Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Michael A. Cole
Department of Public and International Affairs
George Mason University
North Korean leadership has found nuclear threats and ambiguity to be powerful tools to
remain in power, provide security, and increasingly, to extract concessions from the
United States and its neighbors to satisfy the country’s material and strategic needs.
Although it has pursued nuclear weapons for decades, North Korea has never tested a
its security strategy. The threat of acquiring a nuclear capability has enabled North
threats, North Korea is likely to prolong ambiguity concerning its capabilities for as long
as it is practicable, but must eventually identify new means to maintain its security.
When it signed the Armistice Agreement concluding the Korean War in 1953,
North Korea’s economy and infrastructure were devastated. It had suffered more than
half a million deaths in addition to approximately 900,000 Chinese deaths (Niksh 1), and
the Agreement left it with neither peace nor security assurances. The South Korean
government initially refused to sign the agreement and to recognize the North Korean and
Chinese communist governments, preferring instead to continue the war and unite the
peninsula (Nahm 378). South Korean hardliners espoused this position for decades.
With the memory of its brutal war with U.N. forces, and of its war-time enemy’s likewise
desire to govern a united Korean peninsula, North Korea has sought security above all
from its post-war conception to the present. To this end, it has pursued conventional and
socialist models by instituting a centrally controlled economy and investing heavily in the
distinct from other communist revolutions. Economic recovery served as an early test of
the North’s new system. “It was estimated that about 80 per cent of North Korea’s
productive capacity was destroyed by the war” (Nahm 387); its agricultural sector was
decimated; factories and hydroelectric plants were severely damaged (Nahm 388). The
centralized economy saw earlier and faster success than South Korea until the mid-1960s,
“Underfed and overworked, the North Korean farmers and workers were exhausted.
Free medical care and education helped the people, but the high pressure politics
combined with the slow rise in the living standard and various threats of
farmlands, difficulty acquiring manufacturing materials and recurring famines, have not
been alleviated by frequently redrawn economic plans intended to reverse economic
decline.
The Kim regime’s military reconstruction following the Armistice was pursued
with renewed conflict in mind, and its expressed desire has been control of the Korean
peninsula. Although threats associated with nuclear weapons have colored North Korea’s
international relations for half a century, the post-war military buildup emphasized
“North Korea sought and received a tremendous amount of military assistance from
the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Efforts led by them to rebuild
their military strength led to the rise of a large military force, well indoctrinated
with political ideology and equipped with up-to-date weapons” (Nahm 385).
but nuclear threats have always rested in the background, initially as the result of
“During the Korean War, the United States made a number of pointed threats of
nuclear use, and after the War, Washington deployed a sizeable number of tactical
nuclear weapons to Korea. The result of these U.S. policies was to present North
(Indeed, it was not until the conclusion in September 2005 of the Six-Party Talks that
North Korea received formal confirmation that the U.S. had removed its nuclear weapons
from the peninsula consistent with its 1994 Framework Agreement concession and
President Bush’s 1991promise, and that South Korea did not have nuclear weapons in
accordance with the 1992 joint declaration on the denuclearization of the korean
Peninsula (Huntley 10)). North Korea expressed interest in nuclear weapons as early as
the mid-1950s (Mazarr 93). As the Cold War progressed, North Korea’s well-
comparative economic and military ascendancy, and the strength of the U.S.-South Korea
alliance, placed beside North Korea’s security needs and offensive aspirations maintained
Alliances made by North Korea with the Soviet Union and China served to
enlarge the U.S.-North Korea conflict into an issue of global importance, effectively
raising the stakes of possible U.S. intervention against the D.P.R.K.’s regional
provocations, and provided much-needed funds and expertise to promote North Korea’s
nuclear aspirations.
