Readers' Voices

To the Editor:

In “Bush’s Bipolar Disorder and the Looming Failure of Multilateral Talks With North Korea” (October 2003), Peter Hayes rightly points out the Bush administration’s “lack of strategic coherence.” Yet, the problem with the administration’s “erratic swings” is more serious than Mr. Hayes suggests. The insistence by Washington officials that the regime in Pyongyang is a “threat” betrays the administration’s dearth of understanding of what kind of a negotiating partner the North Koreans are.

In his lucid account of North Korean negotiation strategy, How Communists Negotiate, Admiral C. Turner Joy wrote that “distortion of truth as practiced by Communists is a science.” North Koreans cheat systematically, but, from their point of view, they have also been cheated. In the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union promised to provide Pyongyang with four light-water nuclear reactors, after which North Korea joined the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty on December 12, 1985. Unfortunately for North Korea, the Soviet Union collapsed several years later, still not having fulfilled its obligations. Pyongyang also claims that it was cheated by the United States in the 1994 Agreed Framework, according to which the “two sides agreed to move toward full normalization of political and economic relations.” North Korea used the nonfulfillment of this clause as one justification for declaring in May 1998 that it was no longer bound by its framework obligations.

The Bush administration came into office with such scorn for the Clinton administration’s foreign policy approach that it did not care to learn President Bill Clinton’s North Korea lessons. Proclaiming one day that North Korea should give up its nuclear program and become a full-fledged member of the international community while asserting that Kim Jong Il’s regime is a powerful reminder that “freedom is not free” sends an unmistakable signal to Pyongyang that the United States is trying to cheat them into giving up their deterrent only to destroy the regime afterward. Clearly, this approach stymies rather than helps our efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff on the Korean Peninsula.

My second comment is in response to Mr. Hayes’s perceptive observation that “the pivot of the Korean nuclear issue turns on economic rather than military power.” Upon signing the Agreed Framework, North Korea froze its plutonium-based nuclear program until 1997-1998 when it started to enrich uranium clandestinely. Cheating notwithstanding, this suggests that Mr. Kim’s weapons can be bought if the conditions are right. Where missile exports are concerned, Pyongyang actually named its price of $1 billion during the bilateral talks in July 2000. Nuclear weapons will surely cost more to buy out, and Pyongyang will be reluctant anyway to give up the magic wand that keeps the hyperpower at bay. Verification will, as always, remain a formidable challenge. Nonetheless, the resolution of the crisis is not out of reach, assuming that realism, not “moralism,” forms the foundation of our policy.

—Eugene Kogan
Research Intern
Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Monterey Institute of International Studies

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To the Editor:

With one important exception, the editorial “Course Correction on North Korea?” in the November 2003 issue accurately addresses one of the most important security problems of the new century. The exception rests in the statement, “North Korea can potentially churn out enough material to make six bombs in a year.” We find this statement incomplete, as it applies only to the U.S. understanding of North Korea’s ability to produce plutonium and does not address its ability to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU), a process far easier to hide from even highly intrusive inspections. Whereas the thermal power released by plutonium production reactors can be monitored accurately to estimate production rates, there is no comparable signature available from the modern centrifuge technology that North Korea arguably may have acquired from Pakistan.

Under the current trajectory, the range of plausible estimates for North Korea’s HEU inventories will grow steadily larger with time, and it is doubtful that inspection teams dominated by American and European nuclear experts could ever achieve the level of access required in North Korea to verify the absence of centrifuge enrichment. Conversely, there could be substantial political and practical benefits to an international inspection regime led by the Chinese, with inspection teams composed primarily of Chinese nuclear experts. This would be particularly true in obtaining access to sensitive North Korean military installations to verify the absence of centrifuge enrichment. Given the practical difficulty of verifying nuclear disarmament in North Korea, a multilateral, regional solution, led by the Chinese, appears to offer the best means to ensure that North Korea would have to forgo the ability to churn out nuclear weapons, clandestinely or otherwise.

—Harold P. Smith Jr.
Distinguished Visiting Scholar and Professor
Goldman School of Public Policy

—Per F. Peterson
Professor and Chair
Department of Nuclear Engineering
University of California
Berkeley, California

The author replies:

Clearly, the “six bombs a year” assessment of North Korea’s potential capabilities in the November 2003 ACT “Focus” column refers to their spent fuel and plutonium reprocessing activities. Although North Korea’s efforts to acquire uranium-enrichment capabilities represents a new and difficult challenge, it is clearly not as mature a program as North Korea’s plutonium program. Consequently, the first concern of the United States and the international community should be to verifiably halt and to begin dismantling Pyongyang’s plutonium program.

Monitoring of undeclared uranium-enrichment activities is technically more challenging than declared plutonium activities. Achieving the necessary confidence that North Korea is not engaged in militarily significant uranium-enrichment work is technically possible but will require a shift in the political situation. It will not only require agreement by North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programs but eventually a more extensive national and international monitoring and inspections plan as well.

Indeed, China and other states in the region are vital partners in dealing effectively with North Korea. However, the onus should not be shifted entirely to the Chinese. As former Department of State North Korea envoy Jack Pritchard said in his interview published in the November 2003 ACT, China is unlikely to put its stamp on a new, six-party agreement—much less take the lead on verification—without a more pragmatic U.S. negotiating posture. As “Course Correction on North Korea” suggests, this begins with some form of written U.S. nonaggression guarantee that denies hard-liners in Pyongyang a rationale for pressing forward with a nuclear weapons program.

—Daryl G. Kimball
Executive Director
Arms Control Association