North Korea blinks

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Monday, December 20, 2010 - 9:22 AM

Well, it was a very exciting weekend on the Korea peninsula, as South Korea vowed to go ahead with live-fire artillery exercises on Yeonpyeong Island, site of the artillery exchange between ROK and DPRK earlier this month. North Korea vowed to retaliate, the U.N. Security Council met all day yesterday without any agreement on the matter, Seoul recommended island residents go to bunkers, and everyone urged restraint by everyone else.

Very exciting!! How would today's exercise play out? Mark McDonald and Martin Fackler report for the New York Times:

Defying North Korean threats of violent retaliation and "brutal consequences beyond imagination," South Korea on Monday staged live-fire artillery drills on an island shelled last month by the North.

The immediate response from Pyongyang was surprisingly muted, however. A statement from the North's official news agency Monday night said it was "not worth reacting" to the exercise.

"Maybe we had a little impact," said Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who as an unofficial American envoy was in Pyongyang when the drills ended. Mr. Richardson, a former ambassador to the United Nations, said earlier that the North had offered concessions on its nuclear program, including a resumption of visits by United Nations inspectors.

Wait, that's it? Pyongyang issues threat after threat and then claims the whole thing isn't worth their bother? Let's dig a little deeper into the Times story:

The question now is whether the North will make good on its promises to retaliate, and how it might do so. Mr. Lankov, the analyst, said he did not expect a massive response by Pyongyang because the recent incidents are part of a North Korean "strategy of tensions," meaning that North Korean leaders want to choose when and where to strike.

"I do not think the North Koreans will do much this time," Mr. Lankov said. "They'd rather deliver a new blow later when they will be ready. But the maneuvers still mean a great risk of escalation."

Meanwhile, Mr. Richardson said the North had agreed to concessions related to its nuclear program, a main source of tension on the peninsula. A former United States special envoy to North Korea, Mr. Richardson was on an unofficial trip approved by the State Department. He met with high-ranking military officials, the North Korean vice president and members of the Foreign Ministry over four days.

Mr. Richardson said the North had made two significant concessions toward reopening six-party talks on the country's nuclear program. The North's proposal would allow United Nations nuclear inspectors back into the Yongbyon nuclear complex to ensure that it is not producing enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb. The North recently showed an American nuclear expert a new and stunningly sophisticated facility there. It expelled international inspectors last year.

North Korean officials also told Mr. Richardson that their government was willing to sell 12,000 plutonium fuel rods to South Korea, removing bomb-making material from the North, he said. "I would describe this as important progress," he said of the concessions.

So now North Korea also wants to restart the Six-Party Talks? What just happened? As always, trying to explain North Korean behavior is a challenging task. Here are some possible explanations:

1) North Korea finally got caught bluffing. True, they have the least to lose from the ratcheting up of tensions, but that doesn't mean they have nothing to lose from a military escalation with the ROK. The past month of tensions got everyone's attention, and North Korea is only happy when everyone else is paying attention to them.

2) Kim Jong Un was busy. One of the stronger explanations for the DPRK's last round of provocations was that this was an attempt to bolster Kim the Younger's military bona fides before the transition. Reading up on what little is out there, it wouldn't shock me if he planned all of this and then postponed any retaliation because he'd organized a Wii Bowling tournament among his entourage.

Somewhat more seriously, it's possible that there are domestic divisions between the military, the Foreign Ministry, and the Workers Party, and that the latter two groups vetoed further escalation.

3) China put the screws on North Korea. For all the talk about juche, North Korea needs external aid to function, and over the past year all the aid lifelines have started to dry up -- except for Beijing. As much as the North Koreans might resent this relationship -- and they do -- if Beijing leaned hard on Pyongyang,

4) North Korea gave the ROK government the domestic victory it needed. Bear with me for a second. The shelling incident has resulted in a sea change in South Korean public opinion, to the point where Lee Myung-bak was catching hell for not responding more aggressively to the initial provocation. This is a complete 180 from how the ROK public reacted to the Cheonan incident, in which Lee caught hell for responding too aggressively.

