U.S.-North Korea relations are at a point of crisis. Pyongyang’s surprise October admission to a secret nuclear weapons program based on uranium enrichment has triggered a cascading breakdown of the 1994 Agreed Framework structure that had kept North Korea’s more advanced plutonium-based nuclear program in check. The country has now expelled United Nations inspectors, removed monitoring equipment at its Yongbyon nuclear complex, and begun reprocessing spent nuclear fuel stored at the site. The North Koreans have long been suspected of possessing sufficient plutonium for one or two nuclear weapons, and this new reprocessing could provide an additional half-dozen weapons’ worth of fissile material within a few months. Once the reprocessed plutonium is dispersed to multiple hidden locations, North Korea would be unimpeded in both producing nuclear weapons for its own use and exporting the materials and technologies to whomever comes up with the cash. This twin proliferation danger surpasses even the apex of the 1993-94 crisis that nearly triggered a U.S. military attack.

The Bush administration’s de facto policy of “hostile
neglect” toward Pyongyang has been a fundamental
source of the current crisis. Although North Korea’s
uranium-based program began well before Bush took
office, the current administration bears responsibility
for inciting acceleration of Korea’s nuclear program
and for fostering the fragile conditions under which
the program’s revelation quickly precipitated a complete
breakdown of U.S.-North Korea relations.
Unfortunately, even as Bush administration supporters
now acknowledge the need for a new approach,
there is still insufficient comprehension that the deficiency
of Washington’s posture stems as much from
the “neglect” as from the “hostility.”
For over a decade, U.S. domestic debate about dealing
with North Korea has boiled down to engagement
versus confrontation. The new Bush administration,
convinced that Clinton’s engagement of North Korea
amounted to nothing more than bribe-paying
appeasement, has essentially embraced confrontation.
While eschewing any direct contacts for nearly two
years, administration officials routinely characterized
North Korea as an irredeemable threat to U.S. interests
and emphasized that preemptive strikes and other
strategic policy innovations were meant to thwart
exactly the kind of proliferation that the administration
expected North Korea to undertake.
However, through the 1990s, North Korea neither
dependably reciprocated accommodation, as engagement
advocates had hoped, nor routinely cowered in
response to U.S. intimidation, as confrontation advocates
had expected. Rather, the one constant of North
Korean behavior has been provocation whenever it
senses U.S. attention waning. Thus, while U.S.
debate is dominated by engagement versus confrontation,
U.S. policy success is at least as much a function
of prioritizing interaction over neglect. This factor was
a driving dynamic in the ebb and flow of post-1994
U.S.-North Korea relations, often undermining the
Clinton administration’s overarching engagement
intentions. Similarly, over the past two years, the
Bush administration’s refusal to interact with North
Korea at any level—or even to be bothered to generate
a proactive policy—has served as much to precipitate
Pyongyang’s recent provocations as has Washington’s
undisguised antipathy for Kim Jong Il’s regime.

