North Korean
denuclearisation and peace process
Every change of
administration in the U.S. for the last quarter century and more has seen a
resetting and recalibration of Washington’s policy vis-à-vis the
DPRK. The Biden Administration has conformed to type. It worked during its
first months in office on a North Korea policy review, which brought forth the
mouse of ‘calibrated’ diplomacy. Details remain scarce – some in Seoul suspect
because there aren’t any – and are drip-fed out in meetings and during other
DPRK-related events. The one thing that is clear is denuclearisation takes
priority over peace in the Peninsula. Meanwhile, in a flanking run, Seoul is
pushing for an End of War Declaration this year as the clock runs down on
President Moon Jae-in’s term in office.
Any transition
from an armistice to peace can only be multilateral. The goal is agreed but the
pathways are at odds. The two main paths have sharply different itineraries.
Seoul sees an ‘End of War Declaration' as a launch pad to starting the
long process of denuclearisation process, while Washington sees it as more the
reward for serious steps forward – if not completion – of the denuclearisation
process on the Peninsula.
The reluctant
U.S. Special Representative on North Korea Sung Kim and his doubting Deputy
Jung Pak stated in Seoul on 21 June that they are willing to meet ‘anywhere,
anytime, without pre-conditions’, but failed to mention anything they are
prepared would bring to the table. State and the National Security Council are
at odds – if not yet at war – over Peninsula policy. It is still not entirely
clear that Biden will build on the Singapore Declaration or retreat from it.
For Pyongyang, Singapore’s ‘denuclearisation of the Peninsula’ is a
lightly coded signal they are allowed a civil nuclear power programme,
while ‘denuclearising North Korea’ is to deny the possibility.
Nowhere is there much 'show and tell' of what and when the North may draw down
in return. Despite the wish being the father to the thought amongst a minority
of realists trapped inside the Washington ‘beltway’, there is precious little
evidence of Pyongyang’s imminent promotion into that small exclusive club of
nuclear proliferators Delhi and Islamabad – de facto if
not de jure nuclear weapons states – corralled by Arms
Control rather than denuclearisation. Israel’s ‘get out of jail free card’
is certainly not in play for Pyongyang.
Despite the
clearly deluded pursuit of 'maximum pressure' in the wake Pyongyang’s
economic self-flagellation in its attempts to follow a zero-Covid regime,
Washington continues to flog allies and adversaries in ASEAN and wider
Asia to tighten sanctions implementations on the North under the threat of
enhanced monitoring and surveillance. Pyongyang’s response to the COVID-19
pandemic has shrunk North Korean trade to its lowest point in 30 years, even
lower than during the famine of the ‘arduous march'. Sanctions have
undoubtedly hurt, but are a pin-prick in comparison to the economic self-harm
Pyongyang has felt necessary to impose on itself to avoid what it sees as an
existential threat from Covid running rampant.
For Pyongyang,
strategic defence and economic imperatives are different sides of the same
coin. Biden, like Trump, is incapable of delivering US sanctions relief – save on
some Treasury issues. Even a Democratic controlled Congress would never agree
and the Democrats will lose their majority in next year’s mid-term Senate
elections and possibly the House as well. To get where the DPRK wants to go is
through UN sanctions relief. Early signs are not good. I used to tell
people that I agreed with nothing Trump did apart from North Korea. Now I worry
that I will end up agreeing with Biden on everything apart from North Korea as
he gratuitously and unnecessarily engages Congress and Tokyo in the process and
allows his Administration to equivocate over the Singapore Declaration (more
below).
ROK-U.S. Summit
and prospects on relations with Pyongyang
President Moon
Jae-in is into legacy territory. He desperately wants to achieve some
breakthrough before he is forced to step down in Spring 2022. During the
ROK-U.S. Summit (21 May), North Korea was central to the talks. President Moon,
in exchange for the Summit statement re-commitment to the Singapore and
Panmunjom Declarations and a Special Envoy on North Korea leap-frogging ahead
of any potential Special Envoy on Human Rights in North Korea – even if it
turned out to be someone double-hatting as Ambassador to Indonesia, countertraded
signing up for serious elements of Washington Indo-Pacific démarche against
Beijing. Seoul appreciated the references to ‘We’ and ‘Our’ in what seemed an
endless statement, even when it failed to reflect ROK interests. The Human
Rights references salted by Washington were the necessary price to be paid.
