What Kim Wants, Kim Gets

Just hours before U.S. President Barack Obama promised to pursue a world free of nuclear weapons before a cheering audience in Prague, North Korea conducted a long-range missile test under the guise of a satellite launch. Although the test appears to have failed, it succeeded in proving that Pyongyang will continue to use dangerous and aggressive negotiating tactics to get what it wants.

The North’s tried-and-true strategy is to test succeeding U.S. administrations by creating crises. The goal is to increase negotiating capital by threatening to take actions that the world deems dangerous. As the world tries to avert disasters, North Korea extracts political and economic concessions to prop up its failed economy, all the while stalling on any reciprocal actions such as real denuclearization.

North Korea pursued this policy in the early 1990s, pushing the region toward the brink of war before agreeing to suspend operation of the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon in exchange for two light water power reactors and up to 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil each year until the reactors became operational. Under this deal, the 1994 Agreed Framework, the United States and other countries contributed more than $2.5 billion to North Korea.

In 2002, after Pyongyang admitted to pursuing uranium enrichment, in violation of the Agreed Framework, the United States and its allies suspended heavy fuel oil shipments. Over the next several months, Pyongyang responded by withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, breaking International Atomic Energy Agency seals on the Yongbyon reactor and other facilities, and expelling international inspectors. The country restarted the Yongbyon reactor and harvested additional plutonium for weapons. On October 9, 2006, North Korea announced that it had conducted a nuclear test, confirming what it had long denied — its intent and capability to produce nuclear weapons.

With the new U.S. administration in place, Pyongyang is once again probing to identify what additional concessions it might be able to extract — hence the rocket launch. The North will try to lock the Obama administration into bilateral talks that marginalize Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang will want to talk missiles to distract from nuclear weapons issues. It is also likely to seek economic and political concessions to shore up its economy and protect itself against any additional economic sanctions in the event that talks again break down.

Meanwhile, Pyongyang will quietly contemplate its next move on a far more dangerous front: the transfer of nuclear-related technology and materials abroad. In April 2003, North Korean officials threatened their U.S. counterparts at talks in Beijing that Pyongyang was prepared to expand, demonstrate, and transfer its nuclear deterrent if Washington did not comply with the North’s demands. We now know that North Korea has reprocessed additional spent fuel in order to extract plutonium and expand its nuclear arsenal. In October 2006, the North followed through on its second threat, demonstratingits nuclear capability in a test.

The third threat of transfer poses the greatest danger to international security, and signs indicate it has already begun. In September 2007, Israeli jets destroyed a covert nuclear reactor at al-Kibar, Syria, that North Korea helped build. The design was very similar to that of Yongbyon and suitable for producing weapons-grade plutonium. According to an April 2008 background briefing arranged by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, North Korean nuclear cooperation with Syria probably began in 1997. At about the same time, North Korea was also dealing with Libya and Pakistani nuclear smuggler A.Q. Khan — all this while nuclear weapons work had supposedly halted under the 1994 Agreed Framework.

The international community has not done enough to make these actions costly for North Korea. In the wake of the 2006 nuclear test, the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed tough sanctions, but then promptly dropped implementation because North Korea agreed, once again, to freeze its Yongbyon reactor in exchange for economic aid. Heavy fuel oil shipments, which had been cut off after the North began reprocessing in 2003, were also resumed in exchange for some modest steps toward disabling Yongbyon. Nothing was done about the transfer to Syria.

In the age of global terrorism, the ongoing cooperation on nuclear weapons technology between dangerous regimes such as North Korea and Syria cannot be ignored. In Prague, Obama took a strong stand against the lawless behavior of the North. Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something, he said. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. This is a good start, but it must be followed by action.

As many commentators have noted, the key to North Korea has always been pressure from China, North Korea’s largest trading partner and the source of more than half of its food and fuel. But China has been reluctant to use the full weight of its influence on North Korea and appears to be stalling action in the Security Council. Beijing fears, among other things, that political and economic instability could send refugees flooding over the two countries’ shared border. How then to persuade China to take effective action to meet the primary U.S. concern — the threat of nuclear proliferation by North Korea?

The United States must make it clear to Beijing that preventing nuclear proliferation by North Korea is a fundamental and unalterable U.S. interest. This message should be reinforced with the point that further transfers by North Korea will cause responses that are counter to China’s security goals. Indeed even now, the ongoing threat of further proliferation by North Korea creates pressure for more U.S. forces in the region, stronger U.S. alliances with Japan and the South Korea, and more vigorous international efforts to block North Korea’s illicit trade. Yet all these are second-best solutions for preventing further nuclear transfers by North Korea. The best solution, Chinese pressure on the peninsula, can only come from Beijing.