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US Foreign Policy and the Korean Nuclear Crisis

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US Foreign Policy and the Korean Nuclear Crisis A rogue is a rogue is a rogue: US foreign policy and the Korean nuclear crisis ROLAND BLEIKER* We’ll kill every son of a bitch north of the forward edge of the battle area, and we won’t retreat one inch. US General James F. Hollingsworth, at the Korean DMZ, 19741 We’re a peaceful people … travelling south on that road, the people of the North would see not a threat, but a miracle of peaceful development. US President George W. Bush, at the Korean DMZ, 20022 Dealing with communist North Korea has become one of the most difficult challenges in global politics today. Totalitarian and reclusive, ideologically isolated and economically ruined, it is the inherent ‘other’ in a globalized and neoliberal world order. And yet North Korea goes on surviving, not least because its leaders periodically rely on threats to gain concessions from the international community. The latest such attempt was signalled in the autumn of 2002, when Pyongyang admitted to a secret nuclear weapons programme and subsequently withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Thereafter the situation rapidly deteriorated. By early 2003 both the US and North Korea were threatening each other with outright war. Even Japan, adopting its most militar- istic posture in decades, publicly contemplated the possibility of a pre-emptive strike against North Korea.3 The dangers of North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship are evident. Miscalcu- lation or a sudden escalation of tension could precipitate a human disaster at any moment. Equally dangerous, although much less evident, are the confrontational and militaristic attitudes with which some of the key regional and global players, most notably the United States, seek to contain the situation. The problems * I am grateful to Bill Tow and an anonymous referee for insightful comments on an earlier draft. Thanks as well to Moon Chung-in, for hosting my stay at Yonsei University, and to the US Institute of Peace and the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung for their generous research support. 1 Commander South Korean / US I Corps, as reported by Donald Gregg, then CIA chief in Seoul, and cited in Don Oberdorfer, The two Koreas: a contemporary history (London: Warner Books, 1998), p. 62. 2 George W. Bush, ‘We would be happy to have dialog with North Korea’, press conference at Chong Wa Dae, 20 Feb. 2002; ‘North Koreans will see miracle of peaceful development’, speech given at Dorasan Railroad Station on 20 Feb. 2002, both in Korea Observer 33: 1, Spring 2002, pp. 173, 183. 3 Doug Struck, ‘North Korean threat erodes Japan’s pacifism’, Guardian Weekly, 20 Feb. 2003, p. 28. International Affairs 79, () ‒ 719 INTA79_4_02_Bleiker 719 7/3/03, 11:17 Roland Bleiker associated with these approaches have been largely obscured by Washington’s apparent willingness to de-escalate the crisis through negotiations. ‘I believe this is not a military show-down,’ stressed President George W. Bush. ‘This is a diplomatic show down.’4 Much has been made of the difference between this tolerant approach and the far more aggressive stance taken in respect of Iraq, where war was presented as the only possibility of preventing a dangerous escalation towards the use by the Baghdad regime of weapons of mass destruction. The situation was particularly paradoxical since Pyongyang publicly admitted to its nuclear ambition and asked inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to leave the country. Baghdad, by contrast, denied possessing weapons of mass destruction and admitted inspectors for the specific purpose of verifying its claims.5 The reluctance to use force against North Korea obscures the fact that US foreign policy is guided by a largely consistent approach towards the pheno- menon of so-called ‘rogue’ states. That war was not advocated in Korea is a reflection of diplomatic constraints and, above all, strategic limitations. South Korea’s then newly elected president, Roh Moo-hyun, strongly opposed a military solution to the problem. Perhaps even more importantly, the conse- quences of an escalation in Korea would be hard to contain. One of the world’s biggest cities, Seoul, is only 50 kilometres away from the heavily militarized ‘Demilitarized Zone’(DMZ) that separates North Korea from the South. Even if pre-emptive strikes were to neutralize North Korea’s possible nuclear arsenal, they would not be able to destroy all its conventional weapons. The latter alone could easily trigger a second Korean war, with disastrous consequences on all sides. The purpose of this article is to examine the role of the United States in the Korean nuclear crisis, for no aspect of the past and present dilemmas on the peninsula can be addressed or even understood without recourse to the US. This is why China repeatedly stressed that the latest nuclear crisis was primarily an issue between North Korea and the United States.6 Kim Dae-jung, in his