Moon majored on ‘global health security’ and even offered finance.
Biden
graciously lifted the limits on the range of the ROK's indigenous missiles –
already capable of reaching all of the North – as part of his seduction to
silently incorporate Seoul into the Quad+ format; Washington’s Asian alliance
to counter China. The ostensive justification was to allow the ROK to develop
Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs) to hit North Korea from international
waters. The quixotic rationale at a moment when Washington is stepping up its
own presence in the region is hard to take seriously, and puts Seoul,
if it carries its promises through, on course for conflict with Beijing. Moon
traded short-term gains for long-term costs, leaving a toxic legacy for his
successors. The goal of a ‘hail Mary’ delivery of an ‘End
of War’ Declaration in the coming months might be worth it, but it is a long
shot at best.
The prospect of
any serious resumption of Washington-Pyongyang talks appears remote for the
moment. July saw a hint of a fresh Inter-Korean Dialogue, but Washington’s
determination to proceed with August’s Joint Military Exercises and
Seoul’s pliant acquiescence sharply raised the price. Kim still
blames Seoul for the ‘bait and switch’ fiasco of Hanoi, and are all too aware
of their poor track record with Seoul's ‘lame duck’ Presidents. The Roh
Moo-hyun experience is not one they want to serialize. Pyongyang’s
psephologists will be busy reading the electorate. Some serious polling
confirming Moon’s successor will be a ‘progressive’, not a conservative, will
be necessary to get them talking, let alone acting.
Pyongyang does
pick up the phone for Seoul, but seven months into the Biden Presidency they
were still neither answering the phone or accepting messages from Washington.
While the US and ROK reaffirmed a preference for the practical, and a
‘something for something’ approach to denuclearisation. The Summit has not
advanced DPRK-US engagement. From Pyongyang’s perspective, the outcome at best
was like the curate’s egg, good in parts. Kim can see the contradictions.
Record defence spending by Seoul and Biden’s endorsement of ending Seoul’s
restrictions on the fetch of its ballistic missiles. Pyongyang sees no option –
much to its chagrin – but to turn to Beijing giving President Xi first approval
before re-engagement.
The crumbs from
the table were restrained ambiguity with positive references back to the
Singapore and Panmunjom Declarations, and the non-appearance of the
shopping list of references to chemical and biological weapons,
cyber-warfare and the abductees that fattened the G7 Statements and others
earlier. Nevertheless, that still leaves the US's Complete, Verifiable and
Irreversible Denuclearisation (CVID).
Denuclearisation
and what North Korea learnt from the JCPOA
Nuclear weapons
are seen by Pyongyang as required for regime survival. Libya is the example of
the consequences of thoughtless surrender of nuclear capabilities if North Korea
could be persuaded to give up its nuclear program in order to be welcomed into
the global community of nations and sanctions relief. Colonel Gadaffi's
subsequent death in Sirte, after being buggered with a bayonet, was a bloody
confirmation of Pyongyang's scepticism. The lesson burnt into Pyongyang learnt
was that the problem was not having weapons of mass destruction, but rather not
having them. For Kim, his nuclear deterrent given its conventional military
inferiority is a far more effective guarantee of regime survival than any
‘billet-doux’ from a term-limited U.S. President in a highly partisan
Washington.
For a short
three decades, final denuclearisation has been the beginning, middle, and end
of US-DPRK engagement, while for Pyongyang ending and surrendering its nuclear
weapons programme is the ultimate and final instalment of the price to be paid
for a cascading process of give and take encompassing security, political, and
economic dimensions. Any meeting of minds requires a recognition by the US that
for Kim the journey is as important as the destination, that the waystations
will provide the components of the greater whole. Yet trust must be built, not
pronounced. Some of Pyongyang’s attempts to demonstrate good faith with
unilateral gestures, such as the destruction of a nuclear test site at
Punggye-ri in 2018, generated more suspicion than goodwill in Washington.
