Obama edges to realpolitik on Koreas
By Peter Lee
Will President Barack Obama become a late and unlikely convert to realpolitik and allow Secretary of State John Kerry to sacrifice America's nuclear non-proliferation principles on the battered altar of North Korean diplomacy?
Potentially, the North Korean nuclear crisis is a good thing for the US and South Korea - and perhaps even for China - if President Obama is ready to bend on some cherished non-proliferation beliefs.
That's what the North Korean leadership is begging him to do, amid the nuclear uproar.
Kerry seems to be interested in getting, if not on the same page, at least in the same chapter with North Korea, and maybe pick up a geopolitical win over China similar to the successful effort to push Myanmar (Burma) out of its near-China orbit.
Kerry is very much the pragmatist - normalization of US-Vietnam relations was his signature geo-strategic success as a senator - and apparently would enjoy negotiating with the North Koreans and weaning them away from the Chinese at the cost of finessing the nuclear weapons issue.
On the occasion of his press conference in Seoul on April 12, Secretary Kerry had some interesting things to say. [1] First, in a backhanded way, he repudiated the previous policy of non-engagement, saying [South Korean President Park Geun-hye] ''wants to try to do to change a mold that obviously has not worked very effectively over the last years''. Secondly, on the nuke issue he stated: North Korea will not be accepted as a nuclear power.
Kerry made the remarks in the context of opening the door a crack to discussions, not trying to rally an international coalition to remove an entrenched Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) nuclear weapons program that otherwise is clearly not going anywhere.
I don't think I'm reading too much into this statement to interpret it to mean ''It will be unacceptably embarrassing to the United States if North Korea tries to compel formal US acceptance of North Korean nukes along the lines of the bullshit deal we did with India, so Pyongyang better be prepared to throw me a goddam bone like, hey, we are also committed to the eventual denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.''
Or, in Kerry-speak: They simply have to be prepared to live up to the international obligations and standards which they have accepted, and make it clear they will move to denuclearization as part of the talks, and those talks could begin.
It also remains to be seen if President Obama will agree with Secretary Kerry (who, I believe, is not a member of the president's true inner circle temperamentally or ideologically) that some incremental and perhaps temporary improvement in the North Korean situation is adequate compensation for the muddying of the US pivot and non-proliferation messages.
President Obama's decision will probably hinge on whether he decides that recent leadership changes - and the potential for tectonic realignments in the region's geopolitics - present an opportunity worth seizing.
To understand why, one has to look at the complicated geopolitical relations of the major players, the rivals, and the haters, especially South Korea. All five of the nations directly involved in the current imbroglio on the Korean peninsula experienced leadership transitions over the past six months, either through election (the US, Japan, and South Korea), selection (the People's Republic of China), or demise (the DPRK - aka North Korea).
The most important change was the one least noticed in the West: the election of Madame Park as president of South Korea. Park succeeded Lee Myung-bak, whose intransigent ''MB'' policy toward North Korea had frozen Korean diplomacy for the last six years.
Her stated intention is to mix some carrot with the stick in what she calls ''trust-politik'' in a quest for reunification. She has put engagement and discussions back on the proposed North-South agenda. Since South Korea, as the frontline state with the most skin in the Korean game, holds a de facto veto over US North Korean policy, Park's shift means that the Obama administration has the option of transitioning from the policy of ''strategic patience'', aka malign neglect, that prevailed during the Lee Myung-bak years, to consideration of some kind of engagement with Pyongyang in coordination with Seoul.
Unfortunately, what Pyongyang really needs is something that the United States is loath to grant: some kind of diplomatic and economic rapprochement that includes acceptance of the DPRK's nuclear weapon and missile programs, which provide the best assurance of continued US forbearance, engagement, and, potentially, active and positive interest in the regime's survival.
The administrations of George W Bush and Barack Obama can shoulder much of the blame for North Korea's unwillingness to abandon its nukes. For North Korea, the Iraq invasion highlighted the dangers of being nuke-free in the face of US antipathy; the Libyan adventure (which occurred after Libya's full denuclearization, return to the good graces of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a multi-billion dollar financial settlement, the opening of Libya's oil industry to Western exploitation, and a restoration of diplomatic relations and security exchanges with the United States) demonstrated that surrendering one's nukes in return for rapprochement could quickly turn into a death sentence.
