North Korea has now set off seismic shock waves in the geopolitical terrain of East Asia after trying to make a splash in space by ”launching a satellite.” This colourful view does not dramatise or distort the new centrality of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to a future East Asian order. Pyongyang is indeed beginning to test, perhaps also trifle with, United States President Barack Obama’s current policy of continuity in this vital region.
The latest crisis is best captured in a new event which is frozen in time. International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors left the DPRK on April 16 after it expelled them from its nuclear complex at Yongbyon. And, on April 17, it was the turn of U.S. monitors to quit the same scene, as ordered by the DPRK. These experts were there, in two independent teams, under an accord in the relevant process of six-party talks that has remained stalled for months now. The six parties, whose agenda is to denuclearise the Korean peninsula, are the U.S., the DPRK, China (in the Chair), South Korea, Japan, and Russia.
Importantly, and as a prelude to ordering the expulsion of IAEA and U.S. experts, North Korea on April 14 announced its exit from the six-party talks. Such expulsions are an old trick up the DPRK’s sleeves. However, North Korea’s withdrawal from the six-party talks on denuclearisation is either a novel pressure tactic or even a strategic gamble.
Mr. Obama has not, of course, turned the heat on the DPRK in a manner reminiscent of his predecessor George W. Bush’s graphic denunciation. For a period, Mr. Bush viewed the DPRK as a critical component of an “axis of evil,” which included Iran and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. While Mr. Obama has steered clear of such denunciations, both he and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have minced no words on the DPRK. Unacceptable to them are any moves by Pyongyang to arm itself with a viable nuclear arsenal and credible ballistic missiles as delivery systems.
Mr. Obama’s U.S., too, is concerned over North Korea’s suspected proliferation agenda. In this, China, as an ascendant global player in the existing world order, has made common cause with the U.S. for several years now. China is also the only power with direct access to, and variable influence over North Korea, which, for reasons of recent history, is quite isolated. These aspects have already had an impact on Pyongyang’s current challenges.
In the intermittent sessions of the six-party process over several years now, the DPRK has sometimes cooperated with the other five. Yet, they have often braved the odds in a bid to denuclearise the Korean peninsula, the theatre of a1950-53 war which ended without a peace accord.
It is in this big picture that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is now free to resume his “recently-halted” nuclear weapons programme. His latest series of extreme actions against the IAEA and U.S. monitors and his exit from the six-party process are designed to secure for him a free hand. And, these moves were spelt out in response to the United Nations Security Council’s condemnation of the DPRK’s controversial April 5 “launch.”
Significantly, the UNSC glossed over the issue of whether North Korea, true to its claims, had in fact tried to put a satellite in orbit around the Earth. Neighbours Japan and South Korea, which monitored the North Korean launch, detected no signs of a satellite-entry into orbit. The U.S., a veto-empowered member of the UNSC, concurred; but two other veto-wielding members, China and Russia, were not on that wavelength. China and Russia are also neighbours of the DPRK, while the U.S. sees itself as a long-time “resident power” in the inter-Korean neighbourhood. In the face of divided opinion, the UNSC decided the issue on the basis of a general view that the purported satellite launch required a dual-use rocket.
Potentially, a dual-use rocket, capable of launching a satellite, has known military-related applications as well. In the present case, the U.S. and its allies like Japan and South Korea believe that Mr. Kim was really testing an inter-continental ballistic missile. And, this line of argument has been reinforced by North Korea’s failure to show demonstrable evidence of a satellite in orbit.
Above all, two inter-related factors determined the UNSC Chairman’s April 13 (New York time) statement. Northeast Asian diplomatic sources said the statement was facilitated by consensus among China, Japan, and South Korea. While Japan had pressed for the UNSC debate on this issue; the leaders of these three countries met at Pattaya in Thailand on April 11. These logistics apart, the UNSC was, in the first place, aware of the DPRK’s peculiar situation in regard to the international law on satellite launches. The central issue was whether North Korea would be entitled to claim the sovereign right to peaceful exploration of space.
In the UNSC’s perspective, though, the second and clinching factor was that the DPRK already had to answer for its ballistic missile programmes. U.N. sanctions of the anti-proliferation kind, as different from an acute economic embargo, were in fact on the statute book against Pyongyang. Closely related were the facts that North Korea did use a dual-use rocket on this occasion and did not verifiably put a satellite in orbit. So, the UNSC statement called for a reinforcement of the implementation of existing sanctions and also an early resumption of the six-party talks.
Given the diplomatic under-statement evident in these calls, North Korea has furiously responded by keeping an eye on their implications for the future. It is too early to envision new and durable security architecture in East Asia, in the context of a “rising” China and a “resurgent” Japan.
Gaining currency recently, as perceived by Japanese expert Nishihara Masashi, was the possibility of a “U.S-North Korea non-aggression pact.” That was when the DPRK was implementing some aspects of an interim accord under the six-party process. These included the partial disablement of the Yongbyon nuclear complex. However, the latest signals from Pyongyang indicate a nuclear U-turn and the possibility of a new strategic game in East Asia. It is up to Mr. Obama to shape the rules of this game, if he wishes to do so and finds the time for that, given also North Korea’s humanitarian needs.
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