“Under the mutual military assistance agreements signed in 1961 with the Soviet
Union and the People’s Republic of China, North Korea received a considerable
amount of military assistance from both countries, particularly from the Soviet
North Korea’s 1965 acquisition of a Soviet research reactor produced an alarming threat
to international norms and regional stability (Mazarr 94). Under Soviet tutelage, the
North continued construction of reactors and at least one plutonium reprocessing plant
through the late 1980s, including the project at Yongbyon that would later become the
early 1990s, particularly the decline of socialism and their increasingly peaceful
engagement with the West, left North Korea without the security of its Cold War
“The final blow for North Korea came when its former allies Russia and China
normalized their relationships with South Korea in 1990 and 1992, respectively …
When Moscow informed North Korea of its decision [to normalize relations with
South Korea], Foreign Minister Kim Young Nam warned that North Korea would
not regard the existing Moscow-Pyongyang military alliance treaty as being in force
and that North Korea had no choice but to facilitate the development of necessary
weapons. It shows how much the North Korean leadership was struck with fear for,
and a sense of crisis over, the nation’s survival. In addition, with the collapse and
‘betrayal’ of former allies, the North Korean leadership realized its severe
diplomatic isolation and came to perceive a grave danger to its own survival”
(Mazarr).
Continued weakness and underdevelopment within, and American and South Korean
threats perceived from without, led the D.P.R.K. to consider its nuclear weapons program
as its most powerful deterrent and place it at the fore of its defensive position.
nuclear device, utilizes ambiguity concerning the extent to which the nuclear program has
progressed and how far the Kim regime intends to progress toward a nuclear capability.
serve the dual purpose of extracting political and material concessions, maximize
time for the nuclear program’s development. North Korea’s interests are efficiently
served by an ambiguous nuclear threat alone. However, world politics has evolved to
make a security liability of progress beyond threats to device testing, therefore opening
the possibility that North Korea will come to see its interests reflected in nuclear
nonproliferation. In the interim, the strategy employs a long timeframe in which the Kim
regime will use its nuclear program and associated threats to remain in power as North
At the time North Korea disengaged from Russia, the credibility of its nuclear threat
contradictory and D.P.R.K. public statements were inconsistent. Time and intelligence
communities have since shown North Korea has made significant progress toward the
development and delivery). The evidence in these areas moderates the possibility that
North Korea has not yet tested a nuclear device due to technical challenges, again
suggesting strategic motivations. In 1990, Russia’s K.G.B. reported to the Soviet Central
Committee that “According to available data, development of the first nuclear device has
been completed at the nuclear research center in Yongbyon;” “The C.I.A. estimated
publicly in December 2002 that North Korea could produce two atomic bombs annually
through [highly enriched uranium] beginning in 2005;” the aforementioned K.G.B. report
suggested the North Korean government had decided not to test the device in order to
avoid international detection (Niksch 11). North Korea has claimed to possess nuclear
weapons (and in turn, that it does not), and the U.S. intelligence community acts upon the
assumption that the affirmative claim is credible. Whether or not the D.P.R.K. has
weaponized its nuclear material, two things are clear: North Korea possesses or may soon
possess the wherewithal to do so, as seen below by its technological achievements, and
the country’s strategic interests provide insight to its likely course of action where its is
Relationships with Russia, China and Pakistan have benefited the North Korean
nuclear program by providing its scientists with expertise, education and materials. The
alone, many of whom studied nuclear technology in China and in the U.S.S.R. until its
collapse in 1991 (Niksch 9); “East German and Russian nuclear and missile scientists
reportedly were in North Korea throughout the 1990s” (Niksch 10). China and Pakistan
have supplied components and materials for the nuclear program. In the case of Pakistan,
either equipment or equipment designs were exchanged for North Korean missile
technology (Squassoni 6), though technology explicitly intended for North Korea’s
weapons program is thought to be largely of indigenous origin (Niksch 9). The nuclear
suspicion but little evidence of the country’s interest in uranium enrichment at the time of
the 1994 Framework Agreement negotiations and its Nonproliferation Treaty obligations
overseas purchases of equipment and materials for the uranium enrichment program
U.S. and Chinese intelligence sources indicate construction of facilities under Mt. Chun-
Ma and elsewhere that will be detected only with great difficulty (Squassoni 6).
(Squassoni 4), at least one active uranium-yielding mine, and natural uranium sources
estimated at twenty-six million tons nationwide (Niksch 9), North Korea continues to
Yongbyon’s five mega-watt atomic reactor can produce enough plutonium (6kg.) for one
nuclear weapon each year (Niksch 8). Construction resumed in June 2005 of a fifty
mega-watt reactor capable of yielding material for thirty weapons annually (Niksch 8).
