Foreign Policy Making in
the US
Roger PERSICHINO
December 6, 2012
Comparison of US Administration’s response to North Korea after May
2009 with the Administration’s initial foreign policy plan
Dongwook LEE
100040097
Usage of nuclear tests for North Korea is a signal
where it wants to make neighbor countries and political counterparts reassess
their prevailing strategies. The North was insisting that the denuclearization
of the Korean peninsula would require the United States to disengage from its
security commitments in Northeast Asia, remove its nuclear umbrella from South
Korea, withdraw US military forces from the peninsula, and develop a US-DPRK
strategic relationship paralleling the US-ROK alliance. This paper tries to find
out the difference between foreign policy to North Korea proposed by President
Obama for his election campaign and what Bush was holding on till the end of
his term, and the difference occurred after North Korea nuclear test. What is
the most notable factor that formed Obama Administration’s foreign policy
measures in response to the North Korea nuclear test? Which factor had the most
influence just after two military provocations?
The
United States was pursuing three primary denuclearization
objectives: to convince Pyongyang to relinquish its fissile-material inventory;
to preclude the possibility of additional fissile-material production by the
North; and to ensure the DPRK’s full compliance with its non-proliferation
commitments.
According
to US think tanks and policy analysts, the United States has four options in
dealing with a nuclear North Korea:
1.
Give
economic aid and a security assurance if North Korea dismantles its nuclear
program.
2.
Use
a military strike against North Korean nuclear facilities.
3.
Let
North Korea develop nuclear weapons.
4.
Starve
the North Korean regime of money.
The
ultimate goal remains nuclear abandonment by the North, but a more practicable
objective is risk minimalisation, both in relation to the DPRK’s extant weapons
and in any potential transfer of technology and materials beyond North Korea’s
borders.
The United States has not yet deemed North Korean nuclear weapons a direct
threat to US national security.
But its nuclear and missile programs remain a prospective threat against which
the US continues to prepare, notably with respect to ballistic-missile defense.
Unlike Israel, India and Pakistan, the DPRK was a signatory to the NPT, the
main cause of reproach from the United States. American
officials had additional dealings with diplomats and technical personnel during
the negotiations over Pyongyang’s missile development, the cancelled
light-water reactor (LWR) project, and the now-suspended disablement of the
DPRK’s nuclear complex at Yongbyon. Intelligence data on the
North’s earliest years of nuclear development was patchy and inconclusive, and
more definitive evidence emerged only as the North pursued development of a
complete nuclear fuel cycle, and when IAEA personnel were briefly able to
undertake limited inspections at Yongbyon, the centre of the North’s
plutonium-based program.
If the Congress were divided
in two contrasting opinions, there would be no ability from the US to negotiate
the nuclear crisis effectively with the DPRK. Sanctions managed by the Congress
moved to practice after ironing out differences between Republican senators and
representatives. Bipartisanship did not exist even though organized
fact-finding trip to North Korea was conducted with senators from both parties.
However, as more economic aid and stance similar to the Sunshine Policy from
the South Korean government were not a feasible track the Democratic party can
take, Congress worked in a same direction as the UN Security Council, and
mainly operated by Republican party in terms of relations with North Korea. North
Korea Accountability Act of 2009 was introduced by four senators from the
Republican party from Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in August after the
nuclear test, making president Obama along with Secretary of State and
Secretary of the Treasury to pressure North Korea in a state approach, although
it failed to pass the Senate.
The United States approaches
to the North Korea’s nuclear issue through sanctions from the UN Security
Council in response based on liberal idealism. Interventions sanctioned by an
international system, notably UNSC and IAEA, dominated the abnormal relations
between the two states so far covering both Bush and Obama administration.
These began three days after the outbreak of the Korean War, and have been
increased in its scope and subject for containment of North Korean regime.
President George H. W. Bush on 27 September 1991
announced that the United Sates would unilaterally withdraw all remaining US
tactical nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula and from US surface ships in
the western Pacific. IAEA safeguards that the
North Korea acceded were due to preliminary South Korean withdrawal of nuclear
weapons. The United States has pushed towards North Korea giving South Korean
case as a justification of stopping nuclear weapons development, until the
George W. Bush administration. With the capabilities it already had or was soon
to complete by the early 1990s, Pyongyang today could have an arsenal of a
hundred or more nuclear weapons.
Some policyanalysts
believe that North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons reflects anxieties
triggered by the end of the Cold War and the DPRK’s loss of explicit security
guarantees from Russia and China. Pyongyang selected the
gas-graphite reactor technology, which was the best dual-use option for both
civilian and military nuclear usage. As a small nation which
uses a strategy of a scorpion to make other two or more neighboring countries
fight each other, a certain amount of exaggeration of nuclear abilities led to
overcome political crises inside North Korea and strengthened its relation to
international community. Although DPRK is called as a hermit state, its arms
deal with countries normally hostile to the United States remains stable with
appreciation of trade partner countries.