Lee clearly felt domestic pressure to do something. Maybe, just maybe, the North Korean leadership realized this fact, and believed that not acting now would give Lee the domestic victory he needed to walk back his own brinksmanship.

5) Overnight, the DPRK military hired the New York Giants coaching staff to contain South Korean provocations. Let's see... a dazzling series of perceived propaganda victories, followed by the pervasive sense that they held all the cards in this latest contretemps. Then an inexplicable decision not to do anything aggressive at the last minute, after which containment policies fail miserably. Hmmm… you have to admit, this MO sounds awfully familiar.

If I had to make a semi-informed guess -- and it's just that - I'd wager a combination of (1) and (4).

Alternative explanations welcomed in the comments.

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EXPLORE:INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, EAST ASIA, NORTH KOREA, ASIA/PACIFIC, CHINA, NORTH KOREA, REPUTATION, SOUTH KOREA, UNITED STATES

The unclean slate of American foreign policy

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - 3:14 AM

James Vreeland, international political economy (IPE) scholar extraordinaire, has started a blog -- the Vreelander. James is one of the sharpest tools in the IPE shed, so it's to the good that he's started blogging (longtime readers might remember this guest post from last year).

I, for one, would like to officially welcome my good friend to the blogosphere by questioning his political sanity.

Last week he blogged about the Dalai Lama's meeting with Obama -- a fact that displeased Vreeland to no end:

President Obama is planning to meet with the Dali Lama at the White House. This is terrible. He is the spiritual leader of Tibet, an advocate for autonomy from China, and the head of the Tibetan government-in-exile. And the visit with Obama implies a tacit US endorsement that will deeply offend the Chinese government, not to mention many of the Chinese people.

Right now we need close cooperation with China to address serious global issues ranging from the economic crisis, to the environment, and even global security.

Meeting with the Dali Lama is a major affront to Beijing and to many Chinese. They consider this an issue of national sovereignty....

China is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-lingual country. It has to deal with some problems similar to those of the United States. The path is long, circuitous and difficult. And having the leader of a rival power meet with a head of government-in-exile doesn't help.

More importantly, we've got bigger issues to deal with regarding China. Rather than meet with the Dali Lama, Obama should be talking about Chinese currency revaluation. And he should be doing so on a daily basis. Leave China's sovereignty alone.

Oh, please. First of all, the U.S. can't "leave China's sovereignty alone," unless we're also prepared to jettison the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act and fail to mention China's Internet restrictions. That's clearly not going to happen. Meeting with the Dalai Lama, in comparison to sending arms to Taiwan, seems pretty tame.

It's also pretty routine, as CSIS's Charles Freeman pointed out. He also provided some useful context:

Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush have all met with the Dalai Lama. Indeed, an express refusal to meet with the Dalai Lama would not only stray from established principle but would engender a raft of criticism from Congress and human rights groups that might constrain the president’s efforts to conduct a China policy that emphasizes engagement and cooperation.

And this is the thing -- foreign policies are never crafted with a clean slate, even with a change in presidential administrations. If no president had ever met with the Dalai Lama before and then Obama bumped into him in the Map Room, that sends one signal. If every president for two decades met with the Dalai Lama and then Obama abstains from meeting him -- let's call this the Vreeland Gambit -- that sends another signal.

I understand Vreeland's concerns that Tibet will gum up the foreign economic policy works, but I also know that the signal Obama would have sent by canceling this meeting would not have been a good one.

I would interpret this is a massive exercise in (oh, the irony) kabuki politics. Obama has a meeting that leads to no real policy differences, and China gets visibly upset and the inconsequential meeting. A week from now, neither side's rhetoric on this issue will matter all that much.

