up its nuclear
option, for it could serve as a credible deterrent against a US attack. Indeed,the
desire for such a deterrent only mirrors the attitude and behaviour of theUS.
Declassified intelligence documents, which became available after thecollapse
of communist regimes in eastern Europe, do indeed reveal that from the 1980s
on North Korea perceived itself as increasingly weak and vulnerable toexternal
attacks.35 This is why theprime objective of the government in Pyongyang has
moved, as many commentators now recognize, from forcible unification of the
peninsula to the simple task of regime survival.36 But very few Western decisionmakers
have the sensitivity to recognize these factors and take them into
account when formulating their policies. Donald Gregg is a rare example of a
senior American diplomat who acknowledges that 'the US scares North Korea.'37
But even he could make such an admission in public only once he had retired
from all his official functions.
In view of the above reinterpretation of events, the question ofresponsibility
for the recurring nuclear crises in Korea becomes very blurred. Onecould point
out, as several commentators have done, that before October 2002 North Korea
had by and large complied with the terms of the 1994 agreement. This wasconfirmed
not only by the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization,
but also by CIA director George J. Tenet, who gave a respective testimony to
Congress on 19 March 2002.38 The 'mother of all confessions' does, of course,
put this interpretation in perspective. But it is still unclear when and to what
extent North Korea secretly restarted its nuclear weapons programme. Itis
undisputed, however, that the US did not live up to the AgreedFramework.
Construction of the two light-water reactors promised to North Korea wasfive
years behind schedule. Long before the most recent crisis unfolded, thepromised
annual fuel deliveries came under increasing threat because of high oil
prices and opposition from influential conservative elements within the US
Congress.39 Perhaps mostimportantly, the very existence of longstanding
American nuclear threats against North Korea is not only contrary to thespirit
of the 1994 agreement, but also a direct violation of the internationalnonproliferation
regime, which states that 'countries without nuclear weapons must
not be threatened by those who possess them.'40
The point is not to attribute responsibility for the re-emergence of a nuclear
crisis on the peninsula. Both the US and North Korea have done a great deal to
fuel each other's fears. But decision-makers in Washington haveclearly not been
sufficiently aware of their own role in generating fears andcounter-reactions.
Nor have they learned much from the lesson of the first nuclear crisis. Consider,
for instance, how the US has quickly forgotten, or ignored, a number ofrather
striking concessions that Pyongyang made in the period leading up to the
second crisis. North Korea started to open up its borders; it accommodatedseveral
hundred representatives of foreign aid organizations; increased cooperation
with (capitalist) Russia; sought to normalize relations with Japan; and enteredinto
diplomatic relations with a dozen Western countries. There were stepstowards
domestic reform, such as the introduction of quasi-market principles and theopening
of special economic zones. There was also progress towards a rapprochement
with the South, most notably in domains such as family exchange visits,business
contacts and cultural programmes. Pyongyang started to clear mines in theDMZ
and worked towards establishing road and railway links with the South. North
Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, even publicly agreed to a continuousdeployment
of US troops in South Korea. He stressed that their presence is a threat onlyas
long as the relationship between North Korea and the US remainshostile.41
This in itself could be seen as the 'mother of all concessions', for theremoval of
US troops had been one of North Korea's key demands for decades.42
Instead of appreciating and building on these concessions, US foreign policy
towards North Korea focused on Pyongyang's lingering nuclearambition. But
not everyone believed Pyongyang when it declared in October 2002 that it had
never ceased its nuclear programme. The Russian foreign minister, for instance,
called the admission a North Korean tactical 'manoeuvre'.43Neither claim can be
empirically verified, but that is not the main point. More important is the fact
that the US failed to pay attention to a series of rather obvious North Korean
gestures long before the crisis was acknowledged as such in October. North
Korea's anxiety began to grow with President Bush's 'axis of evil' speech in
February. An official North Korean spokesperson, Kim Myong Chol, then told
a New York Times journalist, Nicholas Kristof, that heforesaw 'a crisis beginning
in the latter half of this year'. North Korea, he suggested, 'will respond to the
breakdown of the nuclear deal . . . by starting its nuclear program and resuming its
missiles tests'.44 That is, of course, preciselywhat happened eight months later.
