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Pride and pragmatism
Now North Korea, the only such country with any military atomic capability, has closed all the facilities at its nuclear complex at Yongbyon. But the lack of applause from the Whitehouse for the success of its own negotiator, Christopher Hill, has been deafening.
In a Yahoo News article, Joe Conason notes one possible reason for this paradox- pride:
Perhaps because Bush never admits he is wrong — and this accomplishment, one of very few that he could cite today, proves just how mistaken he and his fellow ideologues have been...
The Bush team took office with undisguised disdain for the work and ideas of the Clinton administration. Led by Vice President Dick Cheney, the neoconservatives who controlled policy in the Bush administration also rejected Mr. Clinton's approach to North Korea, which had resulted in a 1994 'agreed framework' that exchanged fuel oil supplies and diplomatic recognition for the shutdown of nuclear facilities.
It was after the Bush administration abandoned the 'agreed framework' that the DPRK (North Korea) re-started its facility at Yongbyon and expelled the nuclear inspectors:
As North Korea continued to talk about and possibly build nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, American policymakers became more realistic. Ultimately, the Bush White House needed to find a way to climb down from its aggressive attitude and reach an agreement with the North Koreans.
But being Bushies, they also needed a fig leaf to conceal their own reversal of policy. Both the president and the vice president, after all, had often declared how tough and unbending they are, particularly in contrast with Clinton. Under no circumstances could they acknowledge that, like him, they had found negotiation preferable to confrontation...
Conason is perhaps mistaken in one respect. Powerful elements in the Whitehouse did not find negotiation preferable to confrontation; they sought not fig leaves but ways of blocking a negotiated solution. David E. Sanger of the New York Times glosses this as follows:
To lure Kim Jong-il, the North’s reclusive leader, to return to the status quo of 2002, Ms. Rice and Mr. Hill worked around Mr. Cheney to strike the February [2007] deal, which awarded the North large shipments of oil as it took the first steps to end its nuclear production capacity.
The United States also cleared the way for the return of $25 million frozen in a Macao bank that the administration had said was largely North Korea’s ill-gotten gains from counterfeiting and arms sales. In the end, the only way to return the money involved sending it through the Federal Reserve, which played a crucial role in getting it back to the North Korean leadership. That process took months longer than expected, and North Korea refused to shut the reactor until it was completed.
The $25 million in the Macao-based Banco Delta Asia was impounded in 2005, as part of a stringent set of financial sanctions imposed extra-territorially by the US Treasury immediately after a previous breakthrough in negotiations with North Korea. The sanctions, which effectively barred the DPRK from all international banking activity, were justified on the grounds that North Korea was engaged in counterfeiting and money-laundering. No evidence for these charges has ever been produced, but the sanctions killed off the September 2005 agreement.
Although the fruition of the February 2007 deal was clearly predicated on the return of the $25 million through international banking channels, the US Treasury Department refused to issue a guarantee that no action would be taken against banks which would be willing to take part in the transfer. Only for this reason did State Department officials find that "the only way to return the money" was to spend four months constructing an elaborate arrangement involving Russia and the US Federal Reserve, in order to transfer the money back to its owners.
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North Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan on a recent visit to the USA |
Why are they speeding it up? Because they want to use Yongbyon as a bargaining chip in bilateral negotiations with the U.S. to resolve the stalemate over resumption of the six party talks. North Korea does want to return to the six party talks. [Deputy Foreign Minister and chief negotiator on the nuclear issue] Kim Gye Gwan said “it’s very important to us to resume the six party talks because we would be the big beneficiaries if the September 19, 2005 Beijing declaration is implemented.” But first they want to negotiate an end to the financial sanctions imposed by the U.S. right after the September 19 agreement which they regard as a violation of the agreement. The financial sanctions are very severe. We [the USA] have in effect asked all the banks in the world not to deal with North Korea or to handle any transactions involving North Korea...
I found instances in North Korea in which legitimate imports of industrial equipment for light industries making consumer goods have been blocked. The North Koreans understandably see this as a regime change policy designed to bring about the collapse of their regime through economic pressure. They think the U.S. government is so divided between Vice President Cheney and the State Department that it’s incapable of carrying out the September 19 agreement. What they’re saying is, we want the U.S. to show us it is ready to move toward normal relations in accordance with the September 19 agreement. If the U.S. won’t lift all of the financial sanctions, all at once, they say, then it should show us in other ways that it has got its act together and is giving up the regime change policy.
What they have in mind are bilateral negotiations without preconditions leading to a package deal that would be followed by the Six Party Talks. For example, the U.S. would lift some or all of the sanctions in return for North Korean concessions such as a freeze of the Yongbyon reactor, a missile testing moratorium, and a commitment not to transfer nuclear weapons or fissile materials to third parties. Or the U.S. would offer incentives such as energy aid and removal from the terrorist list in return for a North Korean compromise on aspects of the financial sanctions.
Here is what Kim Gye Gwan said: “I am optimistic that the Bush administration will climb down in the near future and return to the September 19 agreement. They have no choice, since we are the ones who hold the key to the six party talks. The administration is under pressure from China and South Korea. So previously they said the financial sanctions were law enforcement and could not be discussed in the six party talks. Now they are changing their tune. Previously they said there could be no bilateral contacts before the six party talks. Now they are sending signals suggesting bilateral contacts. We are trying to find out whether they are ready for serious discussions without seeking to impose preconditions.”
