Beyond Realipolitik
Richard Tanter, "Beyond Realpolitik", Spinach7, No. 3, Autumn-Winter 2004.
North Korea is ruled by a struggling dictatorship, whose people are starving, and whose time is running out. Richard Tanter takes a diplomatic look at world diplomacy, and examines the options in dealing with the famously 'rogue' state.
I was talking to a distinguished foreign security specialist, a long-time advisor to his government on North Korea. We were sitting at a seaside restaurant on a warm Melbourne summer evening arguing about security policy in Northeast Asia, especially the question of what to do about North Korea and the present nuclear stand-off, when he said something that made me wonder whether I'd heard correctly.
"Send them no aid, none at all; any aid just props up the dictatorship", he argued.
"Yes, I understand that argument," I replied, carefully. "But surely you don't include food aid? We know that millions of people in North Korea are starving, and there are already hundreds of thousands of North Korean refugees in China."
"Nothing. Not a drop. We need a million and a half refugees going across the border - at least 10 percent of the population. Then we'll get regime change", he concluded.
This is what is called 'realpolitik' in international affairs: be hardnosed, stay focussed on the question of power, and don't let an overabundance of sentiment about the human side effects of policy get in the way of statecraft. A kind of self-styled "realism" that is often in fact not particularly realistic in its assessments of the consequences of its policy recommendations - as can be seen in this particular recommendation about how to deal with North Korea. The objective of the policy is simple: to bring down the state led by the dictator Kim Jong-il. The method proposed is to magnify the already long-running economic distress inside the country of 22.4 million people to a point that the country will be ungovernable. Millions will flee over the border into neighbouring China, and millions more be so desperate that, despite being unarmed and completely unorganised politically, they will rise up against their vile and brutal rulers.
Never mind the unavoidable and almost unimaginable human consequences, it's even more important to understand the degree of fantasy - rather than genuine realism - on which such a policy is built. The North Korean regime has more than a million men under arms, a huge and powerful secret police, and a whole menagerie of secret intelligence and spy organisations; not to mention - in all likelihood - a small number of nuclear weapons. There has not been an open demonstration in North Korea in the last 40 years, and no visible opposition. Any 'uprising' would trigger a violent and most likely highly confused response, which in turn would heighten the risk of unintentional war across the nearby border with South Korea.
Yet North Korea is a genuine problem that needs to be talked about.
So how are we to think about the issue? What should we be expecting the Australian government to do? And what can the rest of us do? To put the case as bluntly as possible: what is to be done about a country whose dictatorial and highly corrupt government controls all its citizens in the name of a perversion of "state socialism" that looks more like a kind of hereditary fascism; murders, tortures and starves many of its citizens; sells heroin and long-range missiles for export income; kidnaps foreign citizens to train its spies; and most likely has two or three sophisticated nuclear weapons and the long range missiles to drop them on its neighbours?
Is humanitarian intervention the answer?
One comment often heard around Washington and Canberra to justify a possible invasion of North Korea has some truth to it: you should not compromise with evil. Accordingly so, it is argued that no negotiation is really possible with North Korea, and that intervention is the only viable solution.
While military intervention by the US may lead to the collapse of the North Korean regime, it would only do so through a catastrophic war that would dwarf the impact of the Iraq war, spill over into South Korea, drag the United States into certain confrontation with China, and negate any possible claimed humanitarian consequences within North Korea itself.
Somehow an answer must be found that has a reasonable chance of leading to internal political and economic change in North Korea, and at the same time avoiding that worst of all possibilities: another Korean war.
What is the North Korean problem?
North Korea is a small country, about half the size of Victoria with a population a bit larger than Australia. The northern half of the Korean peninsula, the country has a long border with China to the north, made up for the most part of two shallow rivers across which 200-350, 000 North Korean refugees have crossed in recent years - often to be sent back to face prison or worse. Apart from a few official exchanges, nothing has crossed the four kilometre-wide Demilitarised Zone that stretches along the 238 kilometre border between the two Koreas since 1953, except the animals and birds that have flocked to Asia's - albeit unintended - richest natural conservation zone. That is because this "demilitarised" zone is surrounded by a million North Korean, South Korean and US soldiers - the result of almost half a century of mutual expectation of attack.
The South emerged from four decades of American-supported dictatorship a decade ago to become a vibrant and democratic economic powerhouse, deeply uneasy at the continuing military presence of more than 38, 000 American frontline soldiers - and about the possibility that the collapsing and poverty-stricken North might fall unpredictably into its hands and become an albatross around its neck. About the same time, the North began to go into what appeared to be terminal decline. Decades of Soviet and Chinese preferential markets and economic assistance were suddenly cut off when the Soviet Union collapsed, and Chinese communists discovered the attractions of capitalism. Almost overnight, North Korea lost protected markets for its exports and massive subsidies for its most important import: oil. Almost like a biblical plague, a decade of alternating floods and failed rice and corn harvests wreaked havoc on basic food supplies. The end of cheap imported oil and petrol meant the chemicals to make agricultural fertilisers were no longer freely available, and the large manufacturing sector (much larger, proportionally than that of China or Vietnam) ground to a virtual halt.