It is striking how closely North Korea's approach in 2002-3 paralleled its
behaviour during the crisis of 1993-4. Pyongyang most likely assumed, as it did
a decade earlier, that a hard-line US administration would not engage in serious
dialogue until North Korea threatened to withdraw from the NPT. Scott Snyder,
in an extensive study of Pyongyang's approach during the first crisis, speaks of a
'crisis-oriented negotiation style' that is rooted in North Korea's particular historical
experience, most notably the role that some of its leaders played in guerilla
activities against the Japanese colonial occupation. Snyder writes of a remarkably
rational and entirely consistent approach-one that relies on 'threats, bluff, and
forms of blackmail to extract maximal concession from a negotiating counterpart'.45
Even the dramatic language that shocked the world media in early 2003 was
entirely predictable. The apocalyptic threat to turn Seoul into a 'sea of fire', for
instance, was literally a rehearsed metaphor from the first crisis.46It is part of an
all-too-predictable emotional vocabulary that has prevailed in North Korea's
press for decades. Once translated into standard English it is not very different
from the more rationally expressed US threat of pre-emptive nuclear strikes.
One can agree or disagree with North Korea's dramatic brinkmanship tactic,
but one cannot ignore its deeply entrenched existence without risking dangerous
miscalculation. At minimum, doing so prevents us from recognizing how
Pyongyang may be using its last bargaining chip, its nuclear potential, as away
of entering into dialogue with the US. In case this was not clearfrom North
Korea's behaviour during the first crisis, Kim Myong Chol stressed the same
point again in the above mentioned conversation with Nicholas Kristof. In
February 2002, several months before the crisis escalated, Kim pointed out that
'North Korea cannot kill the heavy-weight champion, the U.S. But it can
maim one of his limbs, and so the heavyweight champion will not want to fight.
That is the North Korean logic.'47 The logic may beflawed, as Kristof notes,
but it is entirely consistent with Pyongyang's attitude during the first crisis. It
demonstrates that Pyongyang had no interest in a military confrontation with
the US. Indeed, North Korea's press repeatedly stressed that the firstnuclear
crisis 'was settled through negotiations' and that this proved the presentissue
could be solved in the same manner.48Pyongyang wanted guarantees and
concessions. And its demands were not particularly outrageous. For years
Pyongyang has requested a non-aggression pact as well as bilateralnegotiations
with the US, leading to a normalization of the relationship between the two
countries, or at least to a recognition of each other'ssovereignty.49 The US, by
contrast, has always preferred multilateral negotiations and demanded North
Korean disarmament prior to a normalization ofrelations.
Despite numerous and obvious signs, and despite detailed and insightful
studies of North Korea's previous negotiation behaviour, in 2003 US decisionmakers
repeated exactly the same mistakes made during the first crisis: they
believed that by demonizing North Korea as an evil rogue state they could force
Pyongyang into concessions. Whether this policy resulted from ignorance or
specific design remains open to debate. The bottom line is that the USposition
was firm: 'America and the world will not be blackmailed,' stressedPresident
Bush in his 2003 State of the Union Address.50 The result was predictable:
Pyongyang became more recalcitrant. A new nuclear crisis started to takehold
of the Korean peninsula.
