US must overhaul North Korea policy: expert

US must overhaul North Korea policy: expert

 

Author: IISS Voices

Posted: 14/02/2013

 

By Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, Research Assistant for Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme

 

The United States needs to push North Korea straight to the top of its policy agenda, says academic Joel Wit (above), saying that Pyongyang might already possess 25 nuclear weapons and may have deployed a prototype road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

 

Speaking at the IISS several days before Pyongyang carried out its third nuclear test on 12 February, the former State Department official and Visiting Scholar at the US–Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) said he thought the passive policy of ‘strategic patience’ during the Obama administration’s first four years had failed.

 

As the administration entered its second term, he suggested, the White House should take a more proactive approach to North Korea – especially given President Barack Obama’s recommitment to Asia and his outspoken advocacy on nuclear issues.

 

Wit, a veteran North Korea watcher, thought the ‘strategic patience’ approach could lead to the worst-case scenario where North Korea (DPRK) achieved the status of a small nuclear-armed state with expanded reach by 2016.

 

Over the next four years, he said, the DPRK might acquire up to 50 nuclear weapons, including battlefield and boosted-yield nuclear weapons. It might also have the capability to miniaturise these warheads and to create nuclear-tipped missiles larger than the latest rocket launched in December 2012.

 

Wit questioned the effectiveness of sanctions, and said that the US had to move beyond holding out offers of food aid in exchange for denuclearisation. Instead it should address the real issues for North Korea that have created the insecurity driving its nuclear programme.

 

One goal of US diplomacy, he added, should be the conclusion of a permanent peace treaty between the US and North Korea, still technically in a state of war since the outbreak of hostilities in June 1950.

 

Wit also challenged ‘myths’ about North Korea, including the notion that Kim Jong-un leads an isolated, irrational and failed state that never abides by international agreements.

 

Wit said any senior-level policy review should focus on determining US national interests on the Korean Peninsula and better understanding North Korea to create a US policy with a ‘seriousness of purpose’ that would change the dynamic on the Peninsula. While recognising its limits, US policy should be based on identifying and balancing incentives and disincentives.

 

Wit encouraged the Obama administration to strengthen disincentives for nuclear testing through bolstering deterrence, while increasing high-level diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang through a division of labour with US regional allies.

 

Any agreement towards a peace treaty should include specific incremental benchmarks to be reached before the US government establishesd diplomatic relations with the DPRK and the DPRK denuclearised, such as the North giving up its stockpiled reactor-fuel rods.

 

Such a treaty would preclude the United States’ acceptance of the North as a nuclear state, since diplomatic relations would only come with a denuclearised DPRK. The initiative must be pursued in cooperation with South Korea.

 

Pointing to the ‘resounding success’ of the 1994 Agreed Framework  that Wit helped to negotiate and implement, and which resulted not just in a freeze but a rollback of Pyongyang’s nuclear capabilities, he held out hope that negotiations on a permanent peace treaty may yet induce the North to abandon its nuclear weapons programme.

 

Regardless of whether North Korea would agree to finally denuclearise, diplomatic engagement could achieve durable limits on the nuclear programme, to prevent further build-up and to set the stage for rollback if political relations improved.

 

In the spirited discussion that followed his prepared remarks, Wit pushed back at the idea that President Obama had tried to engage North Korea last year with the so-called ‘Leap Day Deal’, only to find Pyongyang reneging weeks afterwards.

 

Wit believed the deal had failed because there was no signed agreement with a shared definition of the long-range missile launches that Pyongyang agreed to suspend. Without nailing that down in writing, the US should have walked away from the deal but kept focused on its strategic goals.

 

Wit disagreed with the notion that agreeing a moratorium with North Korea would give it tangible benefits while leaving the West empty-handed. He focused on the great impact the Agreed Framework had on halting progress and even dismantling part of the DPRK’s nuclear programme, leaving Pyongyang today ‘trying to get back to the 1993 stage’.

 

Returning to President Obama’s future policy options, Wit said North Korea wouldn’t stop proliferating until forced, so the US could either ‘stand back or dive in and stop development of the nuclear programme’.

 

Listen to the full discussion: Watching and worrying about North Korea

 

Source: iissvoicesblog.wordpress.com

 

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