COMMENTS (3)

EXPLORE:U.S. FOREIGN POLICY, CHINA, REPUTATION, TYRANNY OF THE STATUS QUO, UNITED STATES

Ten things to read about reputation in international relations

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Wednesday, May 27, 2009 - 1:33 PM

There's been a lot of chatter during the latest iteration of the North Korea crisis that the DPRK leadership is testing the Obama administration's mettle, or that "[other] nuclear wannabes, such as Iran, are watching how we deal with this provocation. To ignore, excuse, or reward it might send an unfortunate signal." This comes on the heels of the Obama administration's mantra about changing America's reputation in world politics, from one of bellicose hard power unilateralism to a greater mix of soft power and multilateralism.

So, apparently, concepts like reputation and credibility matter a lot in international affairs -- and, intuitively, we would think this to be true. The thing is, reputation is also a fuzzy concept. Countries should cultivate a reputation for what, exactly? Can a reputation for toughness in a crisis be reconciled with a reputation for compliance with international law? Do countries have reputations, or just leaders? Does a reputation in one issue area -- say, aid generosity -- spill over into other issue areas?

I could give you a definitive answer to all of these questions, but that would be an act of hubris on my part, and I don't want that rep. Instead, here are ten books/articles to read on reputation and international relations that might ~~confuse you even more~~ provide some enlightenment on the subject:

1) Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1532 [1513]). "Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with." And the debate about reputation commences.

2) Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (1960). If you're interested in international relations, you should read this book regardless. Schelling devotes a significant portion of his analysis, however, to the utility of "rational irrationality" -- i.e., making the other side think you are a maniac. One could argue that the North Koreans have imbibed Schelling in full.

3) Earnest May and Philip Zelikow, ed., The Kennedy Tapes (1962 [2002]) Reading the Excom conversations during the Cuban Missile Crisis is enlightening to see the moments when reputation is discussed -- as well as the moments when it simply disappears from the policy debate altogether.

5) Jonathan Mercer, Reputation and International Politics (1996). Mercer points out the cognitive biases that affect how reputations are constructed. If we think someone is a bad actor and they do a good thing, we ascribe that to environmental pressure. If they do a bad thing, it's because of their intrinsic preferences. This suggests that it's very hard for any international actor to alter their reputation in the eyes of their allies or adversaries.

6) George Downs and Michael Jones, "Reputation, Compliance, and International Law." Journal of Legal Studies 31 (January 2002): S95-S114. Do countries have a single reputation that covers all issue areas? Downs and Jones think the answer is no. They arhue that the effects of reputation are bounded. When a state defects from an agreement in one area (i.e., the environment) there is little evidence that they jeopardize their reputation in every other area (for example, trade and security).

7) Anne Sartori, Deterrence by Diplomacy (2005). Sartori argues in this book tha during crises, what matters is not a reputation for resolve, but a reputation for honest diplomacy. This is why goverments tell the truth (but not necessarily the whole truth) most of the time -- doing so allows them to maintain reputations for honesty, which in turn enhances their ability to resolve future disputes using diplomacy rather than force. Part of the reason the DPRK acts the way they do, perhaps, is that no one believes what they say any more.

8) Daryl Press, Calculating Credibility (2005). Press makes a provocative argument in this book -- in the heat of a military crisis, reputation does not really matter all that much. It certainly matters less than the military balance of power. This suggests that the Obama administration's response to North Korea has no bearing on Iran -- what matters are the viability of military options in both cases.

9) Mark Crescenzi, "Reputation and International Conflict," American Journal of Political Science 51 (April 2007): 382-396. Crescenzi pushes back a bit on Press' argument. He argues that past actions to affect others' perception of reputation -- provided that countries in question are similar in their capabilities. So, contra Press, Creszenzi might argue that Iran will pay close attention to how the Obama administration responds to North Korea.

10) Michael Tomz, Reputation and International Cooperation. Part of the problem with talking about reputation is its ineffable quality -- how do we know it when we see it? Tomz looks at a tangible measure of reputation -- the ability of sovereign countries to borrow. He argues for a dynamic theory of reputation, in which actors can update their beliefs over time about whether governments will honor their commitments. The empirical evidence Tomz brings to the table is very impressive.

Readers are welcomed to proffer their suggestions in the comments.

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EXPLORE:INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY, REPUTATION