A US military withdrawal from the ROK had long been
among Kim Il-sung’s foremost strategic objectives. As he remarked to Romanian
leader Nicolae Ceausescu only a month before the Kissinger visit, ‘[I]n the
absence of the Americans in South Korea or of any other foreign forces, the South
Korean people could install a democratic progressive government, through its
own forces, and the establishment of such a government would draw us very close
to each other, so that, without fighting, we could unify the country.’
Under the George W. Bush administration, North Korea and its leader were the target
of contempt, dismissal and verbal attacks. The politics of “naming,
labeling and framing” set the two governments significantly back in any
pre-existing bilateral progress. Also, the Bush
administration killed the Agreed Framework for domestic political reasons and
because it suspected Pyongyang of cheating by covertly pursuing uranium
enrichment.
November 2000 election led to a dismissive tone of
Agreed Framework initiated in 1994, leading to its complete breakdown in 2003.
Hardened attitude of the Bush administration following the attacks of September
11, 2001 was apparent in the president’s highly personalized criticisms of Kim
Jong-il, his characterization of North Korea as a member of the ‘axis of evil’.
After Pyongyang decided to formally renege on its NPT commitments and restart
its long-suspended plutonium enrichment program, the Bush administration made
China as a mediator taking an offensive role to dissuade North Korea. This
tradition goes back to 2002, when Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
pressed China to host three-way discussions because it was clear that Bush was
opposed to direct talks, according to the book “Soldier: The Life of Colin
Powell,” by Washington Post Associate Editor Karen DeYoung.
On bilateralism of the United States towards North
Korea before its first nuclear test in 2006, president Bush maintained a
multilateral approach such as Six-Party Talks in terms of getting information
about North Korea’s nuclear enrichment program. In a CNN article on October 10,
2006, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday defended the Bush
administration’s refusal to hold bilateral talks with North Korea in the face
of Pyongyang’s claim of a successful nuclear test. As scholars argue that
Northeast Asia is a region that has every possibility of becoming the best
trading bloc in the future, because of Japanese capital and technology, Chinese
labor and money, Russian natural resources, and the Korean work ethic, Bush administration
maintained multilateral approach leveraging gains of regional cooperation even
though his personality and thinking were the most hostile to North Korean
dictatorial regime.
Before the Obamaadministration,
president Bush tried not to provoke North Korea directly through diplomatic
clash. Instead, the United States managed to leave a very ineffectual
diplomatic channel with stubborn policy principles. The stalled multilateral
negotiation has turned out to be a failure where each member brings its own
issues to the community agenda. Senior Vice Foreign
Minister Kang, who acted as the lead North Korean negotiator for the Agreed
Framework, claimed that Pyongyang sought a bilateral agreement with both
countries sitting ‘knee to knee’, but it is very doubtful that the DPRK
anticipated or desired serious negotiations with the Bush administration.
DPRK’s nuclear test secured the bilateral channel with
the United States, which DPRK failed to erect during Bush’s first term. After
DPRK resumed energy assistance from the US with bilateral talks, under the
terms of the denuclearization action plan of February 2007 announced at the
Six-Party Talks, the North agreed to ‘shut down and seal for the purpose of
eventual abandonment the Yongbyon nuclear facility’ and to allow IAEA personnel
to monitor and verify Pyongyang’s compliance with its commitments. But because of small
anticipation for the United States to change their interests, agreement of
North Korea turned out to be a makeshift.
During the visit of US Assistant Secretary of State
James Kelly to Pyongyang in October 2002, the US for the first time accused the
DPRK of pursuing uranium enrichment. But at a later time, the
status goes to zero again. Following the initial 2002 altercation with the Bush
administration over North Korea’s alleged uranium enrichment program, as part
of its response to UN sanctions following the April 2009 missile launch,
Pyongyang announced that it would now pursue enriching uranium for domestic LWR
program.
On 10 January 2003, the DPRK announced its ‘automatic and immediate’ withdrawal
from the NPT and its ‘complete free[dom]’ from the restrictions of the
safeguards agreement within the IAEA, simultaneously claiming that ‘in the
current stage, our nuclear activities will be limited to only peaceful
purposes, including electricity production.’ When investigating the
reason of opting out of NPT for North Korea, it is most plausible that it wants
to be equal to the US in terms of relations in Northeast Asia.
After a year-long absence from the Six-Party Talks,
Pyongyang returned to the negotiations, culminating with release of the joint
statement of 19 September 2005, with Beijing the principal drafter of the
document.