The D.P.R.K. possesses approximately eight thousand spent nuclear fuel rods, from
which it can extract weapons grade plutonium for up to six weapons (Niksch 1). U.S.
intelligence experts believe North Korea successfully reprocessed its stockpile of eight
thousand fuel rods and may produce a new stockpile (Niksch 8). All that remains is
miniaturization, warhead manufacture, and attachment to missile delivery systems, an
North Korea has been capable of delivering warheads in an attack on Seoul since the
success of its S.C.U.D. short-range missile in the 1980’s, but the North Korean leadership
reportedly aims to threaten the continental United States (Feickert 6). The No Dong
(“Laborer”) short to intermediate range missile improved upon the S.C.U.D. with greater
accuracy and power within the peninsular theater, and could reach Japan and other
neighbors. The Taepo Dong 1 missile employs a two-stage deployment process using an
missile to project warheads as far as U.S. installations in Okinawa and Guam. The Taepo
Dong 2 missile, which remains untested, may reach up to 8,000 kilometres (to Anchorage
or Seattle). Analysts speculate the Taepo Dong 1 could function with a light warhead
(200 kg.) to reach the central United States or Washington. The assembly of a warhead
and successful joining of nuclear devices to projectile weapons is either within North
Korea’s power or could be within a short time. Despite the ambiguity surrounding the
North’s specific nuclear capabilities, its successes in the two primary technical areas
necessary to produce nuclear weapons indicated its constant non-nuclear status until
September 2005, and continued restraint from announcing itself to be a nuclear power is
inspections which threatened to reveal more about its nuclear program than would serve
its strategic interest in ambiguity. After signing the N.P.T. in 1985 at Russia’s urging (in
coordination with the U.S.), North Korea refused to permit I.A.E.A. inspectors to visit its
nuclear facilities until it received public assurances from President Bush in October 1991
that American nuclear weapons had been removed from South Korea. The North signed
inspectors’ access and movement (Nye 1295). Inspections were controversial as a result
system” (Mazarr 95). The 1992 I.A.E.A. announcement “that it had uncovered
(Mazarr 95), and its demand for “special inspections” of locations not on its list of
disclosed nuclear facilities, led to the expulsion of I.A.E.A. officials and North Korea’s
(Mazarr 95). Just three years after its Cold War security framework had fallen apart,
North Korea constructed a new one, this time by capitalizing on its opacity, manipulating
perceptions and agreements to ensure its physical security and gain concessions. In
addition to the withdrawal of the United States’ nuclear footprint on the Korean peninsula
and the reversal of a long-held American policy not to disclose the locations of nuclear
weapons, North Korea earned itself a negotiating position among large powers.
In order to stem the rhetorical escalation, in which North Korea threatened war for
the first time in decades (Nanto 12) and the United States threatened sanctions and a
blockade (Mazarr 96), both sides entered into discussions to maintain the D.P.R.K. as a
between former President Jimmy Carter and President Kim Il Sung produced the
Framework Agreement, which stood as a bilateral memorandum of understanding in
which each made commitments and concessions in exchange for North Korea’s
continued participation in the N.P.T. regime. Carter’s visit was seen by North Korea as a
strategic victory.
The scenario that [Kim Il Sung] had worked so hard to put together was happening
at last. Faced with the most dismal economic news he had ever received and a
for outside assistance, Kim had, by adroitly using the threat of nuclear weapons and
general war, brought a novice American government to his desk bearing gifts … All
Jimmy Carter accomplished was to adroitly maneuver, cajole, and pressure Kim Il
Sung into accepting everything that the North Korean leader had hoped to receive”
(Cucullu 259).
Under the Framework, the D.P.R.K. was promised light-water reactor power plants to
fuel oil until their completion, and other forms of aid negotiated at later meetings. North
Korea agreed to store and dispose of its spent nuclear fuel stocks, permit I.A.E.A.
inspections, fulfill its safeguards agreement before completion of the light-water reactors,
and implement its part of the Korean Peninsula Denuclearization Declaration. Each side
committed to move toward political and economic normalization, though the terms of
each are vague. By taking key countries to the edge of war and leaning on its strategy to
utilize nuclear threats and ambiguity, North Korea successfully averted a conventional
conflict it could not win, claimed further assurances for its future security, and retreated
talks and rewards, continuing at present as the Six Party Talks. The North has bought
itself ten years to develop its nuclear program, successfully avoiding I.A.E.A. inspections
throughout the period. During that time, it has restarted and then shut down nuclear
facilities at Yongbyon numerous times, first in December 2002 and recently in June
2005; it has suspended its participation and re-entered international talks several times,
citing its intention to aggressively develop weapons. It retains its strategic tools: threats
attached to its nuclear program and ambiguity concerning the same. The program of
concessions has remained in place since 1995, and manipulation of the program is a part
of North Korea’s strategy to prolong the present situation, but it is also critical to
by malnutrition. The people die silently by the thousands in their homes, in the
fields, and by the roadside. The government tells them that loyalty to Kim Jong Il
and juche socialism is more important than life itself, and many seem to believe it.