It is now generally accepted in the foreign policy establishment that the DPRK in its current configuration will never give up its nuclear weapons. Indeed, as the current crisis demonstrates, North Korea is committed to testing and improving its arsenal as quickly as possible under the cover of the general uproar.
The nuclear embarrassment is compounded by the fact that North Korea is not content to wait passively for whatever policies that the US and ROK jointly decide, in the spirit of mercy or malice, to impose on the DPRK.
Although the ROK's new interest in reducing tensions on the peninsula is a prerequisite for America taking another bite out of the rather gamey North Korean negotiating apple, the DPRK does not like to see the United States deferring to Seoul on North Korea issues and thereby letting the initiative pass to South Korea.
It doesn't want discussion to focus on the ROK's priority - reunification - which would give the whip hand to President Park and deprive Pyongyang of the opportunity to play divide and rule and lure the United States into a deal that might suit Washington's geopolitical obsessions (like sticking a finger in China's eye) while giving shorter shrift to awkward South Korean priorities (like reunification-related reforms, further economic and investment goodies for the ROK in the North or at the very least the promise of some better behavior from Pyongyang).
In order to suit its US-centric negotiating strategy, the DPRK wishes the North Korean issue framed in the context of the US priority - nuclear security.
So the DPRK turns to its cherished geopolitical card, actually its only geopolitical card, nuclear brinksmanship, in order to demand that the world negotiate with it on its terms - and the United States, as the self-professed guarantor of Asian security and godfather of the global nuclear weapons non-proliferation regime, to negotiate directly with Pyongyang instead of huddling with Seoul.
This must be an extremely aggravating dilemma for the White House.
North Korea is, after all, a Myanmar en ovo - in other words, a socialist Asian regime eager to normalize relations with the United States and free itself of its utter dependence on the overbearing and exploitative mandarins of the PRC for access to Western trade, investment, technology, and diplomatic good offices.
And the DPRK, through its nuclear posturing, is yelling ''It's time for the DPRK and USA to get into a room alone, without the ROK and the PRC, and make a deal that suits us both!''
However, explicitly accepting North Korea's nuclear weapons program is a tough sell for President Obama, for reasons that go beyond the danger of a nuclear DPRK, a stated adversary of the US and ROK (relations are still governed by the armistice that ended the Korean War, and no peace treaty has been signed), or the awkwardness of disappointing the Nobel Peace Prize committee (which awarded the coveted tin to Obama in anticipation of his future contributions to nuclear non-proliferation, not what he had already done, that is, zip).
The key obstacle to adopting a live-and-let-live attitude toward North Korea's nukes is that neither South Korea nor Japan are interested in living as non-nuclear neighbors to a North Korea that is happily and aggressively developing its nuclear weapons and missile assets.
Thanks to some dubious decision-making by the United States, Japan is a de facto nuclear weapons power, already possessing the technology, space program, and plutonium metal needed to weaponize its nuclear industry.
The Republic of Korea would like to tread the same path as Japan and is attempting to renegotiate its main nuclear disadvantage vis a vis Japan - the US refusal to let South Korea ''close the fuel cycle'', that is, perform the extraction and refining of plutonium from fuel rods on a variety of plausible pretexts, such as the ROK's need to offer a full slate of nuclear fuel services as it competes with Japan to sell reactors to the Middle East, or in order to reduce the load of spent fuel rods in its overcrowded cooling ponds.
For its part, the United States is trying to keep the ROK/Japan nuclear weapons genies in the bottle (or, in the case of Japan, try to pretend that the stopper has not already been removed) since, in a region suddenly bristling with prosperous, nuke-wielding powers, the US would be well on the way to losing its self-claimed role as essential security guarantor, arms-race preventer, and beloved pivoteer in the West Pacific.
When Secretary Kerry touts ''denuclearization of the Korean peninsula'', he is also messaging to South Korea that the United States, for selfish as well as good reasons, would like to see the ROK to eschew its own nuclear weapons ambitions and find some other way to manage the unpleasantness of the DPRK's program.
Ironically, this puts the US on the same page with China, albeit for different reasons (China has reason to worry about actually getting blown up by local nukes, not just suffering an embarrassing loss of regional stature).
However, it appears that the easy solution to the whole regional nuclear arms mess - denuclearizing the DPRK - is not feasible.