The Costs of Neglect
The Bush administration’s general neglect of U.S.-
North Korea relations has also precipitated a grave U.S.
strategic miscalculation. Bush officials probably assumed
that the aggressive policy to disarm Iraq would also
bolster confrontational intimidation of North Korea
by implicitly signaling that, as a charter member of the
“axis of evil,” it could become subject to the same type
of pressure. But Kim Jong Il seems to have noticed a
key point that the Bush team apparently overlooked:
as long as the U.S. is preparing for a major war in the
Middle East, U.S. threats to resort to the same kind
of coercion of North Korea I are far less credible. Kim
Jong Il’s government probably also concluded that only
possession of a credible nuclear threat could spare North
Korea from Iraq’s fate. Pyongyang clearly got the
message that when the Bush team was finished with
Iraq, North Korea might be next, but the Koreans
also realized that they had a “window of opportunity”
to prepare for any future U.S. confrontation (as well
as to compel eventual U.S. negotiation). Faced with
exposure of his uranium program, Kim Jong Il seems
to have judged that, with U.S. resources strained by
the Iraq effort, North Korea must make its nuclear
gambit now—it cannot afford to wait.
This strategic backdrop accounts for the Bush
administration’s otherwise astonishing dismissiveness
of the gravity of Pyongyang’s actions. In skewering
North Korea on the “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of
the Union address, President Bush drew a clear line
in the sand: “The United States of America will not
permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten
us with the world’s most destructive weapons.”
But less than a year later, the administration has shown
itself to be both unprepared for Kim Jong Il’s assertive
leap across that line and unaware of its own response
constraints. Preoccupied with Iraq, the Bush team has
been even less remonstrative of North Korea than was
the Clinton administration in the 1994 crisis: condemnation
of North Korea’s uranium program has been
highly qualified by protestations that the situation can
be handled diplomatically and has been coupled with
candid admissions by unnamed high Bush officials
that they are in no mood to take on a second crisis.
So palpable has been this passivity that Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at one point felt compelled
to make a vigorous public assertion of the U.S.
capacity to fight simultaneous wars in the Middle
East and the Korean Peninsula if necessary. Kim Jong
Il hardly could have failed to perceive this statement
for the hollow bluster that it was. The Bush administration’s
continuing intentional neglect has presented
to North Korea neither sanctions to punish abrogation
of its nonproliferation commitments nor incentives
to embrace and expand those commitments.
Thus, predictably, North Korea has responded to the
cutoff of its fuel oil supplies (stipulated under the
Agreed Framework) by moving rapidly to terminate
International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring at
Yongbyon and to begin reprocessing the existing
spent fuel (as well as restarting its 5Mw reactor at the
site and recommencing construction of two newer
reactors). For good measure, the regime has also
threatened to resume missile testing and has declared
that any UN sanctions in response to these actions
would be considered “an act of war.”
Meanwhile, North Korea has cleverly taken advantage
of the strains that Bush administration unilateralism
has created in U.S. relationships elsewhere in
Northeast Asia. Even while breaking out of its nuclear
straitjacket, North Korea has managed to deflect
blame sufficiently to induce South Korea to offer
“mediation” of the dispute—an astounding development
demonstrating just how poorly Bush administration
officials have appreciated the widespread erosion
of South Korean support for U.S. policies in the
wake of President Bush’s snubbing of South Korean
President Kim Dae Jung (as well as Bush’s own secretary
of state) just a few months after taking office.
Nor have the Bush administration’s East Asian policies
given China a strong incentive to pressure North
Korea to end its nuclear weapons program. Although
China shares the goal of keeping the Korean Peninsula
nuclear-free, the Chinese leadership does not share
the avowed aim of many Republicans of precipitating
the collapse of Kim Jong Il’s regime. Beijing’s influence
in Pyongyang is tangible but limited (as evidenced
by North Korea’s 1998 missile test, which
predictably fueled U.S. missile defense aims distinctly
detrimental to Chinese interests). China is unlikely to
squander what influence it does have over North
Korean behavior in order to back U.S. policy goals
whose ultimate effects China would not welcome.
Thus, Kim Jong Il has seized the initiative in the
U.S.-North Korea relationship, kicking sand in the
face of the Bush administration’s “hostile neglect” and
virtually realizing a fait accompli nuclear weapons
capability. The Bush administration’s recently
expressed willingness to talk to North Korea—but
still not negotiate!—is both too little and too late;
having already shifted the status quo, North Korea
may simply stage prolonged and inconclusive talks
while its nuclear weapons development proceeds.
U.S. negotiators reportedly now suspect that North
Korea hopes to end up with both a nuclear capability
and a negotiated accommodation with the United
States. And other recent comments from unnamed
officials that the Bush administration is resigning
itself to an eventual nuclear North Korea do nothing
to dissuade Pyongyang from this ambition.
Painted into a corner by its own neglect, the Bush
administration now has few good options. An early
military strike on the Yongbyon complex might eliminate
the North Korean plutonium-based program
but would risk initiating a war that would cost
countless thousands of lives, devastate Seoul, potentially
subject Japan to chemically armed missile
attacks, and possibly trigger a broader regional conflict
involving China. The Bush administration has
handled its relationships with South Korea and Japan
so poorly that at present it has little hope of gaining
these allies’ support even merely to threaten military
action against North Korea.
Some analysts, rejecting military options but deeming
a nuclear-armed North Korea unacceptable, advocate
a “go for broke” negotiating approach aimed at forging
a sweeping agreement that would not only eliminate
North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs but
would also deeply cut North Korean conventional
arms and forward deployments in exchange for U.S.
assent to a peace treaty, diplomatic recognition, negative
security assurances, and copious economic support.
However, as William Perry’s 1999 policy review
concluded, taking this “upward path” hinges on
North Korean willingness to negotiate. No sweeping
agreement is possible unless North Korea is prepared
to give up its nuclear program completely and to
trust U.S. commitments. Given the current climate,
eliciting such an attitude change is a very tall order.

