[USFK Forums] Why N. Korea will not give up the bomb [IHT]

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Friday, January 6, 2006

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Why North Korea will not give up the bomb

Bennett Ramberg, International Herald Tribune

FRIDAY, JANUARY 6, 2006

LOS ANGELES As 2005 came to an end, vitriol had replaced negotiation in efforts to hold the North Korean government to its September nuclear disarmament agreement. Recent name-calling reflects historic jockeying by both sides. But beyond the rhetoric there remains a deeper reality. For Kim Jong Il, nuclear weapons and regime survival are synonymous.

So what are the chances that Washington and its allies will overcome this mindset in 2006? Two precedents provide answers. In 1991, South Africa abandoned its nuclear undertaking and in 2003, Libya followed suit. The atomic histories of each have much to tell about the prospects for North Korea. Unfortunately, both suggest that Pyongyang will continue to pose a nuclear headache throughout the year and beyond.

Under the veneer of a peaceful nuclear explosives program to dig harbors and oil storage cavities, South Africa manufactured six atomic bombs. The motivations included international isolation fed by apartheid and the belief that such weapons would deter a growing Soviet and Cuban threat along South Africa's borders. The effort benefited from the country's indigenous uranium resources, a talented scientific establishment and the dedication of President P.W. Botha.

Libya never acquired nuclear weapons but spent decades trying. Its leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, sought to buy a weapon from China, enrichment equipment from France, reactors from the United States, a nuclear-armed submarine from the Soviet Union, and to annex uranium-laden land from Chad.

Tripoli had some success in the 1990s when the smuggling network of the Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan provided the rudiments of a nuclear centrifuge program and weapons designs, which added to Libya's other black-market catches.

What moved South Africa and Libya to reverse course? In South Africa, the withdrawal of Soviet and Cuban forces lifted the bomb's raison d'être. Botha's successor, F.W. de Klerk, viewed its elimination as one of the acts required to end South Africa's international isolation.

For Libya, international isolation after the 1988 Lockerbie bombing posed an increasing economic and strategic burden. Oil revenue plummeted, leaving the economy in disarray. Libya, which had been a promoter of terrorism, now found itself a target of the new breed of Islamic terrorist, which international assistance could help suppress. Then there was the threat of a pre-emptive American strike, coupled with events in Iraq. Nuclear termination provided the lure to get the West to deal.

The roots of North Korea's nuclear program go deeper. Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions were stirred during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. After North Korea received a Soviet research reactor in 1960, indigenous talent generated additional plants. With the fall of the Soviet Union, nuclear ardor grew as the North found itself adrift.

For Kim Jong Il, nuclear weapons provide a way to preserve his fiefdom.[color=DarkRed] They generate international tension that justifies the garrison state. They compensate for conventional military weaknesses, providing a hedge against perceived U.S. military designs. They furnish leverage to extract international humanitarian assistance and economic investment from a nervous Seoul.

So it should come as no surprise that Pyongyang followed September's agreement with a demand for an American nuclear power plant that could take a decade to build. Such expressions are designed to drag out diplomacy into the indefinite future.

Unlike Libya and South Africa, North Korea has not arrived at the condition necessary for abandoning its nuclear ways: a willingness to reduce its self-imposed political isolation. Rather, it continues to view isolation as the key to regime preservation.

As a result, a nuclear-armed North Korea will remain part of the international landscape for the foreseeable future. Two grave challenges follow: preventing North Korea from initiating nuclear war because of fears of pre-emption; and stemming nuclear exports to terrorists or rogue states. With nuclear disarmament a chimera, the six-party talks would do well to focus on reducing these risks instead.

(Bennett Ramberg served in the State Department in the administration of President George H.W. Bush. )