Recent natural disasters are believed to have killed five to ten per-cent of the North
Korean population. Although the military leadership appears unwilling to affect change
and peasant revolts have been easily halted, consequences of unrest and economic
deterioration to the Kim regime remain uncertain. The assistance program is a primary
source of relief from ongoing domestic crises, and its indefinite extension is presently an
Korea’s actions and to reflect donors’ strategies and preferences concerning the conflict.
For example, “China and Japan have had some short-term success in linking their food
bodies participating in aid programs, including the United States, China, Japan, South
Korea, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Agency (K.E.D.O.), the World Food
Program (W.F.P.) and the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), each employs a unique
calculus to determine what it will send to the North, usually in the form of energy, fuel,
food, fertilizer, and infrastructure and industry projects (Manyin 4). Whatever the calculi
produce, assistance-providing nations are now strategically bound to the aid program.
talks” (Manyin 30), primarily with reference to nuclear nonproliferation, and policy
provides minimal unconditional aid for humanitarian reasons. As China and South Korea
depend on their assistance programs to facilitate regional stability, and would thus
increase their aid if the U.S. and others responded with cuts to the North’s nuclear
advancement, the aid is presently of limited utility to deter the nuclear program (Manyin
29). However, it remains a useful tool for the United States to maintain channels to
North Korea even through periods of strategic isolation, and acts as “a vehicle to secure
support from China, South Korea, Japan and, Russia” (Niksh 6) for total D.P.R.K.
nuclear dilemma, concluded in September 2005 with its first formal agreement. (It is the
first agreement between North Korea and the U.S. since the Framework Agreement in
1994). “The agreement marks transition from prolonged initial parrying into serious
denuclearize the Korean peninsula and specified the dismantlement of D.P.R.K. nuclear
facilities and weapons; it is the first time North Korea has agreed to dismantle and
discontinue its weapons-oriented nuclear program, as well as the first time its assembled
nuclear weapons have been addressed with such a modicum of ambiguity. In addition,
the agreement reiterated the two Koreas’ commitment to their 1992 joint declaration for
peninsular denuclearization and reaffirmed neither American nor South Korean nuclear
weapons are present on the peninsula. Significant departures from the Framework
phased movement toward a permanent peace and regional security cooperation. This
apparent transition in the years’ long process is contrary to North Korea’s interest in
extended inaction, and talks concluded in November 2005 failed to identify actionable
items to move forward from the September agreement, effectively delaying progress
toward the U.S. objective of denuclearization. However, the 2005 Agreement is the
foundation for the next round of talks. North Korea’s next move will reflect little change
*
Participants in the talks, including the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, South
Korea, Russia, Japan, and the United States, also met in August 2003, February 2004,
June 2004, and July 2005 without success in reaching a resolution.
in its security perception and ongoing need for assistance. It is likely to confirm the
these pressures, but a cost of relying on ambiguity and threats in relationships is that
rejecting agreements that specify timetables for its disarmament, its engagements tend to
reflect a broad conception of its security situation. By signing the September 2005 Six
Party agreement, North Korea signalled both continuity and change in its foreign policy
perspective: continuity in its pursuit of security and concessions, and change in its
perception of the best means to achieve these. That North Korea sought American and
nuclear status, their pledge to work for normalization and cooperative security, and
omission of the Framework requirement that the North rejoin the N.P.T. and inspections-
regime reflects old fears and known weaknesses, but also new recognition that security
need not be a solitary endeavor. North Korea took care to retain promises of aid and
future development assistance. As it has in the past, the assistance program and
providing the North with time to accrue the benefits of aid, as well as opportunities to
obfuscate and retain ambiguity as a powerful tool. This is a victory over the Bush
Korean disarmament was a precondition to any further U.S. actions” (Huntley 2), and the
North’s active pursuit of such an approach notably suggests its interest in “muddling
through” (Oh, Hassig 309), prolonging the present situation for the security and small
benefits it yields. These represent only small shifts in North Korea’s position. However,
its decade-long shift away from threats of war that punctuated its pre-Framework stance
has consisted entirely of small signals amid a din of threats and ideological
pronouncements.