However, after that Washington and Pyongyang quickly released unilateral
statements with starkly different interpretations of their respective
obligations.
During 2007 and 2008, North Korea curtailed some of its nuclear activities,
including the shuttering and subsequent disablement of the Yongbyon reactor. Bilateral negotiations
turned out to be a deceit from one side where solutions to correct the fact lead
to another deceit. President Bush’s first term was plagued with strategic and
diplomatic errors that gave North Korea a free hand to accelerate the
development of its nuclear program.
Since Kim Dae-Jung and Roh Moo-Hyun, the two former presidents of South Korea
supportive for North Korea in humanitarian and economic aids did not take North
Korean nuclear development in account in terms of military strategy, the Bush
Administration did not have to calculate South Korean government’s behavior in
order to change the originally set policy orientation towards North Korea. However,
antipathy between the two Koreas started to affect late Bush administration and
Obama administration thereafter till present. Rather than Obama’s election,
election of South Korean president Lee Myung-Bak and his policy change to take
the same approach according to the original policy orientation that prevailed
from the beginning of Bush Administration was the reason for growing tension
between the two Koreas and the leading military provocation in Cheonan and
Yeonpyeong Do. However, North Korean nuclear test in May 2009 also does not
bear its relation to president Obama’s election in late 2008.
Unlike the case of South Korea in which personality of
a president forced another country’s foreign policy to change, United States
had a set of foreign policy towards North Korea consistently regardless of a
new president’s personality. George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney
used the term ‘axis of evil’ for North Korea, but Bill Clinton and Barack Obama
refrained from using that term. Nevertheless, that does not alter the US vital
interests towards North Korea, and only approaches between the two camps were
different. In a closer look of this procedure, administrative branch has more
peculiarities because congressional support for traditional US foreign policy
towards North Korea remained consistent with the UN Security Council.
Pyongyang had high expectations for Obama, and
expected him to be different from George W. Bush. The election of a
dialogue-oriented president tends not to add UN Security Council sanctions or
resolutions towards North Korea so that it deems the new president favorable,
but as North Korea does not change its foreign policy directive, so that of the
United States cannot change either. With President Obama’s criticism of
Pyongyang’s missile (or satellite) launch in his Prague speech on April 5,
2009, North
Korea responded with a second nuclear test the following month, on May 25,
2009. When the
first nuclear test in October 2006 was partially successful with a yield of
slightly below 1 kiloton, the second was more successful with an estimated
yield of 2 to 4 kilotons. A realist standpoint considering the United States as
a whole, or as a state while looking through changes in North Korean state can
give accurate analysis to find out the most notable factor for change in
foreign policy towards North Korea from Obama Administration.
At the beginning of the Obama administration, it
asserted that its fundamental policy objective with the DPRK is ‘a definite and
comprehensive resolution’ of the nuclear issue, exactly the same as that
of Bush administration holding firm of vital American interests. At that time
resuming Six-Party Talks was always at hand, even though North Korean hostility
to Lee Myung-Bak and reticence of Hu Jintao to initiate softer policy of South
Korea were already two main obstacles. This solution of multilateralism almost
vanished throughout North Korea’s efforts to save its current regime through a
significant nuclear test and two military provocations. Six-Party Talks stopped
abruptly just after the nuclear test, and did not start again since then.
In early 2009, North Korea forcefully expanded its
claims to standing as a nuclear-weapons state. In abrupt, unequivocal
fashion, the DPRK walked away from every denuclearization commitment made
during the latter years of the Bush administration. Along with a nuclear test
with upgraded warhead compared to 2006, it simultaneously reactivated the
reprocessing facility at Yongbyon, which stopped operating the year before.
Every major nuclear test has changed the foreign policy direction of US, and at
that time the change was radical.
The
April 2010 US Nuclear Posture Review implies to expect the emergence of leaders
in North Korea who did not see the system’s fundamental identity tied to
retention of nuclear weapons. But in current situation of failing the yearly
goal of economic growth, the current leader has to remain the status quo in
terms of nuclear policy in order not to fail additionally in political terms.
Current leadership of North Korea is called a ‘no landing’ scenario – that is,
the perpetuation of the existing system based on the unquestioned power and
authority of the Kim family and of the ruling elites that support it, retention
of its nuclear weapons capabilities, and a measure of economic recovery.
The United States also keeps a policy of waiting till North Korea forgoes
possession of nuclear weapons and the means to produce additional fissile
material in exchange for US security and economic commitments, a view that
never corresponds with response from North Korea.
