The best possible response to the North Korean nuclear test

Tue, 05/26/2009 - 8:55am

By Daniel W. Drezner

I think the Obama administration has come up with a novel way of dealing with the North Koreans -- get everyone to talk about something else. 

Half-seriously, this is not a bad idea, because I'm not sure that anything else is going to work better (beyond my modest Britney Spears proposal).  For this decade, the following facts have held: 

  1. North Korea wants to be able to trade its nuclear program for security guarantees and cash -- and then be able to do it again a few years later.
  2. The leadership in Pyongyang is perfectly willing to starve its own population rather than concede a smidgen of autonomy.
  3. No one is entirely sure about the internal politics of the DPRK elite.  This includes China, by the way. 
  4. None of the actors in the region want North Korea to collapse.  China and Russia likes the buffer, Seoul doesn't want to pony up the cash for reunification, and Japan (and China) doesn't want a unified Korean peninsula. 
  5. None of the actors in the region really want North Korea to proliferate either, but that's less important than a collapsing North Korea.  Proliferation is Somebody Else's Problem -- i.e., the Middle East rather than Northeast Asia. 
  6. So, oddly enough, the ideal short-term solution for the region is for the continued existence of the DPRK regime, the absence of any new nuclear activity, and some kid of "strategic ambiguity" regarding North Korea's nuclear status. 
  7. The alternatives to the repeated short-term carrot strategy are even less appealing.  There is no viable military option unless everyone is comfortable with the destruction of Seoul; there is no viable sanctions option unless China decides to cut off the energy tap, and they'll only do this if they're sure it won't lead to a stream of North Korea refugees entering Manchuria. 

The one thing that seems different this time around is that North Korea is really pulling out the stops this time to strip away the "pleasing illusion" that the U.N. Security Council will do something.  Paradoxically, this might actually goad China and Russia into doing something -- sanctions that might increase the likelihood of a DPRK collapse but also increase the likelihood of Pyongyang altering its behavior before that happens. 

If I, rather than my boss, were advising the Obama administration on this issue, the one other deliverable I would aim for in response to this latest provocation would be to get China to join the Proliferation Security Initiative.  China has resisted this for a whole bunch of reasons unrelated to North Korea.  If Beijing were to reverse course, it would make it much easier to engage in interdiction activities along North Korea's coast.  It would also signal to Pyongyang that, yes, there actually are some serious costs to thumbing one's nose at the U.N. Security Council.   

Am I missing anything?   

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North Korea

by Ralph Hitchens on Tue, 05/26/2009 - 2:44pm

I think the one thing everyone's forgetting is that we're not dealing with a real country here, we're dealing with a demented ruling family. The "players" in North Korea love to posture but I don't think they're in any doubt about the fact that actually using nukes or missiles = loss of their personal fiefdom. With their lack of imagination they believe that nukes and missiles are useful bargaining chips in generating deference to their pretentions of legitimacy. Were we to withdraw our pretention of recognition in favor of "benign neglect" we would be none the worse, in my opinion. Close analysis of the correlation of forces suggests to me that North Korea poses no serious military threat to anyone.

Yeah, it is a perfect example

by zjin on Wed, 05/27/2009 - 8:21am

Yeah, it is a perfect example of Nash equilibrium. Only things you missed are the U.S. and DPRK. U.S. needs DPRK so that U.S. can keep military bases in SK and JAP, a convenient excuse. Without DPRK, U.S. has to make its intent explicit that its military in Northeast Asia is aimed to China, a situation that both countries want to avoid.

Since DPRK is far away from U.S. soil and has no strategic assets-oil, the U.S. would gain more by stay on the current course. Proliferation is a concern; however you can always work on the demand side rather than the supply side.

Regarding DPRK itself, it wants to survive, economically and politically. It does not want to totally depend on China economically. So it needs' U.S. to lift the sanction without giving up anything politically. Therefore, it is DPRK's interest to deal with U.S. directly, since it knows that both SK and JAP are following U.S.'s lead.

U.S. previously did not want to deal with DPRK because it had no real leverage. So U.S. wanted all other 4 countries to be on board. SK and JAP know that they have no leverage too, so they have to rely on U.S. to do anything. Russia and China probably are indifferent on the format of the meeting, bilateral or multilateral. They know that U.S. alone won't talk DPRk out of its regime and abandon its nuclear weapons, because there is no trust between U.S. and DPRK, and even if there is, DPRK won't change simply since its rulers won't want to give up their power. So Russia and China know that there is still going to be a buffer if U.S. talks to DPRK directly. Under the 6-party-talk framework, both Russia and China gain leverages over the U.S.

