Kim Jong-un’s “charm offensive” at the Winter Olympics is not fooling the President of the Republic of Korea, and it shouldn’t fool anyone else. North Korea’s nuclear ambitions pose an unacceptable threat to the United States – and China is the best prospect for a peaceful solution, argues Philip Bobbitt, Professor of Federal Jurisprudence at Columbia University, Director of its Center for National Security, and a former Senior Director for Strategic Planning at the US National Security Council.
On 3 September 2017 North Korea conducted a test of a nuclear weapon. Seismic tremors from this test suggest that it was almost certainly a hydrogen bomb in the early stages of development. The test followed an August 28 intermediate range ballistic missile launch over Hokkaido (Japan) and on November 28 of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The purpose of these tests is to pose a mortal threat to US security such that not only would the United States be unwilling to launch a campaign to change the North Korean regime, but that it would also be unwilling to put its homeland at risk in order to enable South Korea to resist demands for a forcible reunification of the Peninsula.
The current US options
At present, the US seems to have only three options:
- the continued diplomatic pursuit of phased negotiations with North Korea by which it is hoped that the imposition of economic sanctions – and the ultimate promise to lift those sanctions – will induce the North Koreans to freeze the development of their nuclear weapons programme, halt further missile testing, and eventually roll back their nuclear weapons program.
- the use of military force either as a demonstration to dissuade the North Koreans from pursuing their nuclear weapons ambitions or to actually destroy the weapons facilities and launchers that are the result of those ambitions.
- the tacit acceptance of a North Korean nuclear arsenal capable of delivering nuclear weapons to US soil, coupled with threats to retaliate against North Korea were those weapons ever to be used to attack the US.
China has an important role to play, as the US recognises, in all of these scenarios. What is less well recognised is that each of them would be a disaster not only for the US but also for China.
Sanctions don’t bite quick enough
The first option depends upon the international community aggressively pursuing economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea. Since 2006, at the urging of the United States, the UN Security Council has adopted eight resolutions imposing increasingly costly sanctions on North Korea, including severe limits on its weapons trade, banking, and various financial transactions.
China is the key player here, because approximately 90% of North Korea’s international trade is with China. I’m convinced, however, that there is nothing the international community generally and China specifically can win from the imposition of sanctions that will result in the Kim regime abandoning its nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programmes. That is because the regime sees these programmes as the guarantee of its security and the regime has shown itself willing to impose enormous suffering on its people and incur the hostility of many states including China in order to assure its hold on power.
I think that privately, most people who urge this option recognise this but they say that if negotiations could at least slow down North Korea’s programmes, eventually the people of North Korea – either in a general uprising, or acting through alienated members of the leadership – will overthrow the regime. It will be increasingly difficult for North Korea to keep its citizens from being exposed to the world outside and, it is said, this will increase pressure on Kim Jong-un to find ways to strengthen the economy, increase international trade, and pursue economic growth. The fact that the regime has decisively rejected this policy, which it had earlier pursued with Chinese interlocutors, makes it clear, however, that nothing short of a coup d’état or a revolution – a dim prospect – could really alter North Korea’s commitment to be a nuclear weapons power.
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