final speech as South Korea’s president, reiterated the same theme: ‘more than anything, dialogue between North Korea and the United States is the important key to a solution.’7 A solution is, however, far from reach. Both the US and North Korea see the other as a threat. And each has good reasons for doing so. But each is also implicated in the production of this threat. The problem is that these interactive dynamics are hard to see, for the West tends to project a very one-sided image of North Korea—one that sees it solely as a rogue outlaw, and thus a source of danger and instability. Nicolas Eberstadt, for instance, stresses 4 George W. Bush, ‘President discusses Iraq and North Korea with reporters’, White House press release, 31 Dec. 2002, www.whitehouse.com. 5 See e.g. Michael R. Gordon, ‘A tale of two crises’, New York Times, 17 Feb. 2003; Jochen Buchsteiner, ‘Die Hierarchie des Bösen’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27 Oct. 2002; Wolfgang Koydl, ‘Moral und Realpolitik’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 11 Jan. 2003, p. 2. 6 ‘Initiativen Chinas im Nordkorea-Konflikt’, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 25 Feb. 2003. 7 Cited in Howard French, ‘North Korea tests missile’, New York Times, 25 Feb. 2003. 720 INTA79_4_02_Bleiker 720 7/3/03, 11:17 A rogue is a rogue is a rogue that ‘North Korean policies and practices have accounted for most of the volatility within the Northeast Asian region since the end of the Cold War.’8 Very few policy-makers, security analysts and journalists ever make the effort to imagine how threats are perceived from the North Korean perspective, or con- sider how these perceptions are part of an interactive security dilemma in which the West, and US foreign policy in particular, is implicated as deeply as the vilified regime in Pyongyang. The central argument of this article is that the image of North Korea as a ‘rogue state’ severely hinders both an adequate understanding and a possible resolution of the crisis. The rhetoric of rogue states is indicative of how US foreign policy continues to be driven by dualistic and militaristic Cold War thinking patterns. The ‘Evil Empire’ may be gone; not so the underlying need to define safety and security with reference to an external threat that must be warded off at any cost. Rogues are among the new threat-images that serve to demarcate the line between good and evil. As during the Cold War, military means are considered the key tool with which this line is to be defended. In the absence of a global power that matches the US, this militaristic attitude has, if anything, even intensified. Look at Washington’s recent promulgation of a pre- emptive strike policy against rogue states. The consequences of this posture are particularly fateful in Korea, for it reinforces half a century of explicit and repeated nuclear threats against the government in Pyongyang. The impact of these threats has been largely obscured, not least because the highly technical and specialized discourse of security analysis has enabled the US to present the strategic situation on the peninsula in a manner that misleadingly attributes responsibility for the crisis solely to North Korea’s actions. A brief disclaimer is in order at this point. I offer neither a comprehensive review of the Korean security situation nor a detailed analysis of the latest events. As a result, there will be little mention of some admittedly crucial issues, such as the role of China or the increasingly problematic rift between Washington and Seoul. Instead, I identify broad patterns of conflict and embark on a con- ceptual engagement with some of the ensuing dilemmas. Focusing on underly- ing trends inevitably entails glossing over nuances at times. For instance, there are heated debates between hawks and doves within Washington’s policy circles, and as a result periods dominated by hard-line realist positions have alternated with periods during which softer and more liberal policies prevailed. But the persistent pattern of seeing North Korea as a rogue state is far more striking, and in many ways far more significant, than the strategic policy manoeuvring that takes place within these patterns. Focusing on the big picture also entails depart- ing from some of the conventions that prevail in the field of strategic and security studies. Contrary to most treatments of the subject, I do not discuss the technical aspects of nuclear and other weapons, except to show, as indicated 8 Nicolas Eberstadt, ‘Korea’, in Richard J. Ellings and Aaron L. Friedberg, eds, Strategic Asia: power and purpose 2001–02 (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2001), p. 135. 721 INTA79_4_02_Bleiker 721 7/3/03, 11:17 Roland Bleiker above, how these very discussions, jargon-ridden and inaccessible as they are to any but military experts, often serve to stifle debate about some of the underly- ing political and ethical issues.9 Patterns of action and reaction: the first nuclear crisis The first nuclear crisis in Korea started to emerge in the early 1990s.
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