Talk of a Washington Split Over North Korea Is Overblown

WASHINGTON: Despite President George W. Bush's warning that he would not permit North Korea to have nuclear weapons, the crisis with Pyongyang has moved at a slow pace, certainly much slower than that with Iraq. The 11-nation "proliferation security initiative" meeting that just concluded in Brisbane to deal with Pyongyang's arms trade might is another step increasing the pressure on North Korea, but any brusque escalation is unlikely. Rather, a slow build-up of pressure by a coalition of countries might bring North Korea around.

The Brisbane meeting is one of the critical steps in Washington's strategy of methodically knitting together a coalition of like-minded countries to pressure the regime through interdiction of the North's illegal exports of drugs, counterfeit money, and missile technology.

It has been widely speculated that the almost casual pace with which the Bush administration is dealing with this problem (again, relative to Iraq or Iran) reflects a paralyzing internal debate within the administration over policy toward North Korea. At one end of the debate are the Pentagon hawks, who see regime change in the North as the most ideal, effective, and lasting solution to the problem at hand. There is no official roster of the supporters of this view (nor are they exclusively in the Pentagon), but as reported in major national newspapers those associated with the hawkish camp under Rumsfeld generally include: Vice-president Dick Cheney, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, the Defense Policy Board (including Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Harry Rowen, Ken Adelman), and John Bolton and Liz Cheney at the State Department.

At the other end of the debate are moderates under Secretary of State Colin Powell. They do not hold the North's nuclear program in any less priority than the hawks. But they believe disarmament of North Korea is best achieved through continuing discussion. This group is not hopeful that the North's collapse is imminent, nor willing to believe US engagement will change North Korean intentions. But it maintains the need for continued talks with the North to look for a negotiated settlement and build a coalition for punishment among the concerned countries if engagement fails. People in the Powell camp include: former Bush administration officials such as Brent Scowcroft and James Baker, Richard Haass who was until recently Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, most of the Foreign Service, Minority leader of the Senate Foreign Relations committee Senator Joe Biden, and Republican Congressman Curt Weldon.

The alleged split in views on Korea became apparent at the time of the US-North Korea-China talks in Beijing in April 2003. After Pyongyang's eleventh-hour threat to reprocess plutonium on the eve of these talks, those in the hawkish group advocated scuttling the talks and then tried to get John Bolton to replace Assistant Secretary for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, James Kelly, as the US delegation head.

There is no denying the existence of such policy gaps on North Korea, but they are not nearly as wide as popularly portrayed. All agree on the principle that the United States will not be blackmailed by the North, and that Pyongyang needs to come clean on its nuclear weapons programs before any form of engagement can be seriously contemplated. On this latter principle, there is virtually no disagreement among Bushies. Where differences do lie is in how strictly one should define the North's coming clean. While Pentagon hawks might demand total disarmament in advance of serious engagement, others might employ a more flexible definition of what the North needs to do in order for engagement to start. But the bottom line for both groups is real, verifiable, and irreversible steps by the North to disarm.

Both groups take the North's proclamations since the April 2003 meetings that it possesses nuclear weapons as an escalatory step, aimed at attaining nuclear power status. There is also little disagreement that what the North wants in the current crisis is not a simple quid pro quo of US security assurances to end its nuclear threat. Kim Jong Il's true aim is to have his cake and eat it, too. He wants bilateral negotiations with the United States to attain security assurances and international support, but he also wants to retain an extant nuclear weapons arsenal. In this sense, Pyongyang probably sees the acceptance of his nuclear declaration as fait accompli as a success. Because the North has declared itself a nuclear weapons state, the United States has no option but to negotiate.

Finally, there is little disagreement that North Korea's nuclear affirmation was designed to extort concessions from its richer brethren in the South. The squeeze put on the South is, ironically, economic, not military. The nuclear crisis has cut short South Korea's economic recovery and led to a rapid deterioration in investor confidence. Economic growth estimates are now 1.4 percent for 2003, down from earlier estimates of 6.2 percent. Indeed, during the first quarter of 2003, when North Korea began breaking its nonproliferation commitment in earnest, US foreign direct investment commitment in the country plummeted 72 percent and the South Korean stock market dropped 18.3 percent.

Few in either policy camp believe that the North will abandon this strategy. Pyongyang adheres to a time-honored practice of using threats to transform South Korea's economic advantage into bargaining leverage. Recently released communist foreign ministry archives from East Europe record Kim Il Sung explaining that even if the North could not catch up to the South economically, it could use limited military provocations to wreak havoc on the South's economy, turning the South's strength into a vulnerability subject to Pyongyang's control.

What does all of this mean for US policy? The Bush administration's much-maligned emphasis on approaching North Korea through a mix of multilateral pressure and diplomacy may actually make sense. If Kim really wants to have his cake and eat it, then the only feasible solution is for interested regional parties in unison to tell the Great Leader that he simply cannot have both. This multilateral approach has been the US preference, and it now appears to be Russia's as well, given recent statements that a nuclear North Korea would prompt reconsideration of their policy opposing sanctions against Pyongyang. It also appears to be Japan and China's preference, given the residual outrage among Japanese over the abductions issue, and Beijing's growing frustration at their communist ally's insolence and incompetence. However, if such multilateral pressure fails to sway Kim's commitment to keeping his arsenal and partaking in negotiations with Washington, hawks in the Pentagon will feel validated that engagement is worthless because it will inherently fail to rid the North of its weapons.

The slow pace in dealing with Pyongyang's threat may have given the US a psychological, if momentary, advantage over North Korea. What no doubt troubled Kim Jong Il more than the images of bunker-busting bombs and toppled statues of Saddam was the unsettling realization that, after Sept.11, the US administration is willing to take greater risk in pursuing homeland security. This resolve may render impotent the North's coercive bargaining attempts (which were always premised on the North being more willing that the United States to go to the brink first), and prompt Kim to look for a face-saving way out of this crisis as the pressure on the regime increases.