By the end of the 1990s, the demise of 'socialist fraternity' coupled with the economic, political and environmental consequences of a corrupt, incredibly centralised and dictatorial economic planning system ensured that what had once been the most advanced industrial economy in the Asian communist bloc had all but collapsed. By 2002 foreign aid - mostly food - made up 90 per cent of all imports.
Estimates of the living conditions inside North Korea are difficult because the government restricts access of outside observers, limits the movement of foreign aid workers, and fiercely controls contacts between North Korean citizens and outsiders. The most reliable estimates suggest that in the 1990s, between 600, 000 and 1 million people died of starvation. Food aid is diverted to the capital Pyongyang, and the few other places where foreign visitors have ready access, and to the families of the Korea Workers party and the military.
There is an image, almost unbelievable, but quite true, that makes all of this quite clear. It is a 2001 photograph of Northeast Asia at night taken from space by an American imagery intelligence satellite. In the picture, the southern part of Japan glows - a country rich enough to be careless with its energy. North Western China is dotted with intense spots of light - the industrial heartland of the world's largest country. On the Korean peninsula, the lights of Seoul splash out, and the outline of the rest of the country is ablaze. But crossing the well-lit Demilitarised Zone that separates North and South Korea and moving north to the Chinese border, there is barely a light to be seen outside the capital, Pyongyang - and that looks like one of the smaller provincial South Korean cities. This is not American propaganda. It is an image, not of rational energy conservation, but of starvation, incompetence and bankruptcy.
The North Korean government centred on Kim Jong-il is fighting for its life - against international pressure from the US and its allies on the outside, and a largely self-inflicted economic collapse on the inside.
The nuclear issue
Does North Korea have nuclear weapons? Probably yes, although there is no absolute certainty. In 1989 the Koreans suspended the operation of their small Russian-built 5 MWe research reactor at Yongbyon, about 60 kilometres from Pyongyang, and then removed a large number of spent natural uranium fuel rods from it. Using reasonable assumptions, the CIA, as well as independent experts, calculate that it would have been possible to have reprocessed that fuel to obtain plutonium that could be used to make up to five 'nuclear devices' - the stage before actual weapons. Using technical knowledge about the design of plutonium nuclear weapons (of the type dropped on Nagasaki) from Pakistan, and manufacturing equipment smuggled in with help from Pakistan and the nuclear black-market, it is quite possible - but not certain - that North Korea has produced two, or perhaps three, nuclear devices sufficiently small, reliable and safe to use as weapons, if not missile warheads.
Why are the Koreans trying to make nukes? There are in general four possible uses for nuclear weapons: deterrence; attacking another country; as an export earner; and as a bargaining chip in negotiations. A nuclear deterrent would certainly stop a US attack, but a North Korean use of that tiny deterrent force, whether in defence or attack, would be suicidal. That means the real purpose of the weapons is either to earn export income, or to use as a bargaining chip in a deal for massive aid. After the revelations in February about Pakistan's nuclear black-market operations, Korean export of nuclear technology would be virtually impossible.
The North Koreans' favourite - and almost only - style of diplomacy is a kind of 'in your face' brinkmanship, combined with blackmail. Now, as in the early 1990s, the North Koreans are using the threat that they will acquire nuclear weapons to push the US and its allies to leave them alone militarily and provide the massive aid needed for them to survive. This is partly because they have so few cards to play. They have no exports other than narcotics, missiles, and forced labour, and these are all becoming impossible to sustain post 9-11. They have no genuine popular support or political allies.
Many people have pointed to the obvious way out of the North Korea problem: a verifiable North Korean agreement to give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for a guarantee of military and energy security from America and its allies. The economic costs are relatively small (certainly compared to the $150 billion plus cost to the US of the Iraq war), and, if the 1994 example were followed, would be largely paid for by those American allies with most to gain and lose in the event of war: South Korea and Japan.
Clearly, if such a deal is to be done between North Korea and the United States, both sides will have to be sure it will not come undone. The US and its allies will rightly insist on a failsafe complete and verifiable nuclear disarmament. North Korea will insist on one form or another of security guarantee. The US will have to foreswear the option of a nuclear attack on a non-nuclear North Korea, and it will also involve a guarantee by all parties of respect for borders - that is, no invasion by the US.
