So-called "Nuclear Powers" Aren’t

The Korea Times reports today that the recently released annual report by U.S. Joint Forces Command, “Joint Operating Environment 2008: Challenges and Implications for the Future Joint Force,” lists North Korea as a “nuclear power.” Perversely, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which shapes the environment for joint operations significantly by limiting the number of nuclear arsenals globally, is not mentioned in the document.

The section entitled “The Contextual World” begins its discussion of “The Pacific and Indian Oceans” as follows:

“The rim of the great Asian continent is already home to five nuclear powers: China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Russia. Furthermore, there are three threshold nuclear states, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, which have the capacity to become nuclear powers quickly.”

Such colorful writing may enliven the read, but it dangerously distorts the picture of Asian and global security presented in the report. While North Korea, appears to have tested a nuclear explosive device and maintains a conventional military of unusual size, it has by no means earned the status of “power” somehow analogous to Russia, China, and India.

Nuclear weapons may confer political status, but this is as much a dysfunction of contemporary global politics as it is a reflection of some real utility of nuclear weapons in meeting the needs of states. Nuclear weapons are exceedingly dangerous to U.S. and global security and North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is clearly destabilizing to the region. But nuclear weapons do not transform North Korea’s role in the world; they are a symptom and contributing cause of North Korea’s national tragedy.

Kim Jong Il styles himself an alchemist, hoping nuclear weapons will transform his comparative advantage in ignoring global norms and violating international law into security and foreign investment. It is unclear that he has achieved security or even broken even economically. He has impoverished his people and alienated them from the world community. A small nuclear arsenal may provide him a fig leaf of deterrence sufficient for human rights atrocities and petty criminality, but it has not transformed him into a globally relevant leader.

The U.S. Government should make this clear by consistently and assertively rejecting Kim’s mystical belief that nuclear weapons make him powerful; this includes consistently rejecting the use of the term “nuclear power” to describe any state.

Jimmy Carter in Defense of Arms Control

In a September 12, 2007 article in the Taipei Times titled, “Nuclear Steps Undermine Peace,” former President Jimmy Carter argues “By abandoning many of the nuclear arms agreements negotiated in the last 50 years, the US has been sending mixed signals to North Korea, Iran and other states with the technical knowledge to create nuclear weapons.”

Mr. Bolton had his Chance

As International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors prepared to re-establish international verification of North Korea’s nuclear program last week, Leonor rebutted John Bolton's delicately titled opinion piece "Pyongyang Pussyfooting" in a letter to the editor published in The Wall Street Journal on July 12, 2007:

“Attempting to negotiate in good faith with a country that is hostile to the U.S., as distasteful as this may be to Mr. Bolton, is a process inherent to effective diplomacy; it was used successfully by the Reagan administration with the "Evil Empire" and helped usher an end to the Cold War, and it remains the most effective way to stop Kim Jong Il's nuclear weapons program. Failing to do so will result in significant cost to national security.”

The Prodigal State Party

Yoo Cheong-mo of Yonhap reports that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director Mohammed El Baradei called for North Korea to return to the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) at the Inchon International Airport in Seoul on Wednesday:

“Now is a very crucial time for the IAEA, Korea and the entire world. North Korea has just returned to a verification process. I wish it would lead to North Korea's return to the NPT and complete scrapping of its nuclear weapons program.”

This is an important step toward reigning in the North Korean breakout from the NPT. Some observers have contested the legal force of North Korea’s asserted departure from the NPT on January 10, 2003.

The argument that North Korea’s withdrawal is illegal because it was asserted to have immediate effect is weak. Complex negotiations following the DPRK’s original assertion of its intention to withdraw from the NPT around March 9-11, 1993 (Wit, Poneman, Gallucci, Going Critical, page 25-6) led to interesting disagreement as to whether a state party to the NPT could “suspend” its withdrawal after the three month waiting period specified in Article X of the NPT had run out or, in the alternative, its withdrawal clock was reset if it chose to remain in the Treaty after having announced its intent to withdraw. This disagreement cleverly widened room for diplomacy and sparked discussions about how procedural measures might raise the bar against further NPT defections, but it did not fundamentally change North Korea’s right to withdraw. It only mattered so long as everyone – including the North Koreans – agreed that North Korea remained a state party to the NPT.

Law is important, but legalistic debate cannot reclaim the four-and-a-half years that the North has spent outside the NPT any more than IAEA inspectors can travel back in time to verify compliance during that period. But an unambiguous North Korean return to the NPT would be good for three reasons. First, it would multilateralize North Korea’s commitment to verified nuclear disarmament – even if entered into cynically, this global commitment to all NPT members would demonstrate that even a state that seems to spoil for an adjective (like “rogue” or “outlaw”) must acknowledge the relationship between verified and legally binding nonproliferation and contemporary sovereignty. Second, it would emphasize the resilience of the Treaty. Today, North Korea stands outside the NPT as a model to other states that might choose nuclear weapons proliferation over the rule of law, although no other states have yet followed suit. The DPRK’s return to the NPT would signal that breakout is not sustainable. Third, returning North Korea to the NPT would move this nearly universal Treaty even closer to universality – emphasizing that the historical and strategic circumstances that have left only three other states outside the Treaty should not be immune to creative efforts to bring them into meaningful and effective levels of partnership with NPT states parties for nonproliferation.