POV: Weighing Our Options for Dealing with North Korea
Diplomacy, not brinkmanship, is the answer
North Korea has proven that even “a tinpot dictator” like Kim Jong-un can guide an extremely poor country into nuclear weapons possession. While some analysts argue that additional sanctions—more targeted and thus presumably more effective—constitute the ultimate solution for the North Korean situation, doubts remain about their effectiveness.
Since North Korea is neither a democracy nor a state integrated into the global economy, sanctions have so far failed to hurt. Any military option carries the real possibility of becoming a nuclear war that would involve not just the North Korean and US capitals of Pyongyang and Washington, but also American allies—Japan and South Korea—and adversaries—Russia and China. High-pitched threats and efforts to caricature Kim Jong-un, such as President Trump dubbing him the “Rocket Man,” can only cause further damage to any possibility of finding a diplomatic solution.
This brings to the fore a key predicament regarding the North Korean crisis. What is meant by a solution and what are our policy options? Is it learning to live with North Korean nuclear arms? The United States has been doing this quite well since the first North Korean test in 2006. Is it learning to tolerate North Korean missile tests? This is a tough one since the tests have effectively proven North Korea’s ability to target US territory. Is it denuclearization, i.e., forcing Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons? This option is not possible without a regime change, which in turn is not possible without US military action, and such action might draw multiple countries in the region into a nuclear war.
What are the risks posed by North Korea and its nuclear weapons? Pyongyang has the long-term goal of uniting the two Koreas—split as an outcome of the Korean War, which saw North Korea lose a million or more lives. The North Korean regime has also vowed the destruction of the United States, which makes it hard to ignore, especially given its rapid progress in missile development and its indigenous capability of producing UDMH rocket fuel. However, the “Korean Missile Crisis” does not stop there.
The current situation has the potential to easily become part of a larger “rogue state nuclear crisis,” with Pyongyang becoming a major illicit supplier of technologies and materials related to weapons of mass destruction and missile technologies. It already has a history of providing nuclear reactor technologies and chemical weapons to the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad—a regime that is believed to have conducted a sarin attack against its own civilians this past April. Last month, Israel reportedly attacked a Syrian chemical weapons production site, which allegedly benefits from North Korean involvement. Israel had earlier attacked and destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor at Deir ez-Zor, which was also built with North Korean assistance in 2007.
As uncertainty continues over the Trump administration’s recertification of the Iran nuclear deal, North Korea’s close ties with Iran on ballistic missile development are reason for additional concern. The two countries have had a history of missile cooperation since the 1990s and are now believed to be cooperating on submarine-launched cruise missiles. Moreover, North Korea is allegedly becoming Iran’s chief source of military technologies, thus raising concerns of a Pyongyang-Tehran military/nuclear nexus opposed to US interests and those of its allies. Such a possibility is not unlikely. If Libya taught leaders with proliferation motives that giving up nukes is a bad idea, the North Korean case might show how the rogues can strike back.
This is why brinkmanship, showmanship, and deliberate ambiguity, as pursued by the current US administration, will not alleviate the crisis. It is a complex, multilayered, multiplayer game that can be contained over time only through multilateral and bilateral diplomacy, because what is at stake is the immediate possibility of a nuclear war on the one hand, and the long-term possibility of a proliferation supply chain expanding to Iran, Syria, and elsewhere, on the other. A concerted US strategy is needed, one that will allow us to work in concert with our European and Asian allies to address the crisis.
Jayita Sarkar, a Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies assistant professor of international relations, can be reached at jsarkar@bu.edu.
“POV” is an opinion page that provides timely commentaries from students, faculty, and staff on a variety of issues: on-campus, local, state, national, or international. Anyone interested in submitting a piece, which should be about 700 words long, should contact Rich Barlow at barlowr@bu.edu. BU Today reserves the right to reject or edit submissions. The views expressed are solely those of the author and are not intended to represent the views of Boston University.
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