But the big ask from the North Koreans will be about economic security. If they are to give up their only playing card, then the Bush administration needs to come see that it is very much in the interests of both the United States and its Northeast Asian allies to help the North Koreans solve their immediate and medium-term food and energy needs. Not only is the alternative of continued extreme tension and even war counter-productive, but the economic payoffs to the US allies from regional stability - the real ending of the Cold War - will be enormous.
For the first two years of the Bush administration, there was a virtual stalemate on the nuclear issue. In the middle of last year, in response this standoff, Chinese president Hu Jin-tao initiated a round of shuttle diplomacy that resulted in a very new form of diplomatic negotiation for this part of the world: the first of a series of six-party talks between North Korea, South Korea, China, the United States, Japan and Russia. Exerting great pressure on the reluctant North Koreans, China undertook the first responsibility of all who want to avoid crisis degenerating into war: getting the parties to the negotiating table, and making sure that they do not walk away.
Obstacles to successful negotiations
Three things are thwarting this possible resolution of the stalemate at the moment. Firstly, Korea has been on the Bush administration's list of preferred wars since the day it took office, -and well before September 11th. Clearly, a close election race only increases the attractions of campaigning with a war president.
To prepare for this possibility - and to send a message to Pyongyang - the US Defence Department has been fairly publicly building up the military resources for a massive 'shock and awe' air attack on North Korea as fast as it can free the resources from Iraq, especially replenishing and expanding its stocks of cruise missiles, forward deploying them along with B-2 bombers to Guam, and fine-tuning the mix of forces in the Pacific Command available for an attack.
In return, the North Koreans have all but stopped negotiating seriously in the six-party talks, hoping for Democratic victory in November's election, and a better offer from John Kerry.
The second obstacle is Japan - and its unresolved issues with North Korea over crimes of the past. Between 1977 and the early 1980s dozens certainly, and perhaps hundreds of Japanese citizens were kidnapped by North Korean secret agents in Japan, and taken to North Korea to train that country's secret agents in how to pass as Japanese. Despite the fact that North Korea has since admitted to the crimes, a large number of missing persons cases have simply never been solved. Unless the Japanese can be satisfied on the kidnapping issue, the question of massive aid to North Korea - a key part of any solution to the nuclear crisis - is off the agenda.
The third obstacle is that Kim Jong-il knows that economic change may well lead to his own downfall, and of those who he shares power with. It is not in fact a one-man show, and Kim must negotiate internally. Certainly we must expect that the privileged of North Korea will either defend their privileges with every political weapon they possess and resist change, or perhaps more optimistically, if equally distastefully, they will come to see that, as with the party and military apparatchik mafia in Russia and China in the 1990s, they can convert the privileges of dictatorship into positions of advantage in a new but less brutal and violent political system.
A role for Australia?
Australia has an important role in this process, as an ally of the United States. If John Howard's rhetoric of "allies, not puppets" is genuine, then the Australian government should be trying to moderate the more intemperate and ideologically driven parts of the Bush administration, maintain close dialogue with all parties to the dispute, and be willing to contribute economically to a stable, nuclear-free Korean peninsula. Moreover, beyond the present crisis, Australia needs to encourage longterm stability: policies that transcend the current lurching from crisis to crisis in the Northeast Asian region; a region to which we are ever more deeply tied economically.
Terrorism and nuclear proliferation are immensely dangerous, especially now they have come together in a nuclear black market, and Australia does need to take a strong role against both. This is not a "war on terrorism" so much as close and effective international police and intelligence cooperation against criminals.
But it is also important for Australia in doing so to remind its American ally that its own nuclear double standards - nukes for friends like Israel, Pakistan and India are okay, but not for others - are undermining all these efforts.
One way in which the Australian government could help is with the crucial but simple practice of breaking down the barriers of myth and suspicion between North Korea and the outside world by encouraging initiatives that bring citizens of the two countries together productively. This is always important in global politics, but nowhere more so than in the case of North Korea - which is so stereotyped by both its own government propaganda and by the Western media. In the context of dictatorship and nuclear threat the idea of people-to people 'diplomacy' may seem limp-wristed at best, and more likely dangerously naïve.
Yet there is already a remarkably positive and successful Australian/American precedent that has cut through the obstacles presented by all the governments involved. Over the past decade, the Australian director of the Nautilus Institute for Peace and Security, Peter Hayes, has lead a remarkable pioneering private aid project that has brought seven wind-powered electricity generators to the small coastal village of Unhari 70 kilometres from Pyongyang. Not only did the Nautilus Institute initiative find a path through the diplomatic shoals and reefs to provide a practical way for Australians and Americans to help a small Korean village, but they also managed to persuade the North Koreans to accept American and South Korean engineers to help train the local villagers to maintain the system. From little things big things grow.