In the event, the North Koreans accelerated the processing of plutonium and then exploded a nuclear device. After the expression of almost-universal horror and the imposition of further sanctions, including the banning by the UN Security Council of the sale of iPods and caviar to Pyongyang, Kim Gye Gwan's predictions have come to pass.
Mortal ambitions
Joe Conason is no doubt right to point out the importance of pride in the current behaviour of US leaders. But this goes beyond merely not wishing to admit being wrong. Alongside the bloody quagmire of Iraq, the progress of negotiations with North Korea is a sign that the first phase of the neo-conservative plan to use international flashpoints as springboards for the increased projection of US imperial power, has failed.
The US neocons are not alone in their angst. The government of Japan, the USA's key strategic ally in the Eastern hemisphere, is also most unhappy. As the Japan Times reported:
...a senior Foreign Ministry official... expressed concern over what appeared to be conciliatory moves the U.S. has taken recently, saying Washington "is in hurry to press for the process of denuclearization and appears to be pushing things a little prematurely..."
Japan hopes to strengthen cooperation with the U.S. and China. But if the U.S. and other parties accept North Korea's request for more energy and economic aid in return for taking the next steps, Japan "would have no choice but to join in," another Foreign Ministry source said.
Japan has been maintaining a policy of not participating in energy and other aid to North Korea until progress is made on the abduction issue.
Japan, which is the former colonial occupier of Korea and much of China, has in fact gone much further than "not participating in energy and other aid". Since 2003 it has tightened sanctions on trade with North Korea. Japan has also cracked down on the Chochongryun, an organisation of Japanese ethnic Koreans which maintains links with the DPRK.
The furore over the 'abduction issue' - the dispute over fifteen Japanese citizens who were allegedly kidnapped by DPRK intelligence agents during the 1970s and early 1980s- has coincided with other moves in Japan to mobilise nationalistic sentiment. These include tributes by Prime Minister Abe to the Yasukuni Shrine which contains the remains of Japanese war criminals, the issuing of school textbooks which gloss over the horrors of Japan's past colonial activities, and US-backed proposals to amend the country's 'pacifist' constitution to provide for rising arms spending and a more aggressive military posture.
The context of the revival of Japanese imperial pride is complex, both begetted and beset by anxiety. For over sixty years Japan has been, to use the terminology of veteran US strategist Zbigniew Brzezinzki, a vassal state within the US empire. As compensation for having no global foreign policy of its own, and for the use of its territory as the base for the USA's military domination of the region, it received free access to US industrial technology and privileged access to the US consumer market, becoming an industrial superstar as a result. But although it proved its loyalty at the outset of the post-Cold War era by providing $13 billion to the US war effort against Iraq in 1991, its economy was a loser, not a gainer, from the phenomenon of globalisation. Now, no longer the top industrial nation of the Asia-Pacific region, Japan has "no choice but to join in" with the unwelcome strategic choices of its US sponsor. Japan is inextricably hitched to a global superpower whose ambitions are being rebuffed by reality.
Three of the other four states of the Six-Party Talks are clear winners from the progress of the negotiations. In China and Russia, support for the resolution of the Korean nuclear issue is unequivocal; for these countries, that the recent events mark a reining in of unilateral US power is very welcome. For the People's Republic of China in particular, the success of the negotiations is a measure of the country's gently emerging diplomatic strength, an indication of its rise as the regional political- not merely economic- power; further, a vindication of its strategy of making advances while postponing, while it is still technologically backward and militarily weak, direct confrontation with the United States.
Russia's gains include the removal of a key justification for the USA's 'missile defense' programme, and if sanctions and stability permit, it will will gain economically by the construction of a rail link to the DPRK: this would make Russia the best conduit for trade in manufactured goods between Europe and South (and eventually North) Korea.
South Korea (ROK) is poised to become a major beneficiary. Having risen to First World economic status, it is in a very strong position to exploit the skilled, disciplined and low-paid workforce and the rich mineral deposits of the DPRK. The ROK recently applied, and was refused, to be allowed to export manufactured goods made by North Korean workers in the employment of South Korean firms which invest in the DPRK, on the same 'free trade' basis as other ROK-produced products. If the main sanctions against the DPRK can be removed, the combination of the South's technological and financial resources with the North's human and natural resources will be formidable.
For North Korea, it would be too optimistic to suggest that the only way is up. If and when the sanctions regime against it, which has been enforced for sixty years, is eased, the DPRK government will face a challenge which it has never known: the opportunity of attracting large-scale capitalist investment and engaging in the global marketplace without punitive restrictions. China, Vietnam, and to a lesser extent Cuba, have met such challenges, though with difficult social consequences; North Korea's ruling Workers' Party has their negative and positive examples to guide its path. Kim Jong Il, against almost all predictions, has led his country through a long period of appalling economic and political adversity. It is at least possible that he and his colleagues may manage the compromises which lie ahead.
Photo of Kim Gye Gwan is from US State Department website.