But
North Korea seeks legitimation by the United States, and demands affirmation
and acceptance of the United States. That is decreased military alliance with
South Korea and Japan, and accepting North Korea as a nuclear-weapons state such
as Israel. At the first time Obama was elected as president, Arab states and
North Korea had a neutral or welcoming stance compared to a well-expected
antagonism towards John McCain. Also for this year’s election results for
giving Obama a second term, Chosun Sinbo, a pro-DPRK journal in Tokyo also
reported the results as ‘neither side won, but it is true that Romney’s hard
line deserves to be reprimanded.’
There have been repeated oscillations in inter-Korean relations,
sometimes including clashes between the two militaries, of which North Korea’s
March 2010 sinking of the ROK Navy corvette Cheonan was the most lethal of
these episodes.
Pyongyang’s November 2010 shelling of Yeonpyeong Do (a ROK-controlled coastal island) constituted the
first use of North Korean artillery against South Korean territory since the
Korean War.
The
main reason of the Cheonan attack was interpreted as to reestablish support for
Kim Jong-Il’s rule especially by the military after November 2009 clash on NLL.
However, current stalemate does not give any measures in either military retaliation
or bilateral talks. The Yeonpyeong Do attack is interpreted as a result of
explicit revelation conducted by a former director of the Los Alamos National
Laboratory Siegfried Hecker in terms of recently constructed centrifuges used
for uranium enrichment, during his trip to North Korea in mid-November. After
the politically neutral discovery, the blatant fact of recent violation of UN
sanction with pursuit of another route for nuclear weapons led to doubtful and
hostile discussion conducted by US and South Korean officials, which led to
public address and media exposure. After Cheonan and Yeonpyeong Do military provocation, the Obama administration
condemned its behavior along with the address of G8 group of industrialised
nations meeting in Toronto in 2010. According to an agreement made between Lee
and Obama in Seoul in November 2009, and a 25-minute talk over the phone on
simultaneous reactions of US and South Korea, Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton along with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates held the first-ever two
plus two security talks with their South Korean counterparts. Moreover, the
U.S. Freedom of Information Act and the Japanese equivalent will be [is] legally
bound to shed light on this incident twenty five years from now [2010].
With economic sanctions
along with UNSC resolution to reaffirm its denuclearization commitments, US
wanted to hear North Korea’s response opening a channel of dialogue as former
president Clinton’s visit to Pyongyang in August 2009 shows. However, president Obama himself never
succeeded a direct bilateral talk with the North Korean leader Kim Chong-Un
yet. With the singular exception of China, various neighboring countries and
the United States were engaged in deliberations and consultations about North Korea, not negotiations with North Korea. As China-DPRK bilateral
relations remain strong that no other country can follow that level of deeper
interaction, United States relatively lag behind of its diplomatic ability. A
new leader Kim Chong-Un trying to strengthen his inner political circle with
holding firmly a nuclear card cannot risk his political path by abruptly
opening talks with a US counterpart. After the leadership change in North
Korea, neither secretary-level talks nor summit talks are currently available.
Rather, president Obama visited US military camps in South Korea and made a
public address condemning North Korea’s behavior with no much change in stance.
Holding back of food aid and other economic support are the only measures
designed for stability and anti-nuclear proliferation at best.
Bush administration preferred multilateral approach using Six-Party Talks, but also
went on a bilateral discussion table when North Korea made a provocative action
so that appeasement was needed afterwards. President Bush and members of the
National Security Council during his two terms preferred justified
denuclearization of North Korea with consensus of other neighboring countries.
But in Obama administration, even that attempt did not take place. Obama administration
did not change much from its previous administration, but it became more
reticent while seeking consequences if the North Korea abolishes nuclear
weapons and thus fall. What
made a significant difference was the nuclear test in May 2009, and military
provocation of Cheonan and Yeonpyeong do are subsequent results with no major
change from May 2009. As
no significant nuclear-generated power supply for improving people’s lives in
North Korea is being conducted, the dual purpose that North Korea suggests is
already an excuse. The answer to denuclearization does not lie in increasing
threat towards North Korea, in which it will accelerate its drive for nuclear
weapons development as a result. When North Korea believes that fundamental relationship
with the United States was improving, then it is willing to slow down. In an
interview with the news media in 2009, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
stated “we should try to step back and see North Korean issues as the forest
instead of the trees.”
Looking at a forest, US can consider approaches other than direct sanction to
limit nuclear proliferation, as improved transportation network replacing old
North Korean infrastructure is constructed with support by government-corporate
cooperation, named North Korean Development Bank, is being suggested by think
tanks in the US. If Obama administration wants to make a diplomatic move,
getting out of current stalemate, choosing alternatives other than war while
differentiating from Bush era is going to be another Sunshine Policy or is very
difficult to achieve.