The difficult solution - finessing the DPRK nuclear program while managing the anxieties and opportunism of Japan and the ROK - is beyond the unaided efforts of the United States.
The combined, genuine, and active good offices of China, the ROK, and the US are probably required to reassure and reward the DPRK's understandably paranoid leadership and perform the well-nigh impossible feat of transitioning North Korea from the scary and unacceptable ''impoverished dangerous dingbat nuclear weapons dictatorship'' category to the acceptable class of ''rapidly developing junior partner in Asian prosperity that just happens to be a single-party authoritarian state with nuclear weapon and missile capabilities'', in other words a mini-China.
The United States continues to gag on the nuclear weapons issue, both for some very good reasons relating to the potential for a regional nuclear arms race and a subsequent decline in US clout, and the expectation born of rich experience that whatever deal is made with the DPRK will quickly turn to shit.
But, judging by Secretary Kerry's remarks, Washington may be enticed by the idea that an incremental US geopolitical win on North Korea and a general easing of Asian tensions might be adequate compensation for the sacrifice of nuclear non-proliferation principles.
The Obama administration, whose first-term China policy was characterized by the relentless (and to my mind, counterproductive) zero-sum tensions of the Asian pivot executed by Kerry's predecessor, Hillary Clinton, may be thinking about using the North Korean crisis as the opportunity for a reset of US-China relations through the incremental pursuit of win-win scenarios under Secretary Kerry.
In a hopeful sign, the discourse over North Korea has recently moved beyond simple-minded and futile US chest-thumping military displays to some convoluted US messaging (see China: Pivot 'partner' or pinata?, Asia Times Online, April 10, 2013) apparently inviting China to participate in the North Korean slicing and dicing with the prospect that, in return, the China-containment element of the Asian pivot might be soft-pedaled.
China, intent on sustaining the viability of its North Korean buffer/de facto economic subsidiary, has not yet responded in any meaningful way to Kerry's blandishments.
Beijing will probably wait and see if the US can find its own way out of the denuclearization cul-de-sac and offer the plausible prospect of a viable North Korean state that has not become a US/South Korean proxy antagonistic to China (in other words, a socialist state that has partially reconciled with the West but somehow retained its nuclear and missile capabilities).
However, Beijing has already resigned itself, albeit grudgingly, to dilution of its once total domination of Myanmar/Burma, and, as tussles on the op-ed pages of the official Chinese media reveal, is obviously debating the possibility that distancing itself from North Korea might be acceptable and even a good thing for China. [2]
The flip side to Chinese equivocation over North Korea is the PRC's determination to ingratiate itself with the Park administration (see China targets South Korea with soft power , Asia Times Online, April 10, 2013), and wean the ROK (whose economic importance to China vastly outweighs that of the DPRK) away from the US/Japan security axis into a closer diplomatic and economic relationship with China.
It would be logical, therefore, to expect that the PRC will cautiously partner with the ROK - and through it, the US - on its North Korean initiatives, if only to smooth the PRC-ROK relationship. So the stars may be aligning for something sensible to happen on North Korea.
Maybe.
Notes
1.See here.
2. here.
Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with US foreign policy
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/CHIN-02-190413.html
North Korea Tones Down Language, Giving Hope for Dialogue
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Lee Jin-Man/Associated Press
South Korean soldiers prepared 155-millimeter howitzers at military exercises on Thursday.
Published: April 18, 2013
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SEOUL, South Korea — By North Korean standards, the invective issued over the past week has bordered on civil. Instead of near daily threats of nuclear annihilation for the “nest of evil” in the United States and promises to “press the button,” the North in recent days has grumbled over a “crafty ploy” and “cunning trick” by America and its allies to strip the North of its nuclear arsenal.
The United States and South Korea, meanwhile, have made a change of their own: putting a new focus on offering talks after weeks of meeting North Korean provocations with harsh warnings that included deploying nuclear-capable stealth bombers on a practice run over South Korea.
Security analysts in South Korea and the United States expressed cautious optimism this week that the shift in tone, however understated, is a sign that after weeks of escalating threats that raised fears of armed conflict, both sides might be ready to calm tensions.
“I wouldn’t say the crisis has passed, but maybe we’re in a less dangerous phase,” said Evans J. R. Revere, a former State Department expert on Asia who is now senior director of the Albright Stonebridge Group, a consulting firm that specializes in Korea, China and Japan. “The possibility of a serious miscalculation is not as great as a few days ago.”
