By DAVID WHITEHOUSE
THE MOST shocking thing about North Korea's October 9 nuclear test may be how quickly the shock wore off.
As the ISR went to press, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried to stoke a sense of urgency as she rushed to Asia to press the enforcement of new UN sanctions, but popular fears of impending armed conflict had already diminished. Initially skittish foreign investors were again betting that South Korea isn't about to become a war zone, and South Korean bosses decided to get on with the business of profiting from tourism and sweatshops in the North. Japan's new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, even made a point of saying that Japan won't use the North's test as an excuse to start a nuclear arms program of its own.
UN sanctions do tighten the screws on North Korea-restricting trade in major arms and luxury goods-but they contain no threat of armed force, a U.S. concession to gain Russian and Chinese support. They also scrap a U.S. demand that UN member states inspect all cargo going in and out of North Korea, instead vaguely calling for inspections “as necessary.”
The shock wore off because the nuclear test was actually no surprise at all. North Korea has been on a quick march toward creating a nuclear deterrent against U.S. threats since late 2002. The North then openly resumed its nuclear program following a U.S. cutoff of fuel oil shipments. A U.S. diplomat provoked the flare-up when he accused North Korea of secretly enriching uranium in violation of a 1994 agreement. The crisis was timed to head off moves made earlier in the year by both Japan and South Korea to normalize relations with the North.
George Bush had vowed to keep the North isolated since before he took office in 2001. He denounced South Korea's “sunshine policy” economic engagement and later castigated North Korea as a member of an “axis of evil”-a hit list for “regime change” after the overthrow of the Taliban. Then he hurled a racist insult at the North's ruler, Kim Jong-il, calling him a “pygmy.”
The North's construction of nuclear arms is thus clearly aimed at preserving the regime's existence against a hostile superpower-a fact that seems to be understood everywhere but in the United States. In South Korea, for example, 43 percent of adults hold the U.S. responsible for the nuclear test, as compared to just 37 percent who blame North Korea itself. In the U.S., North Korea's motivations are obscured by Democratic and Republican chatter about who can be tougher on North Korea.
North Korea, a grotesque garrison state built under the shadow of U.S. force, has looked for a closer relationship with the U.S. since the end of the Cold War-when Russia turned its back on the North, and China turned its attention to the surging economy of the South. Ever more isolated, the North has sought to normalize relations with the South, Japan, and especially the United States.
Partisan myth has it that Bill Clinton's policy was “soft,” but he came into office the way George Bush did-by breaking off any talk of reconciliation. Clinton stoked a nuclear crisis of his own by restarting cancelled war games and retargeting nuclear missiles, once aimed at Russia, on North Korea. The crisis subsided in a 1994 deal in which North Korea agreed to halt its fledgling nuclear weapons program in return for an end to the U.S. economic blockade. The North would also receive light-water reactors to produce electricity, plus shipments of heavy oil as a stopgap. Clinton broke every promise except the delivery of fuel oil, so North Korea's crisis continued.
That was Clinton's plan. Just a little more strangulation would bring down the Northern regime, U.S. officials reasoned, and the South could take over without firing a shot. But Kim Jong-il held on to power, and Southern politicians soon invented a new takeover strategy. The sunshine policy, the opposite of strangulation, would make Southern capital indispensable to the economy.
Clinton was uninterested in “sunshine” until 2000, when Kim floated an astonishing new proposal, as historian Bruce Cumings reports in his book, North Korea: Another Country. Kim would rule an autonomous northern province of a united Korea, and U.S. troops would be allowed to stay. The U.S. had long feared that the South's growing economic connections to China were drawing it out of the U.S. political orbit. Kim was offering to reverse this drift by bringing the North into the U.S. camp against China. Madeleine Albright rushed to the North to keep Kim on his track toward the U.S., but nothing came of the visit-because in 2001, George Bush, like Clinton before him, came into office rattling a saber.
This new phase of the crisis since the nuclear test is likely to go on for a while. North Korea is still years away from producing a deliverable nuclear weapon, and the U.S. has no new cards to play to make the North reverse its course. The South's rulers have no will to challenge a well-armed North, and China won't act to produce more social disintegration in its neighbor and ally.
The North itself keeps escalating the crisis because it can't live with the U.S.-imposed noose around its neck. The background to the nuclear test is a yearlong U.S. effort to expand a bankers' boycott of North Korea that began when the Treasury Department accused a Macau bank of laundering money for the North. As banks have shied away from the North under U.S. pressure, the North's international trade-which last year finally recovered its Cold War level of $3 billion-has dried up.
Last fall, North Korea walked out of the “six-party” talks in protest of the financial boycott. The talks, which include both Koreas, China, Japan, Russia, and the U.S., have provided an international cover for U.S. pressure against the regime. But the North has always contended, with good reason, that its problem is with the U.S., which has tried to keep the regime at death's door-a tactic in a broader strategy to continue dominating the region. This bipartisan strategy keeps Northeast Asia on the edge of a horrific renewal of war.
David Whitehouse is reviews editor of the ISR.