Mutual crisis diplomacy, or the contradictions of hawk engagement
The conflict pattern had been set long before the latest crisis unfolded. Several
scholars, most notably Bruce Cumings and Hazel Smith, have for years drawn
attention to Washington's inability to see North Korea as anything but a dangerous
and unpredictable rogue state.51 A look at the deeplyembedded nature of this
policy attitude is thus in order, even if it entails a brief detour from the immediate
issue of Korean security. Central here is the transition from the Cold War
to a new world order. While the global Cold War power structures collapsed
like a house of cards, the mindsets that these structures produced turned out to
be far more resilient. Cold War thinking patterns remain deeply entrenched in
US foreign policy, not least because virtually all of its influential architects rose
to power or passed their formative political years during the Cold War. As a
result, security has in essence remained a dualistic affair: an effort to protect a
safe inside from a threatening outside. Once the danger of communism had
vanished, security had to be articulated with reference to a new Feindbild, a new
threatening other that could provide a sense of identity, order and safety at
home. 'I'm running out of demons. I'm running out of villains,' said US general
Colin Powell in 1991. 'I'm down to Castro and Kim Il Sung.'52
Rogue states were among the new threat images that rose to prominence
when Cold War ideological schism gave way to a more blurred picture ofglobal
politics.53 And North Koreabecame the rogue par excellence the totalitarian
state that disregards human rights and aspires to possess weapons of mass
destruction; the one that lies outside the sphere of good and is to bewatched,
contained and controlled. But there is far more to this practice of'othering'
than meets the eye. Robert Dujarric hits the nail on the head whenidentifying
why some of the key rogue states, such as North Korea, Iraq, Iran or Libya,are
constituted as 'rogue' by the US. It cannot be their authoritarian natureand
their human rights violations alone, for many other states, including SaudiArabia
and Egypt, have an equally appalling record. Nor can it be that theypossess or
aspire to possess weapons of mass destruction. Otherwise states like India,Pakistan
or Israel would be constituted as rogues too. Dujarric stresses that roguestates
above all share one common characteristic: 'they are small or mediumnations
that have achieved some success in thwarting American policy.'54
The tendency to demonize rogue states considerably intensified following the
terrorist attacks on New York and Washington of 11 September 2001. For some
policy-makers and political commentators, the American reaction to these events
signified a fundamentally new approach to foreign policy. US Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld heralds the arrival of 'new ways of thinking and new ways of
fighting'.55 Stephen Walt, likewise, speaks of'the most rapid and dramatic change
in the history of US foreign policy'.56 Significantchanges did, indeed, take
place. The inclusion of a preventive first-strike option, for instance, is a radical
departure from previous approaches, which revolved around a more defenceoriented
military policy. But at a more fundamental, conceptual level, there is
far more continuity than change in the US position. Indeed, one can clearly detect a
strong desire to return to the reassuring familiarity of dualistic and militaristic
thinking patterns that dominated foreign policy during the Cold War. The new
US foreign policy re-established the sense of order and certitude that had
existed during the Cold War: an inside/outside world in which, according to
the words of President George W. Bush, 'you are either with us or against us.'57
Once again, the world is divided into 'good' and 'evil'; once again, military
means occupy a key, if not the only, role in protecting the former against the
latter. 'The opposition between good and evil is not negotiable,' Allan Bloom
noted at the time of Ronald Reagan's presidency. It is a question of principles,
and thus 'a cause of war'.58 Expressed in otherwords, the rhetoric of evil moves
the concept of rogue states into the realm of irrationality. 'Evil' is in essence a
term of condemnation for a phenomenon that can neither be fully comprehended
nor addressed other than through militaristic forms of dissuasion and
retaliation. This is why various commentators believe that the rhetoric of evil is
an 'analytical cul de sac' that prevents, rather than encourages, understanding.
Some go as far as arguing that a rhetoric of evil entails an 'evasion of accountability',
for the normative connotations of the term inevitably lead to policy
positions that 'deny negotiations and compromise'.59How is it, indeed, possible
to negotiate with evil without being implicated in it?
The contradictions between the rhetoric of evil and the requirements for dialogue
have become particularly evident during the most recent nuclear crisis in Korea.