Pyongyang
appreciated the comparative rigor and robustness of the Iran Deal in
comparison with the Agreed Framework. Trump’s failure to abrogate the Deal in
the face of opposition from the rest of the UN’s P5 and Germany will mean they
will follow very closely Biden’s handling of Iran and his recommitment to the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as a touchstone as to whether any
fresh negotiations are worth the gamble. The JCPOA serves as the paradigm for
any DPRK-US deal. The US is a necessary, but not sufficient partner. Pyongyang
seeks robust multilateral security guarantees, while Washington needs a group
of donors willing to provide the $15-20 billion Infrastructure Fund to refund
the tangible and intangible costs and losses of phased denuclearisation, that
no US President is either willing or able to pay. Given the technological and
scientific progress the DPRK has been making over recent years, the price can
only rise.
The JCPOA has
110 pages dedicated to nuclear issues alone, plus hundreds of pages of annexes.
Negotiating any congruent deal with Pyongyang would take many months, followed
in close order by the hardest step – implementation. This will stretch over a
decade and more – and there will inevitably be rough patches. Yet all the
evidence is that Kim Jong-un trained to Hanoi willing to do a deal. The
existential threats to the North are enemies, foreign and domestic. From the
perspective of external security, they are in as strong a position as they will
be for some time, save for demonstrating the full range and capacity by a test
firing one of their Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) armed with a
conventional warhead deep into the empty quarter of the Pacific. Trading that
for the right deal to pivot to domestic had a logic.
A multilateral
approach
Biden is aware
of the current importance of Beijing as gatekeeper to Kim. This is one of the
few areas in which Beijing and Washington could – along with climate change –
cooperate. The question is why would Beijing take the knee for Biden? US Deputy
Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, during her visit to Tianjin in July, raised
the DPRK's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes with Chinese Foreign Minister
Wang Yi to little avail. The two are on different ends of the see-saw.
Washington with its tough approach seeks to push Pyongyang down, while Beijing
is propping Pyongyang up. Beijing has, at best, turned a blind eye to sanctions
violations. Trump’s former deputy assistant secretary of state for North Korea,
Alex Wong, claimed ships carrying prohibited coal or other sanctioned goods
from North Korea to China were observed at least 555 times in 2020.
The North
Korean issue is closer to political battleground than cooperative partnership
for China and America. Beijing will look to mitigation of UN sanctions –
requiring Washington’s authorisation – and as Pyongyang is increasingly
demanding a reduction in the scale and nature of the U.S. military footprint on
the Peninsula, with no further THAAD deployments.
Moscow is
marginal, even if Pyongyang wants to bring them into play. They share with
Beijing the aversion to the U.S.’ military deployment and have allowed China to
play ‘first violin’ here in exchange for them taking that role in Syria. They
have increasingly aligned positions with Beijing over the last years. The
Kremlin believes the U.S. is responsible for Pyongyang’s bad behaviour and
refuses to blame Beijing. In 2017 the Sino-Russian ‘roadmap’ was an attempt to
take leadership over settling the then crisis. In 2020, Russia and China pushed
the spectacle of sanctions relief in the UN Security Council.
Seoul is eager
to resume engagement. President Moon has been endeavouring to re-open and
improve communication channels with the North and supports frontend loaded
sanctions-relief-for-denuclearisation. Alongside denuclearisation and peace
talks, South Korea pursues humanitarian initiatives in light of the North’s
stressed economy with covid compounding sanctions all aggravated by extreme
weather over the summer in North and South Hamgyong. The inter-Korean hotline
re-connected before Pyongyang hung-up to protest Southern collaboration with
the US Joint Military Exercises. Here little has changed. Pyongyang has long
warned these are a fundamental barrier to rebuilding relations. Pyongyang
delights in forcing Seoul to make impossible choices.
Moon’s approach
has an early ‘sell by’ date. Presidential elections are due in March 2022. If a
Democrat or progressive candidate wins, Moon policies could continue in some
form. A conservative victory could see Seoul itself take the nuclear road and
the Ministery of Unification close. This would serve as a back-handed favour
for Tokyo’s Prime Minister Suga opening the door for Japan to become a ‘normal
country’ with its own nuclear capability with the coup de grace for Eisaku
Satō’s Three Non-Nuclear Principles. Washington and Beijing would be equally
disconcerted and unhappy.
