North Korea and Non-Proliferation: A Conversation with Selig Harrison

March 5, 2003
Conducted by Damjan de Krnjevic-Miskovic, Assistant Managing Editor of The National Interest

Q:  What has brought about the current crisis with North Korea?

SSH: The present crisis was brought on by a combination of factors. The first and most important is the fact that North Korea is an orphan of the Cold War.  It lost its Russian and Chinese petroleum subsidies in the early 1990s. That precipitated an economic crisis that is continuing. The second factor is that the Clinton Administration actually did not carry out most of the agreement  . . .  So the pressures to return to a nuclear program had become great in the first four years after the Agreed Framework was concluded. Therefore, when Pakistan came along and said, “We can’t pay you for missiles in cash, or fertilizer or wheat anymore like we used to, but we’ll pay you in uranium technology", the hawks in North Korea persuaded the doves that this was in their national interest.  The third reason we are in the present crisis is that when the Bush Administration took over, they moved to a posture which is incompatible with the provisions of the 1994 Agreement (Article 3, Section 1) where the United States was supposed to provide formal pledges not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against North Korea.  The Nuclear Posture Review, with its specific reference to North Korea, and then the September 20^th release of the National Security Strategy, led to a North Korean reaction.

Q: Yet the Nuclear Posture Review and the National Security Strategy are post-2000 developments, but, according to you, they went out and got weapons from Pakistan in 1998.  Doesn't that mean that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) was pretty much dead in the water prior to the arrival of the Bush Administration?

A:  Well, there’s a difference between seeking to acquire a nuclear option and actually developing nuclear weapons. That’s why I did not say that the Bush Administration’s posture was the only reason why this is all happening, but that was what got matters to a head—precipitating the explosion, if you will—because it gave the hawks their final resolution.  

We tend to think of the North Korean regime as monolithic, Kim Il-jong as the all-powerful absolute ruler—though his father was—but he is not. That’s really the name of the game: the military took over in a bloodless military coup after the death of Kim Il-sung, and while we can’t say that they run everything, it’s a very interesting partnership.  They need Kim Il-jong up front because he is the link with the “revered father”—nevertheless, the armed forces are much stronger than they were before in the councils of the Workers’ Party.  They really think North Korea should have a nuclear deterrent for their own security, regardless of any agreements.  So I would say that North Korea certainly violated the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and its commitments under Article 3, section 2 of the Agreed Framework by going into this deal with Pakistan.  . . . For two years North Korea has been working on its uranium program, but we don’t know how far they really are. They need a deal, and I believe that although we won’t really know whether they’re prepared to liquidate their nuclear program until we’ve tested them, my own view is that they are ready if we’re prepared to pay the right price

Q: This sounds like blackmail.

A:  The concept of blackmail, it seems to me, is inappropriate. Blackmail in the dictionary is extortion by intimidation.  The North Koreans feel that we intimidate them with our large nuclear posture. 

Let's not forget that Jimmy Carter was able to get the North Koreans to blink.  First, they agreed to start the freeze provisionally before there were formal intergovernmental negotiations, and if there wasn’t, they would call off the freeze, and when there was a formal agreement, it would become a permanent freeze. Now, that’s often forgotten—they blinked first.

Now, I think both sides have to do things that take the gun away from the head of the other, and it has to be done simultaneously, or almost simultaneously, in an orchestrated way. What North Korea has to do is to pledge that it will not reprocess the spent fuel rods at Yongbyon.  Now, we have seen satellite photos of trucks moving away from the reactor—we don’t know whether they’re carrying fuel rods—but North Korea has to say “we won’t reprocess the fuel rods and we will let the IAEA inspectors come back to monitor them.” That’s all we can ask them to do, realistically. If we get them to do that, it will be a significant thing.  It has to be tied, however, with something else--perhaps a joint declaration by Secretary Powell and Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun of North Korea in which we would make a contingent pledge not to attack North Korea with force of any kind.   I say “contingent” because we can’t just give a blanket pledge at a time when their nuclear program has not been destroyed. For the duration of the negotiations with the U.S., they would not reprocess the plutonium and we would be committed not to attack them.  When the dismantling is agreed upon, it takes place with verification.  Then the agreement not to use force would become a permanent, binding commitment—but only when they dismantle to our satisfaction. That joint declaration has to say that we respect North Korea’s sovereignty, and that we will not hinder its economic development.  We will come to terms with the fact that this repressive, repugnant regime is there, that the best way to get rid of it is to open it up to the outside world and that in order to do that, we have to deal with the situation that exists now in order move them in that direction.

North Korea is very eager for opening up to the United States, Japan and South Korea for economic reasons.  Their generals are all tied into these economic conglomerates up to their ears.  This is the most easily corruptible country you can find, they’re all ready to join us in every way—and the same is true in Iran.

Q:  Speaking of Iran, Adam Garfinkle wrote:  “A rogue state’s passing the nuclear threshold is a big deal. It sharply raises the stakes of conflict and simultaneously constrains U.S. options. North Korea’s presumed two bombs and its missile technology mean that the United States has no pre-emptive military strategy worth the risks entailed. . . . Looking around the axis of evil these days, the Iranians would much prefer to hold North Korea’s cards than to hold Iraq’s. This means that a counter-proliferation action against Iraq bears pro-proliferation implications for Iran.”

[http://www.inthenationalinterest.com/Articles/Vol2Issue1/Vol2Issue1Garfinkle.html]  What sort of precedent does this set for American foreign policy?

A:   Well, it points to the fact that non-proliferation cannot be pursued effectively if we assert a unilateral right to have nuclear weapons, declare that no one else can have them, and that we can use them preemptively—something nobody else is entitled to do—that is simply not realistic.  If we have them, other people are going to try to deter us unless we are prepared to do one of two things: either go back to the kind of serious reduction of nuclear weapons, or make it worth it for other countries not to possess them.  The price of absolute security, which is what the Bush Doctrine really amounts to, is cash. You have to make it worthwhile for countries that do want to proliferate—and there aren’t that many, there are very few—not to proliferate.

Q:  What makes you think, however, that the hawks in North Korea (or in Iran for that matter) will accept this option?

A:  You’ve put your finger on the essence of the problem.  The great problem is going to be that a definitive dismantling of their nuclear program, in which we have the kind of verification where we’re really satisfied is completed, will be difficult to get.  The hawks will make a strong argument for an NCND (Neither Confirm Nor Deny) policy—opposing certain kinds of very intrusive inspections like the new so-called Additional Protocol of the IAEA.  So I think the United States has to be prepared for an extended process which is why I think the non-attack declaration has to be contingent; but at the same time, I think we have to be moving on the economic framework and on political normalization.  I believe we have to support South Korea in its economic engagement with the North. We have to set the stage for multilateral organizations to help North Korea’s reconstruction. As you have a process of growing economic involvement, in which China, Russia, South Korea and Japan—which is very much an actor in this, wants to get involved—de-nuclearization goes on. These efforts are mutually reinforcing.  The more North Korean society is opening up and changing, the more over a period of years you’re going to break down those last efforts to keep it as an NCND policy. So it’s not something where we’re going to have a definitive end tomorrow morning to this whole situation which enables us to say that North Korea is not going to be a nuclear power. Taking away the sovereign option of a country to have nuclear weapons requires a very fundamental change in the relationship to the country concerned.

Selig S. Harrison, author of five books including most recently Korean Endgame (Princeton University Press, 2002), is a Senior Scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy.