DENVER — North Korea’s quest for nuclear weapons is often depicted as a “rational” response to its strategic imperatives of national security and regime survival. The country being surrounded by larger, supposedly hostile states, and with no allies it can rely to come to its defense, it is only logical to view Kim Jong-un wanting to avoid the mistake made by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, both of whom would still be alive and in power had they acquired deliverable nuclear weapons.
But the fact is, North Korea’s appetite for nuclear weapons is rooted more in aggression than pragmatism—to decouple the United States from its South Korean partner and set the stage for an invasion of its own.
Of course, such a scenario is, in many ways, the stuff of fancy. Still North Korean propaganda continues to reiterate the view that the Korean Peninsula consists of one people, sharing one language and one culture, indivisible—except by outsiders like the United States.
As it stands, the US-South Korea relationship operates on the basis of something like the North Atlantic Treaty’s collective-defense clause, Article 5: Any North Korean aggression against South Korea will, it is assured, be met by the combined forces of South Korea and the United States.
If North Korea had long-range nuclear weapons, however, it might be able to change the strategic calculus with a threat to launch a nuclear attack on the US mainland. The United States might simply choose not to risk casualties on its own soil.
If that happens, South Korea would still have plenty of recourse against its northern neighbor. After all, South Korea’s conventional forces are far better trained, equipped, and motivated than their North Korean counterparts.
In any case, North Korea — which has invested heavily in forward deployed special forces and other asymmetrical elements of contemporary warfare — seems to be gearing up for an offensive. Against this background, efforts to bring the Kim regime back to the negotiating table — spearheaded largely by China — are misguided.
Such efforts aim to persuade North Koreans to freeze all missile and nuclear tests, in exchange for a scale-down and delay of annual joint exercises by US and South Korean forces. Advocates of this “freeze for freeze” approach say such a tradeoff is only fair: the North cannot be expected to suspend its efforts to strengthen its defensive capabilities if the United States and the South are pursuing supposedly hostile military cooperation in its near-abroad.
The fact is, it is the North whose activities are inherently hostile. Indeed, planning for the annual US-South Korea spring exercises is always based on the premise that North Korea has invaded the South, not vice versa. North Korea knows this well.
But North Korea also knows, without joint exercises, a military alliance becomes weak and hollow. If the United States suspends joint military exercises with South Korea, the latter’s willingness or ability to respond to North Korean aggression in the South may become similarly weak.
This scenario is all the more dangerous, given the possibility that the suspension of missile and nuclear tests may not actually lead to a concomitant weakening of North Korea’s nuclear program. Testing is only a small element of a weapons program—and not necessarily an essential one.
The idea that North Korea will abandon its weapons programs in exchange for the promise of security and regime survival has been tested; and it has failed whenever tested. In September 2005, five world powers, including the United States, offered North Korea an unimpeded civilian nuclear program, energy assistance, economic aid, and diplomatic recognition, as well as a promise to establish a regional mechanism for maintaining peace and security in Northeast Asia, including a US commitment not to attack North Korea with conventional or nuclear weapons.
All North Korea had to do to secure these benefits was abandon its nuclear-weapons programs and accede to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. But the North was not willing to allow for a credible verification protocol. Instead, it attempted to limit verification to that which was already known. In the end, it walked away from the agreement.
A stronger and more purposeful US-China dialogue on North Korea is essential to resolving what is emerging as the world’s most urgent security problem. But the discussion should focus on direct measures to impede and undermine the country’s inherently aggressive nuclear program—not to offer more concessions that will only strengthen a rogue regime’s hand. Project Syndicate
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Christopher R. Hill, former US assistant secretary of state for East Asia, is dean of the Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, and the author of “Outpost.”