Biden wants his
approach to embrace not only Seoul but Tokyo. The Special Measures Agreement -
the cost-sharing mechanism covering US forces in South Korea - was finally
settled in March. This may be enough of a sweetener to shade Seoul’s animosity
towards Japan and allow it to be temporarily parked. Tokyo is convinced the
problem lies with the Moon administration and is circling while awaiting regime
change. They may be disappointed. The rancour towards Tokyo is one of the few
things shared between progressives and conservatives in Seoul and between North
and South down the Peninsula.
Tokyo’s main concern
with respect to North Korea is the tragedy of the abductee issue. Pyongyang
sees this as a toxic spoiler to any prospect of resolution. In this sense, Abe
will never be truly gone while Suga remains Prime Minister. Biden, in involving
Japan in the process, could have requested a self-denying ordinance from Suga
not to allow the abductee issue to prejudice the prospects. The early warning
sign that the tail might be wagging the dog was that in his first visit to
Tokyo, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was branded on the lapel with the blue
ribbon of the abductee campaign. Tokyo, unforgotten and unforgiven, will
remain to be a “no” for Pyongyang. Apart from the historic antipathy towards
the colonial occupation, there is the specific animus over their perceived role
in sabotaging the latter stages of the Six Party Talks because of their
obsession with the abductee issue.
Pyongyang is in
the process of again trying to open to the European Union (EU). They are
following up earlier offers of restarting the Human Rights dialogue with a
request to re-start the political dialogue, frozen by Brussels since 2015, at
Director-General level. The new Ambassador to the EU, based in Berlin, is
provisionally planning a first visit to Brussels in September. Nevertheless,
this is unlikely to bear fruit anytime soon. For Brussels, North Korea is not
important enough to threaten its ‘lips and teeth’ vicinity relationship with
Washington. The US State Department is neither attentive enough, nor interested
enough, to encourage a ‘proxy partner’ to engage. All not helped by the recent
pushback within the European Council against the Merkel-Macron’s proposal to
re-engage with Moscow to the chagrin of Washington.
Conclusions
Yet the
evidence from Pyongyang’s recent dalliance with Seoul is that there is a
residual interest – in principle at least – to re-engage with Washington.
Whether this is driven by economic forces is unclear. Last year’s belt
tightening is this year’s hunger and next year’s famine. The problem for
Pyongyang is knowing which Washington is going to be on other side of the
table. There are several shapes. The Biden Administration’s official position
is a ‘calibrated approach’ midway between Obama’s ‘strategic patience’ and
Trump’s Summits. Nevertheless, from a North Korea perspective – and Seoul’s –
there is more confusion than calibration. In addition, Washington beset by the
‘Goliath complex’ has shown little sign that it appreciates the necessity of
appreciating the need to be ‘first mover’ instead leaving Kim to make the
concessions.
Overall, US
narcissism remains leaving Washington is totally focused on delivering its
needs, with no interest in satisfying Pyongyang’s desires. While Biden – and Seoul
– recognise any solution will be a process and not a performance with the
associated roadmaps and timelines, there is little hint of the temporal
consequences with neither capital building a bipartisan approach to peace.
Rhetoric and action tell the lie.
In the best of
all possible Voltairean worlds, an initial freeze of the North’s plutonium
production alongside an agreed moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons and
ICBMs would be the foreplay before the serious business of negotiating a step-by-step
process to dismantle these and other nuclear facilities and the surrender of
nuclear material over a timespan close to that of the Agreed Framework of 1994
started – the last best attempt to negotiate a settlement. CVID was always
closer to delusion than collusion, a fantasy hidden behind US plausible
deniability. The US can sell trajectory over delivery to arrest Seoul and Tokyo
from following the path to proliferation. But only for so long and only at the
cost of real engagement with the North.
Peace needs
Machiavelli, eliminating lawyers in favour of realpolitik. A Five-Party
Declaration that for them the war is over, signed by the
U.S.-ROK-DPRK-China-Russia and endorsed by the UN Security Council (UNSC),
would serve as starting pistol. Such a settlement, despite claims to the
contrary, would neither legitimise the North’s nuclear weapons nor invalidate
UN sanctions. In short, an End of War Declaration would be that first step on a
long march to a final political settlement for the Peninsula. Such process
should be better forced in the dark. Terms like open, transparent, and
inclusive sound better than they play. South Africa and Northern Ireland
provide all the evidence needed. Korea will be the rule, not the exception.
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