strategic consequences for North Korea’s position. The U.S. policy of pre-emption aims
to make their acquisition a greater liability than an asset, and the world-wide spread of
anti-ballistic missile defense systems promises to both render useless the North’s nuclear
program. Former Secretary of Defense Les Aspin noted that, “In the post Cold War
world … the United States has ‘unmatched conventional military power, and it is our
potential adversaries who may attain nuclear weapons’” (Huntington 187), but he could
not have forseen the developments that now mitigate nuclear weapons’ usefulness.
aggression or not remains a subject of debate, but Saddam Hussein’s Iraq stands as an
threat. Despite continuing ambiguity concerning the veracity of the threat posed by
the threat (verbal or apparent) as sufficient cause to attack. President Bush’s inclusion of
North Korea in an “axis of evil” with Iran and Iraq during his 2002 State of the Union
address, and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s identification of North Korea as one of
six “outposts of tyranny,” were surely causes of alarm for the Kim regime. When the
United States deposed Saddam Hussein in 2003 in a pre-emptive defence against his
security they may once have been. Possession of nuclear weapons or the perceived threat
of nuclear proliferation, without the conventional means to defend the state and its
employed in the invasion of Iraq also makes a security liability of the subtler threat that
North Korea will sell nuclear weapons to outside actors, such as terrorists. The
landscapes of nuclear proliferation and national security have changed dramatically, and
Those countries seeking security from a nuclear program that are undeterred by pre-
technology.
“North Korea is reportedly spending as much as 40 per cent of its gross domestic
military investments are primarily in their nuclear, biological, chemical and missile
programs in order to gain an ‘asymmetrical’ advantage over the U.S. and South
Whereas the D.P.R.K. invests in its nuclear program because it is believed to provide a
greater investment return in security and concessions than its traditional army, successful
A.B.M. defense programs will render the nuclear program ineffectual and obsolete. The
United States, our deployed forces, allies and friends against threats of all ranges
and in all phases of flight. Initially limited, these defenses will evolve to become
increasingly capable over time as technologies mature. In late 2004 the United
States fielded the initial Ballistic Missile Defense System Test Bed that can be used
for limited defense operations as the Missile Defense Agency continues to develop
The A.B.M.-defense program is both land-based and sea-based. Tests for the sea-based
functions are oriented to form a missile shield with U.S. Navy ships for Japan’s defense
against North Korea, and tests of the land-based model have used missiles placed at a
trajectory to simulate a warhead fired from North Korea. The model under development
will target inbound missiles at three points in their paths, using sensors to identify
missiles by targeting their fuel tanks, and smart weapons successfully intercepted test-
decoys in 2005.
missile systems now under development (Felgengauer 1). That technology is a part of
the “next wave,” and its progress suggests North Korea’s hugely expensive program of
nuclear warhead development and 1980s missiles may soon be at least two generations
behind technology used by the rest of the world. Meanwhile, “Japan, India, Australia,
South Korea, Israel, Taiwan, N.A.T.O. and others are moving to acquire new or improved
missile defenses” (Hackett 1). N.A.T.O. may announce its plans as early as its 2006
conference in Riga, Latvia (Inside Missile Defense 1). North Korea’s post-Cold War
against it, and the country continues to overspend on its outdated system to the detriment
of its economy and stability. North Korea’s characteristic strategic acuity will not long
While North Korea continues to suffer from the weakness, poverty, isolation and
fear it was left with in the wake of the Korean War, the rest of the world has moved on.
The Communist-bloc afforded temporary conditions for the North’s security and
subsistence, and the country has capitalized with legendary resourcefulness and skill on
the nuclear technology that alliance left to it. North Korea developed nuclear weapons
regain the security and subsistence it enjoyed under alliances with Russia and China. The
International Institute for Strategic Studies explains, “What passes for economic strategy
as well as foreign policy in North Korea remains little more than a search for outside
economic aid” (Stevenson 305). Although it lingers and carries the Kim regime one year
at a time, this strategy will deteriorate as it has before; North Korea’s decade of
obfuscation and delay will end, forcing it to change or experience further decline.
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