U.S.-China competition over nuclear North Korea.

• Author: Kim, Samuel S.
• Position: ARTICLE

ABSTRACT The often-used description in the American mainstream media and geopolitical literature of "North Korea's nuclear aggression" is misleading. I argue in the first section that Pyongyang's nuclear strategy has been significantly shaped by the perceived U.S. nuclear existential threat since the early 1950s, portending a quest for a self-reliant nuclear deterrent for the DPRK. The shifting role and impact of U.S.-China competition in the course of the first and second U.S.-DPRK nuclear standoffs is explored as background for examining, in the second section, an intensified nuclear confrontation in the first half of 2017. The concluding section considers common-security engagement in charting an alternative pathway toward establishing a working peace system on the Korean peninsula.

Introduction

The latest flare up of U.S.-DPRK (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) nuclear confrontation in mid-April 2017 is a sobering reminder that the Korean Peninsula remains the last stronghold of the Cold War. Even today, almost six and a half decades after the Korean War "ended" with an armistice accord, the Korean DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) stands out as the most heavily fortified conflict zone in the post--Cold War world. Indeed, the DMZ has acquired such security-deficit monikers as "the fuse on the nuclear powder keg in Northeast Asia," "the scariest place on earth," and "the last glacier of Cold War confrontation."

With the Korean peninsula as its kinetic center, Northeast Asia (NEA) is the only international region or sub-region where the world's four great powers (China, Russia, Japan, and the United States) uneasily meet and interact, and where their respective interests coalesce, compete, or clash. The world's heaviest concentration of military and economic capabilities is in NEA: (1) the world's three largest nuclear states (the United States, Russia, and China), one small nuclear state (North Korea), and three threshold nuclear states (Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan); (2) five of the world's top ten military budgets (U.S., China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea); (3) the world's three largest economies (U.S., China, and Japan); and (4) three of the UN Security Council's five permanent members (U.S., China, and Russia).

From the perspective of U.S.-China competition, Washington still maintains its Cold War network of bilateral alliances while Beijing has an impaired alliance with North Korea, often regarded as "an alliance in name only." This signifies the greatest strategic change on the Korean peninsula in the post-Cold War era, giving rise to an asymmetrical nuclear confrontation between more powerful and less powerful state actors. (1)

And yet beneath the surface is Washington's nuclear hypocrisy of "Do as I say, Not as I Do." While virtually all of the non-nuclear member states of the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) regime have followed their treaty obligations, the five original nuclear weapon states--the five permanent members of the Security Council, or First Nuclear World (FNW)--have reneged on their solemn treaty obligations "to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control" (Article VI of the NPT Treaty). In addition, the lack of any international action--let alone outrage--against Israel, India, and Pakistan (all of which possess nuclear weapons programs operating outside the NPT) speaks volumes about double standards in the global politics of nuclear proliferation. In the wake of 9/11, the international NPT regime seems willing to punish those countries with whom the U.S. is not on good terms (Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Iran, Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, North Korea), while quietly acquiescing to proliferation by those countries it considers friendly (Israel, India, Pakistan).

It is also worth noting in this connection American nuclear exceptionalism: the U.S. was (1) the first country to test and the first to drop atomic bombs (Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945); (2) the only state that introduced tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea (1958); and (3) the only state with 180 nuclear weapons deployed at six NATO bases. In June 2016, the largest NATO war games in decades were conducted in Poland, weeks after activation of a U.S. missile defense system in Romania, and the ground-breaking of another in Poland.

The Past as Prologue

In contrast to much mainstream geopolitical literature that blindsides history, this article applies a longer, wider historical and geopolitical perspective to explore the what, why, and how of North Korea's nuclear strategy as it evolved and mutated through mutually interactive and interdependent domestic politics in Pyongyang and Washington. (2)

Indeed, Pyongyang's nuclear strategy has been significantly shaped by the perceived American nuclear existential threat since the early 1950s, portending a quest for a self-reliant nuclear deterrent for the DPRK. "While in Washington the North Korean nuclear threat has been a major issue for the past decade," Gavan McCormack reminded us in 2004, "in Pyongyang the U.S. nuclear threat has been the issue for the past fifty years. North Korea's uniqueness in the nuclear age lies first of all in the way it has faced and lived under the shadow of nuclear threat for longer than any other nation." (3)

The origins of the American nuclear threat to the DPRK can be traced back to the Korean War, which was waged under the shadow of U.S. nuclear weapons. While the United States stopped short of using nuclear weapons, American national security managers "entertained using nuclear weapons in Asia under the Massive Retaliation doctrine on at least four occasions: during the Korean War, in 1984 at Dien Bien Phu, in 1955 in the first Taiwan Straits crisis, and again in 1958 during the second Taiwan Straits crisis." (4)

In January 1958, just four and a half years after the Armistice Agreement of 1953, the United States introduced tactical nuclear weapons onto the Korean Peninsula, in blatant breach of the Armistice Agreement that prohibited the introduction of qualitatively new weapon systems, and thereafter it continued to upgrade its nuclear stockpile near the DMZ and at Osan Air Base. Moreover, the non-nuclear DPRK remained the

target of periodic nuclear threats and "extended deterrence" from the United States in the following decades. By the mid-1960s, the U.S. nuclear strategy centered on the use of nuclear weapons very early in any new war. Tactical nuclear weapons virtually required early first use to prevent their capture by North Koreans. The so-called "AirLand Battle" strategy developed in the mid-1970s added an element of preemption, calling for quick, deep strikes into North Korean territory and against underground facilities. The withdrawal of tactical and battlefield nuclear weapons on a worldwide basis in late 1991 did little to diminish the threat as perceived by Pyongyang, since Washington openly continued its rehearsals for a long-range nuclear strike on North Korea." (5)

In the years immediately following the Korean War, North Korea built enormous underground tunnels and facilities in mountain redoubts, from troop and material depots to munitions factories, and even subterranean warplane hangars. North Korea is said to have some 15,000 underground facilities of a security nature. North Korean military forces both expanded and redeployed in the late 1970s as a response to the AirLand Battle doctrine.

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A sense of Soviet betrayal and abandonment fears gave further impetus to the DPRK's nuclear deterrent development. When the Kremlin announced in 1990 that it would normalize relations with Seoul, the DPRK stated that this would mean an end to the DPRK-USSR alliance and that Pyongyang would have "no other choice but to take measures to provide for ourselves some weapons for which we have so far relied on the alliance." (6)

In the 1990s and since, Pyongyang's nuclear card has consistently been a very potent and fungible instrument for negotiating regime security-cum-survival. In 1993 and 1994, the North Korean nuclear issue emerged for the United States as the single greatest "crisis." After a year of back and forth actions and reactions, including the suspension of withdrawal from the NPT, alleged tampering with IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) seals, a newly announced intention to leave the IAEA, and attempts by the UN Security Council to impose sanctions, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter went to Pyongyang where he received Kim Il Sung's personal pledge to freeze and eventually dismantle North Korea's nuclear program. This catalyzed the revival of U.S.-DPRK negotiations at a time when the United States was veering dangerously toward military action against North Korea. The Clinton administration...