Keeping North Korea from the Brink – Part II

NEW YORK: Militant North Korea has put forth the ultimate plan to ensure global tranquility. In mid-December, the official Korean Central News Agency announced the country would give up its nuclear weapons—just so long as every other nation does so as well.

The offer, undoubtedly insincere, puts America on the spot. Washington started talking with North Korea about its bomb program in June 1993. Since then, the two nations have conducted discussions in every conceivable format. In August 2003, at Washington’s insistence, they initiated talks in a six-party setting—China, Russia, South Korea, and Japan joined the deliberations. Yet this multilateral effort has floundered like past negotiations. Last March Pyongyang proposed turning the ongoing discussions into “disarmament talks.” American officials managed to brush aside the proposal at the time, but now North Korea has raised the issue again.

It is unrealistic to think that Pyongyang will let the matter drop, especially because North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is allying himself with a popular cause. The Bush administration would like to develop a new generation of nukes to go along with a strategic doctrine that emphasizes their use to strike enemies, even non-nuclear ones. North Korea, by claiming it is unfair for the US to develop nuclear weapons for offensive purposes and not permit others to possess them for defense, is tapping into an argument that resonates in many quarters of the planet.

The world’s arms-control regime, embodied in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, rests on a two-tiered foundation. The NPT, as that global pact is called, permits five nations to possess nuclear weapons. The other 183 signatories do not have them—or at least are not supposed to. This structure has been surprisingly stable from the treaty’s inception in 1970. So far, the members of the lower tier of the nonproliferation treaty’s caste system have accepted their position largely because of their abhorrence of the bomb—the so-called “nuclear taboo.”

There are, however, signs that “nuclear apartheid” won’t last much longer. As globalization spreads economic wealth—and eventually geopolitical power—around the world, the current arms-control regime is under attack. With so many complaints, the have-nots will resist continuing with an arrangement that leaves them on the wrong end of the great divide. Countries are beginning to reframe the global discussion away from the aversion to these weapons, focusing instead on the discriminatory nature of a nonproliferation regime that freezes the military advantages of a select circle of nations. Now Kim is challenging the five recognized nuclear powers—the United States, Russia, Britain, France, and China—to follow through on their NPT pledges to engage in good faith efforts to disarm.

So far, the US nuclear umbrella has discouraged other nations from developing their own arsenals of atomic weaponry. South Korea and Taiwan, for instance, have abandoned their own bomb programs in return for security assurances from Washington. Japan has not weaponized its large plutonium stockpile for the same reason. Although these and other nations may not want America to disarm, many others do—and some of them are in a position to go nuclear. Algeria, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and even Brazil are perhaps a decade from acquiring the bomb if they accelerated their current efforts, and Iran is undoubtedly closer than that. Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency and the winner of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, estimates that forty nations or more could develop nuclear weapons within a few years’ time.

So Kim Jong Il needs to be disarmed soon because other leaders—especially Iran’s “atomic ayatollahs”—see him as the test case for Washington’s resolve and skill. In a contest determined by credibility and finesse as much as by raw might, the US will have to build worldwide momentum against North Korea’s nuclear program.

To do that, the US could make a dramatic gesture by unilaterally scrapping a large portion of its own weapons and asking other nuclear powers to do the same. Reduction of nuclear stockpiles around the world would not persuade Kim to give up his small arsenal—he would undoubtedly like to still have his finger on a button—but it would create the desire, and even the urgency, on the part of other nations to disarm him. With global momentum against him and without external support, the North Korean would have little alternative but to allow weapons inspectors to tread where even food-aid monitors cannot now go.

The counterintuitive aspect of this tactic—creating a global wave against North Korea by showing America’s cooperation with efforts to reduce nuclear terror—is that it carries virtually no cost for the US. American planners want to reduce the size of the nation’s strategic nuclear force anyway as it is far larger than necessary to counter existing threats. The Pentagon’s stockpile is so big and well protected that elimination of most of its nukes would have no discernable effect on either the nation’s security or its ability to protect allies.

The arsenal, even after a substantial reduction, could still survive a first strike by another nation, for instance. More than half of America’s warheads are carried on ballistic-missile submarines, which are undetectable when submerged. Each “boomer”—the US Navy has about nine of them on patrol at any one time and 14 altogether—is permitted under existing arms control rules to carry the destructive power of 1,536 Hiroshimas. Just one of a sub’s 24 missiles can make Central America uninhabitable for 150 years. The US president can give the order to eliminate all human life on this planet several times over. If he decides to reduce his arsenal so that he can kill everyone only once, are his constituents any less safe?

They certainly will be less safe if the US cannot disarm North Korea. Over time, every nation that wants the bomb will get the bomb. Eventually, terrorists will secure a nuclear device. Straight-line extrapolations are often wrong, but this scenario is compelling.

Our world is on the brink of an age more perilous than any other period in history, including the first two decades of the Cold War. It is comforting to think that we could meet tomorrow’s challenges with yesterday’s approaches, but that’s unrealistic. “There are times in history when the middle way does not work any more,” says a Bush administration official concerned about the lack of options regarding North Korea’s nukes. “We have worked our way into that.”

To obtain security in a far less structured environment, the existing nuclear powers will probably have to cooperate with one another and make concessions. Big reductions of arsenals and eventual disarmament may seem like extreme dreams, but there is no known alternative that is assured of preventing dozens of new nuclear states, some of them with links to terrorists, and the almost certain disintegration of global order.

Kim Jong Il has announced a challenge that cannot be indefinitely dismissed. At least for the moment, America can give up virtually nothing and still gain much in return. It’s unlikely the opportunity will last long.

Click here to read an excerpt from Gordon Chang's book, “Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World.”