Sunday, January 05, 2003

Who will wink first

PV Vivekanand

I was asked the other day what I thought was the reason for the contrasting American approach to Iraq and North Korea. The US insists on a military confrontation with Iraq which says it has no weapons of mass destruction and poses no threat to its neighbourhood. On the other hand, the US is softpedalling around North Korea which has openly declared it is capable of producing nuclear weapons and poses a threat to US allies South Korea and Japan, and, if need be, the US itself.
Well, I had thought, until the question was put to me, that the situation was fairly clear and did not really need an explanation since the whole affair was and is superficial. There was never the possibility of the Korean "dispute" getting out of hand and North Korea firing a nuclear weapon (not that it is known it has one; even if it had, it knows well that it would definitely lead to the obliteration of North Korea as we know it today. There is no reason to believe that the reclusive North Korean leadership is turning suicidal either).
On the surface, North Korea has done everything to attract international punitive measures of a higher intensity than Iraq warrants. It has been established that it has a nuclear weapons programme and it is not willing to co-operate with the world community, whereas it has yet to be proven that Iraq has such a programme and Baghdad is indeed co-operating with UN weapons inspectors .
Why still the US says diplomacy is the way to resolve the Korean "crisis" while it maintains that military means is the way to deal with Iraq?
In direct comparison, it was the US which pushed the Iraq situation into a real crisis and created the possibility of war for purposes that suit American interets, while North Korea was the culprit on the Asian front but with non-war objectives in mind.
The contradiction between the two "problems" is also clear: the US intends to follow up its anti-Iraq campaign with a war in the Middle East whereas North Korea seems to be the last country interested in war and the US would not be drawn into one either.
Pyongyang's implied and implicit suggestions that poses a nuclear threat in its neighbourhood are the roar of a paper tiger aimed at realising its objective of solving critical internal crises. It is hoping to kill two birds with one stone -- securing external help without compromising its isolationist ideology or exposing its leadership to political risks. And it seeks a position to strength to drive a hard bargain.
Deeply mired in economic problems that have led to starvation and mounting unrest among its people and political isolation that has denied timely external help, the North Korean leadership wants a way out. Pyongyang believes that the US is its best bet for securing foreign aid, including food and fuel. But the Stalinist leadership also knows that they would have to "lose face" if they were to seek direct help and that such help would be at the expense of opening up the country which they are not yet ready to do.
North Korea has also accepted the reality that it could no longer count on its traditional friend China to pull it out of the quagmire. Beijing has its own preoccupation with its newfound economic strength without compromising communism and it is highly unlikely that it would risk a halt to its international windfall by throwing its weight behind a "loser" like North Korea.
As such, it appears to me, Pyongyang found the best means to solve its internal problems through external engagement, and the process was launched from a confrontational approach to the US.
It announced that it had violated a 1994 nuclear agreement with the US, was determined to pursue its nuclear plans, kicked out nuclear inspectors, and broke open the seals of a mothballed nuclear plant deemed capable of producing a nuclear bomb. The world has no idea at this point in time whether such a bomb has already been produced, is being produced or whether the country already had a nuclear arsenal at the outset of the "dispute."
In retaliation, the US and others suspended aid to North Korea and turned off the fuel taps, but Washington has consistently maintained that the way out of the crisis was through diplomacy and dialogue. It has ruled out a pre-emptive strike to eliminate North Korea's nuclear facilities and it has not assembled military force to do so either.
As such, it emerges that Washington is fully aware of North Korea's ulterior objective of sitting down to discuss and resolve the "dispute" and there is little chance of a military conflict erupting in the Korean peninsula despite the mix of threatening rhetoric and calls for diplomatic talks oozing out of Pyongyang.
Armed with that knowledge that North Korea is seeking to assume a high ground -- a positions of strength from its point of view -- in eventual negotiations to settle the crisis, the US is letting Pyongyang have its way for the time being until Washington is ready to sit down for talks. Under normal circumstances, the anti-US language coming out of North Korea is not the kind of talk that Washington would tolerate, but then it knows it is not a war cry but an invitation to dialogue.
Indeed, in public statements, the US has ruled out any negotiations with North Korea saying it would be tantamount to nuclear blackmail. It demands that Pyongyang freezes its nuclear weapons programmes first. But North Korea believes agreeing to the US demand would show that it is vulnerable to pressure and therefore rules it out.
South Korea and Japan are caught in the middle. They are not fully convinced and pacified that the North would not use nuclear weapons against them, but then such successful pacification would not serve the US strategic objective of maintaining control in the region since the bogeyman in the equation would cease to exist.
In the US-North Korean dispute it is only a matter of who will wink first and what could follow is a tug-of-war to determine how much Washington -- and its allies -- are willing to foot the bill and take care of Pyongyang's chronic internal problems.