The lesson of Korea (1)

Themanifest impotence of the United States to get North Korea to end its continuing build-up of a nuclear arsenal, and the continual testing of ballistic missiles to deliver it, is a case study in the embarrassment of a superpower by a weak, impoverished nation. It has created a potentially dangerous international situation. It became especially so last Tuesday after the UN Security Council had unanimously imposed stiff sanctions on North Korea, and Pyongyang was so upset, it began to issue threats against the United States. Then it also transpired that North Korea had already miniaturized nuclear warheads to be placed on its recently tested intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
President Donald Trump who, unlike many Republicans, is not usually given to war rhetoric then issued his most scary warning yet to the North Koreans saying that threats to the US “will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” And despite the heated debate, and what one analyst called colourful bellicose rhetoric, the reality of a war in the Korean Peninsula seemed far-fetched given the incalculable cost and risks. It is true that wars have been waged in the past for pride, ego and less.
But the North Korean challenge demonstrates the limits of military force in the nuclear age, and how peace could be preserved by default through mutual fear of the uncertainties of military adventurism.
Credit must go to the American high command that it did not attempt to sugar-coat or minimize the disastrous consequences of a war with North Korea. Indeed the US defence chiefs said it would be nothing short of catastrophic. Now diplomacy has been initiated by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who has been rather successful in moderating the US position by stating clearly that the United States does not wish for a regime change in Pyongyang, and that it wants a diplomatic not a military resolution, and his strategy must have had a major influence in corralling all members of the Security Council to vote for the sanctions against North Korea. Tillerson was perhaps adopting the Chinese position that the US should talk directly with North Korea.
It is sometimes forgotten that diplomacy actually worked between the US and North Korea, at least up to a point, 23 years ago. But it began at the wrong point, and the opportunity was eventually frittered away by American arrogance and North Korea’s obduracy. The Korean War had ended in 1953 in an armistice, instead of a peace treaty. Both countries are, therefore, technically, still at war with guns pointed at each other across the 38th Parallel, the point at which they agreed on a ceasefire. However, both countries tried to talk peace in what has come to be known as the “Agreed Framework,” a non-binding raggedy treaty signed by both countries on October 21, 1994. The immediate issue was then, as it is today, North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme and the US efforts to thwart or stop it. The dispute first arose between North Korea and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear inspectors in 1992 who raised a query that North Korea was being duplicitous about its nuclear wastes. The inspectors requested permission to visit two other suspected nuclear sites. North Korea refused. The inspectors reported as expected to the UN Security Council. A few months later, March 12, 1993, North Korea announced its decision to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The “Framework” agreement was North Korea’s initiative for a comprehensive agreement with the US. It was accepted by the Clinton Administration, noted by the Security Council, and for a while it staved off North Korea’s attempt to pull out of the NPT. It essentially had nine provisions. It would replace North Korea’s nuclear reactors which were capable of producing weapons grade plutonium with light water reactors which posed no such risks; it would provide North Korea with 500,000 tons of fuel oil per year to help it with heating and electricity until the reactors were replaced. It held out the prospect of a full normalization of political and economic relations between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, the official name of North Korea) and the United States, North Korea had been under US sanctions since 1950. It promised security assurance for the DPRK against the threat or use of nuclear weapons by the US.
The DPRK, on its part, was to take steps to implement the 1992 Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula (which sought to make the Peninsula nuclear-free). The agreement also provided that the DPRK would remain in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and that IAEA nuclear inspectors must resume inspection; nuclear fuel stocks must be disposed of without reprocessing; and North Korea must be in full compliance of IAEA safeguards before the delivery of the low water nuclear reactor components.
Had both parties been true to the “Agreed Framework,” today’s problems would never have arisen. But the agreement was marred by various acts of bad faith. Later it was said that the Clinton Administration signed the agreement only because “they thought that the North Korean government would collapse before the nuclear power project was completed as North Korea’s leader Kim Il-sung had recently died.” Perhaps for that reason, the construction of the low water reactor was delayed for years thereby infuriating North Korea which eventually warned in May 1998 it would restart its nuclear research if the US could not install the low water reactor.
The reactor was to cost $4 billion and no substantial spending was made on the project till the year 2000. To complicate matters, the Republican Party which never believed in the “Agreed Framework” agreement, subsequently won the control of the US Congress. The result was that the oil deliveries were late and the US agreement to phase out the long-standing economic sanctions against the DPRK, a major incentive for the North Koreans, failed to materialize.
The big picture from each side of the agreement was different. While the Americans viewed the agreement as a nuclear non-proliferation endeavour, the North Koreans saw the agreement as their long-sought normalization of relationship with the United States which had been denied them through US hostility to their regime and their country. The US regarded North Korea as a rogue regime, a unique kind of tyrannical government where the leader is worshipped, and opposition is outlawed.
The North Koreans, on their part, regard the United States as the ultimate enemy that wished to destroy their regime and ruin their country and subjugate them. They place their fate in their readiness to fight and die for their country and to be self-sufficient and independent armed with the nuclear card which they see as their ultimate shield, their defence against their more powerful neighbours including Russia, China, and, of course, their ultimate enemy, the United States.