All top US officials publicly stressed one common theme: that 'there is no reason
why discussion about confidence-building measures cannot take place with
Pyongyang.'60 At the very same time, though, theprojection of threats towards
North Korea was carefully maintained, even intensified. 'All options are on the
table,' including military action, stressed President Bush.61Powell, likewise, underlined
that 'no military option's been taken off the table.'62The assumption behind
this approach is that including North Korea in an 'axis of evil' does not necessarily
preclude the possibility of engaging it in dialogue. Indeed, the assumption
is that threats will induce dialogue. William Safire expresses this strategy in
blunt but entirely appropriate words: 'We make clear to weapons traders in the
North that their illicit nuclear production is vulnerable to air attack from a nation
soon to show its disarmament bona fides in Baghdad … That readiness will
bring about what diplomats call "fruitful, regional, multilateral negotiation".'63
'Hawk engagement' has emerged as a term to describe the new and much
tougher US stance.64 It is striking how much thispolicy position resembles
North Korea's vilified tactic of nuclear brinkmanship. Just as Pyongyang does,
Washington explicitly threatens the opponent it allegedly wants to engage in
dialogue. And it advances policies that intentionally create a crisis in order to
win concessions from its arch-enemy. As a result, it is not surprising that the few
contacts which have taken place between the US and North Korea can hardly
be called negotiations, let alone fruitful ones. Consider the famous encounter
that took place in Pyongyang in October 2002, during which North Korean
officials made the 'mother of all confessions'. The US team, led by envoy James
Kelly, was the most senior group of American officials to visit North Korea
since the inauguration of President Bush and his adoption of a more confrontational
policy. Pyongyang was clearly hoping for a resumption of dialogue, but
instead encountered a US team acting in what they perceived was a highly
'arrogant manner'. Even Western diplomats who observed the events agreed.
'These were not negotiations,' stressed one of them. 'Kelly immediately started
with accusations.'65 The next day North Koreanofficials predictably returned
to their own well-practised crisis diplomacy. They upped the ante and admitted
to a nuclear weapons programme, fictive or not.
The concealing power of security expertise
Why is it so difficult to deal with, or even recognize, the interactive dynamics of
security dilemmas? Why is it still possible to present as rational and credible the
view that North Korea alone is responsible for yet another nuclear crisis on the
peninsula? And why have militaristic approaches to security come to be seen as
the only realistic way of warding off the perceived threat, even though they are
quite obviously implicated in the very dynamic that led to its emergence in the
first place?
Answers to these complex questions are, of course, not easy to find. I certainly
do not pretend to offer them here. But at least some aspects can be understood
by observing the central role that defence analysis plays in the articulation of
security policy. The latter has in essence been reduced to discussions about
military issues which, in turn, are presented in a highly technical manner.
Consider a random example from one of many recent 'expert' treatises on
North Korea's missile programme:
If North Korea launches a ballistic missile attack on South Korean airfields andharbors,
it could seriously impede Flexible Deterrence Options (FDO) operations by US forces.
The argument has been made that even if the North uses ballistic missiles, the accuracy
or circular error probable (CEP) of the Rodong-1 (about 1 km) is such that it would not
be able to undertake airstrike missions.66
A fundamental paradox emerges: 0n the one hand, an array of abstract
acronyms and metaphors has removed our understanding of security issues further
and further from the realities of conflict and war. On the other hand, we have
become used to these distorting metaphors to the point that the language of
defence analysis has become the most accepted-and by definition most credible
and rational-way of assessing issues of security. The ensuing practices of political
legitimization provides experts-those fluent in the techno-strategic language
of abstraction-not only with the knowledge, but also with the moral authority
to comment on issues of defence.67
Experts on military technologies have played an essential role in constructing
North Korea as a threat and in reducing or eliminating from our purview the
threat that emanates from the US and South Korea towards the North. The
political debate over each side's weapons potential, for instance, is articulated in
highly technical terms. Even if non-experts manage to decipher the jargonpacked
language in which defence issues are presented, they often lack the
technical expertise to verify the claims thus advanced, even though those claims
are used to legitimize important political decisions. As a result, the technostrategic
language of defence analysis has managed to place many important
security issues beyond the reach of political and moral discussions.
