China’s Mediation Backfires on North Korea

Washington: The collapse of US-North Korea talks in Beijing last week extinguished a slim hope that conflict could be avoided. The next likely US move - to pass a UN resolution censuring North Korea - may well bring a nuclear test or some other demonstration of strength, paving the way for a dangerous confrontation. North Korean brinkmanship may also provide grist to the mill of Washington's policy of regime change.

In an ironic twist, Washington's recent military victory in Iraq and diplomatic success in garnering Chinese support to curb North Korea's nuclear ambition may have pushed Pyongyang to shed all ambiguity in favor of a defiant nuclear posture. While the stunning US victory in Iraq confirmed North Korean fear about Washington's muscular policy in dealing with the 'Axis of Evil', some analysts believe North Korea's wakeup call came eleven days before the first bombs hit Baghdad. During a secret March 8 meeting in Pyongyang, pressure by Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen to lay off the nuclear path may have been the last straw for North Korea. (Qian had been in Seoul the previous week to consult with South Korean leaders.) Fearing total diplomatic isolation, North Korea switched to what it calls songun, or "military first", a policy of relying on military means and brandishing nuclear weapons as the sole deterrent against an impending American assault.

Officials see the direct hand of the military in the manner in which the normally super-cautious North Korean diplomats delivered the blunt warning. On April 24, on the margin of the three-way talk hosted by China, North Korean official Li Gun took Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly aside to tell him that North Korea had nuclear weapons which could not be dismantled. "It's up to you whether we do a physical demonstration or transfer them," Li said. Did the North Koreans tell that to the Chinese? One US official said he did not know for sure. "Perhaps not, since they expressed some apparently genuine concern." Could this be a bluff to head off a US attack or to increase negotiating leverage?

US officials have seen no indication that the reprocessing plant in Yongbyon has begun reprocessing. But given the frustrating experience of trying to find WMD in Iraq, nobody is betting against the possibility that the North Koreans could have dispersed the fuel rods from the cooling pond to other hidden locations. Robert Einhorn, who was the top non-proliferation official under the Clinton administration and currently an adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says "North Koreans will be able to reprocess the fuel rods in small batches. It will take time but it is do-able." A definitive answer may come only if Pyongyang tests a weapon or hostility breaks out.

Whether their claim is true or not, the emergence of a self-declared nuclear weapon state on the Korean peninsula creates a dangerous new dynamic. It could lead to the nuclear arming of Japan and calls for US withdrawal from South Korea, or, worse yet, to a catastrophic conflict. President Bush has already characterized the North Korean nuclear weapon claim as "blackmail", making the demand for verifiable dismantling of North Korea's nuclear program as a precondition for talks firmer than ever. Unless North Korean leaders look at the precipice ahead and slam on the brakes, a disaster seems unavoidable.

The reason most analysts are pessimistic about North Korea reversing their course, says one official who follows North Korea closely, is that they have reached this particular juncture following six months of consideration and incremental steps. North Korea's admission (in October 2002) that they were secretly enriching uranium was, in fact, their first warning salvo after nearly two years of malign neglect by the Bush administration, which included a dismissal of South Korea's sunshine policy and a reversal of Clinton's policy of dialogue. In the period since October, 2002, North Korean diplomats tried to draw US attention and engage in talks that could lead to an exchange, trading the nuclear program for a security guarantee and economic aid. The North Korean call for bilateral talks was rebuffed by Washington, which pressed China hard to bring its neighbor and military ally into multilateral dialogue. American pressure was delivered directly during Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit to Beijing on February 24. Whether by design or accident, China's oil supply to North Korea was interrupted for a few days. Then, on March 2, two North Korean fighter jets shadowed a US RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft in international airspace and sought to force the plane to land. US communications intercepts revealed that the pilot of the North Korean plane sought permission to shoot down the US plane but was denied authorization. The dangerous escalation involving the spy plane seems to have alarmed the Chinese enough to abandon their neutral perch. On March 8 Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen flew into Pyongyang to warn North Korean leaders about the danger they were courting. Chinese pressure seems to have had the opposite effect. In a thinly veiled allusion to China, the North Korean party daily said "no matter what others may say," North Korea will never concede its revolutionary principles and interests.

In mid-March, North Korean diplomats based at the United Nations told their American counterparts that North Korea was at the point of starting to reprocess fuel rods to make plutonium. One official says it was "the last desperate attempt by the foreign ministry to get our attention and do something about it. We didn't do it." Contrary to press reports that this information was withheld by the State Department in order not to jeopardize talks, the official says "the White House knew about it." Whether it was busy with preparations to launch attacks on Iraq or did not take the North Koreans seriously, the warning was ignored.

The North Korean decision on how to deal with the US came on March 21 - the day after the US and British troops invaded Iraq. Not many paid attention to the two-page editorial in the official daily Nodong Sinmun entitled "Army-based idea is an invincible banner for the cause of independence in our era." Officials now say the lengthy, turgid editorial marked the victory of the hard line military whose influence on Kim Jong Il has steadily grown. It called for subjugating political and economic considerations to the building of a powerful army "at any price."

The operational implications of the 'military first' policy was revealed on April 18 with North Korea's public announcement about starting the reprocessing of fuel rods. This was the first time that North Korea publicly admitted to having a weapons program. As one official said, they told the world their program was not for electricity production but for deterrence. "That was almost the Rubicon right there. Once they removed the veil of electricity then the character of diplomacy has to change."

After the fall of Baghdad, John Bolton, the hard-line under-secretary of state for arms control, urged North Korea and other countries seeking weapons of mass destruction to "draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq". But North Koreans appear to have drawn the opposite conclusion. In early April, the North Korean party newspaper concluded that the "serious lesson" of the Iraq war was that "the imperialists' inspection of weapons in sovereign states leads to disarming," causing in the long run the countries to "fall victim to imperialism."

An official who has been strongly critical of the conservative policy on North Korea says he has run out of ideas on how to respond to the latest North Korean move. "I cannot figure out what you do other than almost what Rumsfeld would do - not attack them, but beef up our deterrence." If the US cannot convince the North Koreans about the folly of their nuclear brinkmanship, at least it can prevail in the conflict. "There are times in history when the middle way does not work any more. We have worked our way into that."

China, whose stated policy advocates a non-nuclear Korean peninsula, must also be steaming at North Korea. "Their revelation, in Beijing, about possessing nuclear weapons and possibly exporting them must have come as great affront to the Chinese government, which had taken the responsibility of hosting the meeting," says David Shambaugh, Director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University. "In the wake of this, the Chinese may be less averse to the idea of regime change in Pyongyang, if there is a peaceful way to achieve it," said Shambaugh.