A Way Forward
Any hope of gaining a negotiated termination of
North Korea’s nuclear programs relies, first and foremost,
on the Bush administration replacing its attitude
of neglect with intensive interaction. The issue
is not whether to engage or confront—U.S. posture
must include both genuine incentives for North
Korea to reach an accommodation and credible sanctions
if it does not. In short, the U.S. needs to come
up with both more carrots and a bigger stick.
Secondly, the Bush administration must be prepared
to act dramatically to turn the crisis around.
Even at this late date, there is one action that the
U.S. could take that would give pause to Kim Jong
Il’s nuclear ambitions. That action would be to suspend
the attack on Iraq.
Supporters of forceful action against Iraq—particularly
those singularly fixated on Iraqi regime
change—will howl that suspending the U.S. military
threat would let Saddam off the hook, convey
American weakness, and undermine any future
attempts to enforce international nonproliferation
agreements. Kim Jong Il, however, would know better.
The Pyongyang leadership would recognize that
by suspending its action against Iraq the U.S. would
be bringing all its resources—including both military
options and high-level leadership attention—fully to
bear on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. The implicit
U.S. threat to respond with force to North Korea’s
ratcheted nuclear escalation, or to undertake a range
of preemptive actions, would immediately gain much
credibility. Kim Jong Il would perceive his “window
of opportunity” suddenly slammed shut.
Besides wielding this bigger stick, the Bush administration
would also need to initiate the kind of thorough
diplomatic engagement that most Korean
experts now recommend. As U.S. actions increase
Pyongyang’s perceived danger in continuing its
nuclear programs, U.S. words must convey equally
credible willingness to compensate Pyongyang’s abandonment
of those programs. This approach would
recognize that confrontation and engagement are not
opposing choices but necessary complements in a
strategy that both respects regional allies and halts
North Korea’s nuclear programs at this late date.
Suspending the use of military force against Iraq to
focus on North Korea would certainly win support
throughout the world. The move would signal adaptability
and responsiveness to U.S. allies in both East
Asia and Europe who perceive Bush’s enthusiasm to
attack Iraq as impetuous and dogmatic unilateralism.

The Bush administration would have no difficulty
portraying the move as a responsible U.S. reaction to
changing international circumstances—not unlike the
U.S. reaction to September 11.
Prioritizing the Korean situation would particularly
demonstrate to Japan and South Korea that the U.S.
takes seriously the dangerous circumstances that these
allies now face. Even as the U.S. prepares for potential
use of force against North Korea, its commitment
to full diplomatic engagement would reassure Asian
allies of the U.S. desire to solve the Korean crisis short
of military action, if at all possible. This reassurance is
particularly crucial in easing Washington’s deeply strained
relationship with Seoul. With skillful diplomacy, the
U.S. could parlay the relief of Russia, China, and
European allies into a unified international strategy
to deal with North Korea in contrast to the contentious
and disjointed approach toward Iraq.
Washington would thereby gain benefits in confronting
Baghdad. The Bush team could plausibly
maintain that suspending military action against Iraq
reflects no diminution of U.S. concern for Saddam
Hussein’s behavior. Advocates of giving the inspections
process more time would get their wish, and the
Bush administration could credibly sustain its threat
eventually to disarm Iraq once the inspections process
has run its course. Having given the inspections
process that much more opportunity to succeed, the
Bush team would also be more likely to gain the support
of recalcitrant European allies if Washington still
felt that military force was necessary in Iraq.
Perhaps most importantly, suspending the near-term
threat to attack Iraq in order to focus primary energies
on ending North Korea’s nuclear program would bring
U.S. actions back into sync with reality. North Korea,
with its pending diversion of sufficient plutonium to
build a significant nuclear weapons arsenal and to export
both materials and technology to other countries or
to agents of terrorism, is today a far greater threat to U.S.
security and world peace than is Iraq. This disparity
was most recently underscored by the International
Atomic Energy Agency’s referral to the UN Security
Council of North Korean “chronic noncompliance”
with IAEA safeguards agreements, culminating in
Pyongyang’s recent disconnection of IAEA monitoring
equipment and the expulsion of IAEA inspectors
—in contrast to Iraq, where the IAEA was able to
maintain its accounting of safeguarded nuclear materials
even during the 1998-2002 suspension of formal
inspections. Leaving North Korea’s actions unchecked
could, in the words of IAEA Director General
Mohamed El Baradei, “open the door for countries to
walk away from nonproliferation and arms control
agreements.” By shifting its primary focus from Iraq
to North Korea, the U.S. would redirect international
attention from a lesser threat that is temporarily constrainable
toward a greater threat that may not be.

(Wade L. Huntley is an associate professor for security studies at the Peace Institute of the Hiroshima City University and an analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org).).
Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). ©2003. All rights reserved.
 “A Think Tank Without Walls” Established in 1996, Foreign Policy In Focus is a network of policy analysts, advocates, and activists committed to “making the United States a more responsible global leader and global partner.” For more information, visit www.fpif.org. Recommended citation: Wade L. Huntley, “Coping with North Korea,” (Silver City, NM & Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, February 24, 2003). Web location:
http://www.fpif.org/papers/korea2003.html
Production Information:
Writer: Wade L. Huntley
Editor: John Gershman, IRC