For decades, the US and South Korea have argued that the military balance
on the peninsula represents one of the most severe imbalancesin military power
anywhere in the world.68 During the late 1980s, forinstance, North Korean
troops were said to outnumber South Koreans by 840,000 to 650,000, with the
North enjoying an even greater advantage in tanks, aircraft and naval forces.69
The South Korean Defense White Paper at the time argued that its military
power was only 65 per cent of North Korea's, and that a military balance would
not be reached until after the year 2000.70 But on theeve of the year 2000 the
refrain remained exactly the same. The 1999 Defense White Paper still insisted
that 'North Korea has the quantitative upper hand in troops and weaponry, and
it possesses strong capabilities of conducting mobile warfare designed to succeed
in a short-term blitzkrieg.'71 Virtually allofficial defence statistics present a
seemingly alarming North Korean presence. They juxtapose, for instance, North
Korea's 1,170,000 standing forces against the 690,000 of the South, its 78 brigades
against the 19, its 23,001 armoured vehicles against the 2,400, its 50 submarines
against 6, etc., etc., etc.72
Articulated from the privileged vantage point of the state, the strategic studies
discourse acquires a degree of political and moral authority that goes far beyond
its empirically sustainable claims. For years scholars have questioned the accuracy
of the calculations and the political conclusions derived from them. Already in
the 1980s, critics pointed out that the official statistics compare quantity, not
quality, and that in terms of the latter the South enjoys a clear strategic advantage
over the North, even without including American nuclear and other weapons
stationed in or (possibly) directed towards the Korean peninsula.73These critiques
have intensified in recent years. In a detailed study of the subject,Moon
Chung-in argues that even without US nuclear support, 'South Korea isfar
superior to the North in military capacity', citing major quality differencesin
such realms as communication, intelligence, electronic warfare andcutting-edge
offensive weapons systems.74 Sigal, likewise, points out that the much feared onemillion-
man North Korean army is largely a fiction. About half of them, he
estimates, are either untrained or soldier-workers engaged in civilconstruction.
Many of North Korea's tanks and aircraft are obsolescent, leaving its'ground
forces and lines of supply vulnerable to attack from the air'.75 Humanitarian
workers, who have gained access to much of North Korea's territory inrecent
years, paint a similar picture. They stress, for instance, that 'the few tanksseen
on the road cannot get from one village to the next without breaking down or
running out of fuel.'76
The political manipulation of defence expenditure statistics perfectly illustrates
how technical data are used to project threats in a particular manner. Policymakers
and security experts keep drawing attention to North Korea's excessive
military expenditures. And excessive they are indeed, averaging 27.5 per cent of
GDP over the past few years and reaching a staggering 37.9 per cent in 1998, at
a time when the country was being devastated by famine.77 Seoul's defence
expenditure seems much more modest in comparison, at a mere 3.5 per cent of
GDP. But when one compares the respective expenditures in absolute terms,
which is hardly ever done in official statistics, then the picture all of a sudden
looks very different. Given its superior economy, the 3.5 per cent of GDP that
Seoul spends on its military amounts to more than twice as much as the Northern
Korean expenses, no matter how excessive the latter appear in terms of percentage
of GDP.78 One does not need to be fluent in thetechno-strategic
language of security analysis to realize that over the years this unequal pattern of
defence spending has created a qualitative imbalance of military capacities on
the peninsula. And yet, the myth of the strong North Korean army, of 'the
world's third largest military capability', is as prevalent and as strongly hyped as
ever.79
Conclusion
This article has examined the underlying patterns that shaped the two Korean
nuclear crises of the last decade. In each case, in 1993-4 and in 2002-3, the crisis
allegedly emerged suddenly and was largely attributed to North Korea's
problematic behaviour, most notably to its nuclear brinkmanship. But a more
thorough analysis of the events reveals a far more complex picture. Given the
deeply entrenched antagonistic Cold War atmosphere on the peninsula, the
most recent crisis hardly comes as a surprise. Indeed, a crisis is always already
present: the question is simply when and how it is perceived and represented as
such.