He attributed North Korea’s reduced bombast partly to what he called their position “at the top of the rhetorical escalatory ladder — where do you go after you threaten to nuke Los Angeles, Austin, Texas and Washington? The place to go after that is to carry out your threats, and they are not in the position to do that.”
Even those like Mr. Revere who express hope of at least a short-term quieting, emphasize that too little is known about North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong-un, to predict what could happen next. He could launch a missile test as policy makers in South Korea and the United States have expected, and some South Korean officials privately fear the softening of the North’s tone could be a ploy meant to bolster those in the United States and South Korea who are pushing for a more lenient stance toward the North.
The offers of dialogue by the United States and South Korea, while showing some softening, also expose the gulf in expectations between them and North Korea.
The Obama administration continues to demand that Pyongyang commit to giving up its nuclear weapons before negotiations on longer-term solutions to decades of animosity — a starting point the North has rejected repeatedly, including on Thursday.
The South Koreans, “along with their American master, are still talking such nonsense as ‘denuclearization’ in the North in a bid to make a bargain over its nukes,” a spokesman for the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said. “They would be well advised to drop such daydream.”
The North has also put forward its own terms for talks, including the lifting of United Nations sanctions for North Korea’s recent nuclear and missile tests, a precondition the United States is unlikely to accept.
Still, the fact that North Korea has recently begun at least responding to American and South Korean overtures for dialogue represents a change.
“They are keeping the door open for possible negotiation,” said Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at Sejong Institute, south of Seoul. He said the North might wait to accept the invitation until after the United States and South Korea ended their joint military exercises at the end of April.
Analysts have suggested the North could declare victory to its people once the exercises end, claiming its tough talk drove the Americans to halt what it characterizes as possible plans for invasion. Ending the exercises, and not repeating them, is one of the demands the North put forward on Thursday as a prerequisite for negotiations.
Jae H. Ku, director of the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, said he believed China had played an important role in the toned-down North Korean language, in part by publicly criticizing American military operations in the region in a way that gave the North some face-saving cover for its anxiety over the joint exercises. At the same time, Mr. Ku said, he was sure that China, presumed to be the only country with real leverage with the North, had been privately pressuring the North Koreans to scale back their threats.
One of the first attempts to calm the confrontation came last Thursday when the government of President Park Geun-hye of South Korea ended weeks of tough talk with a vague offer of dialogue. The government also allowed a charity to ship tuberculosis medicines to North Korea, and authorized factory owners from the South to try to meet North Korean officials to discuss reopening a joint industrial park that Pyongyang temporarily closed last week. For now, the North has refused to meet the factory owners.
Then, last Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry, on a visit to the region focused on the North Korea crisis, said “our preference would be to get to talks” and supported the South’s efforts to reach out. The United States had earlier postponed a ballistic missile test.
Even before a noticeable drop in bombast late last week, the young Mr. Kim had disappeared from view after weeks of nearly daily appearances on North Korean news and propaganda sites in poses meant to suggest his readiness for combat and his soldiers’ dedication. One photo showed him with his top generals authorizing plans to strike major American cities with missiles.
Mr. Kim returned to public view on Monday when he visited the Kumsusan mausoleum in Pyongyang to pay respect to his grandfather, North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, who would have turned 101 that day.
George A. Lopez, professor of peace studies at the University of Notre Dame and an expert on the North Korea sanctions, said it was notable that North Korea had not engaged in any provocative actions during Mr. Kerry’s visit to the region, which coincided with the birthday celebrations for Mr. Kim’s grandfather.
“I’m looking at this as a calculated political choice,” he said. “Maybe we’ve seen the worst of the storm.”
Mr. Lopez also said that if North Korea were to conduct a missile test now — considered by some to be the least provocative action the North could take if it needs to make good on its bluster — the Obama administration was likely to react with measured criticism.
That would not move the two countries toward anything resembling a long-term solution over a nuclear program that the administration says it cannot tolerate, and the North considers its “treasured sword” — its best protection against the United States. But like the recent toning down of language, a muted reaction could suggest movement away from tit-for-tat confrontation.
“We don’t need to move toward some progress,” said Dr. Ku of the U.S.-Korea Institute. “If we could all just get off the ledge, that would be progress.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/world/asia/north-korea-tension.html?pagewanted=1