So DPRK knows perfectly well what it needs and what it has. It knows that NUKE is its only leverage to U.S. It knows all other 5 parties want to keep the status quo. DPRK is the only one that wants the change. I do not know what the U.S. plans to do next. But you bet DPRK will try to make the most out of its only leverage on hand. I mean that DPRK will try to sell its nuclear devices to someone, or it will try to make it look like that it is selling the NUKES.

If one assumes all

by blue13326 on Tue, 05/26/2009 - 3:54pm

If one assumes all governments involved are rational actors, as seems to be a fashionable premise in most IR circles these days, the answer is fairly obvious: We could sell all our allies nuclear weapons and the attendant technology. We could then use the proceeds to close the budget deficit and bring our troops home from any places where they're not currently involved in combat.

The best possible response to the North Korean nuclear test

by simplesimon on Tue, 05/26/2009 - 5:16pm

Ignoring North Korean provocations would be a best solution for the time being but everyone knows that North Korea’s lifeline passes through Beijing. Only way to stop this continuing North Korean blackmail is for Obama administration to encourage Japan to go nuclear. If and when China hollers against it, US has to demand that China reign in on its client state if China wants non-nuclear East Asia. That is the only leverage that will work against North Korea.

Probably the best option

by Brett on Wed, 05/27/2009 - 1:22am

Probably the best option would be for the US to do what one of the posters over at the Shadow Government blog called "malign neglect". Basically, a combination of ignoring the Norks' demands for hand-outs, cutting off their international financing whenever possible, and giving the South Koreans and Japanese access to the most advanced ABM technologies possible (the Japanese are already going down this route). I'd actually like to take it further, and give the South Koreans nuclear weapons.

In this situation, the burden falls almost entirely on China, which is good for the US, South Korea, and Japan. The Norks could attack, but they'd be committing suicide, and they know it (or at least the leadership cadre does). And South Korea and Japan get to feel more secure.

The problem with malign neglect

by blue13326 on Wed, 05/27/2009 - 5:41am

is that Obama is already increasingly being viewed as something of a clown in many of these places, and when you have that public face, the urge for dictators to keep pushing to see how far they can go may be inevitable (cf. Carter presidency).

Already, N. Korea is threatening to seize US ships and invade the South, and at a certain point neglect becomes something much more dire.

Good one

by Buzz Killington on Wed, 05/27/2009 - 5:57am

It would also signal to Pyongyang that, yes, there actually are some serious costs to thumbing one's nose at the U.N. Security Council.

Haha.

Some comments above suggest

by zjin on Wed, 05/27/2009 - 8:37am

Some comments above suggest that China would go out its way to prevent SK and JAP to get NUKEs. Of course China would love to see neither SK or JAP becoming nuclear. But China can certainly live with a nuclear SK or a nuclear JAP, because there are already a nuclear NK and a nuclear India. So nuclear is not a game changer for those countries. The reason is simple, with or without China's effort, knowledge and cost of building nuclear weapons will be lower in the future. For rich countries like SK and JAP, they can get their hands on NUKE anytime they want, with or without US's help. And China has no plan to invade those two countries so that a nuclear conflict is out of question. So what is the point to prevent that happeneing except paying some lip services? The nation will suffer most from the nuclear proliferation is U.S. because its enemies actually have the means and wills to get NUKES from NK and use them.

Nash equilibrium? For how long?

by T. Greer on Mon, 06/01/2009 - 10:11am

Scott Snyder made a cognent point pertinent to this discussion on the Asia Foundation's blog, In Asia:

My book China’s Rise and the Two Koreas shows how China’s policies toward North Korea have increasingly come into conflict with its own broader interests in regional and global stability: North Korea’s latest test directly defies Chinese interests by enhancing Japan’s security anxieties and giving momentum to countermeasures (i.e., debates in Japan over acquisition of preemption and even nuclear capabilities) that are ultimately contrary to Chinese interests. North Korea’s actions force China to choose between short-term support for a North Korea that continues to risk Chinese interests by promoting regional tensions and enhancing instability and China’s long-term needs to uphold international non-proliferation norms and remove the sources of instability on the Korean peninsula.

I think it is time to put the

by gavinwilliams on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 7:32pm

I think it is time to put the pressure on N. Korea. Their 'leader' is a spiteful, immature SOB, who is pushing to see how far he can get. Perhaps it is time to send a few missiles his way. This is one case where diplomacy will not work. If we don't want to start a war, then send special forces in to take out the man.

Bush starts a false war on and bombs a country that has no WMD and now we don't want to do the same with a country that does have WMD?