Responsibility for the nuclear crisis is equally blurred. North Korea
undoubtedly bears a large part of it. Pyongyang has demonstrated repeatedly
that it does not shy away from generating tension to promote its own interests,
particularly when the survival of the regime is at stake. Even a primitive North
Korean nuclear programme poses a grave threat to the region, not least because
it could unleash a new nuclear arms race. But Pyongyang's actionshave not
taken place in a vacuum. They occurred in response to internal as well as
external circumstances. The central point to keep in mind here is that North
Korea has been subject to over half a century of clear and repeated American
nuclear threats. Few decision-makers and defence analysts realizethe extent to
which these threats have shaped the security dilemmas on the peninsula.
If one steps back from the immediate and highly emotional ideological
context that still dominates security interactions on the peninsula, then the
attitude and behaviour of North Korea and the US bear striking similarities.
Both have contributed a great deal to each other's fears. Both have also used
their fears to justify aggressive military postures. And both rely on a strikingly
similar form of crisis diplomacy. But the ensuing interactive dynamics are largely
hidden behind a rationalized security policy that presents threats in a onedimensional
manner. The image of North Korea as an evil and unpredictable
rogue state is so deeply entrenched that any crisis can easily be attributed to
Pyongyang's problematic actions, even in the face of contradictory evidence.
Keeping up this image, and the threat projections that are associated with it,
requires constant work. The specialized discourse on security and national defence
contributes to the performance of this task. It presents threats in a highly technical
manner and in a jargon-ridden language that is inaccessible to all but a few military
experts. As a result, a very subjective and largely one-sided interpretation of
security dilemmas has come to be accepted as real and politically legitimate.
Articles on defence issues usually end with policy recommendations. Not so
this one, even though much could be said about a great many crucial issues,
such as the possibility of involving China as a way of reaching a compromise
between Pyongyang's insistence on bilateral negotiations and Washington's
preference for a multilateral approach. But trying to identify the underlying
patterns of Korea's security dilemmas seems a big enough task on its own. This
conclusion, then, takes on a more modest tone and merely draws attention to
the type of mindset with which the challenges ahead may be approached more
successfully. Required more than anything is what Gertrude Stein sought to
capture through the metaphor that served as a model for the title of this article:80
the political and moral obligation to question the assumption that something is
how it is and how it has always been; the need to replace old and highly
problematic Cold War thinking patterns with new and more sensitive attempts
to address the dilemmas of Korean security.
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btw, i wonder what George Bush would of done in this situation
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^ You didn't see the summary at the very beginning?
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I auto-scrolled down the page and was wondering when the text would stop.
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- Oct 15, 2008
no, i did not sir... good day
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what most of you all don't understand is that just because a country has a nuclear bomb does not mean it is going to use it. you're confusingcapability with willingness.
since the end of world war II, no nuclear arms have been used in any conflict. i don't see that changing any time soon. many nuclear arms scholars havesaid that when states finally do realize their nuclear ambitions, they also recognize the new power that they have, and it's often a very sobering effect.
you won't have world war III simply because all of these nations know it would be the absolute end of mankind. it's basic game theory/the securitydilemma.
since the end of world war II, no nuclear arms have been used in any conflict. i don't see that changing any time soon. many nuclear arms scholars havesaid that when states finally do realize their nuclear ambitions, they also recognize the new power that they have, and it's often a very sobering effect.
you won't have world war III simply because all of these nations know it would be the absolute end of mankind. it's basic game theory/the securitydilemma.
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Originally Posted by Hugo
^^^^ cliff notes please
btw, i wonder what George Bush would of done in this situation
Not sure how you miss a summary at the beginning of an article intended for people like you, but this is NT.............. smh.
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Originally Posted by retr0sxual
I auto-scrolled down the page and was wondering when the text would stop.