Seoul, South Korea
CNN
–
As a statement of intent, it’s as blunt as they get.
North Korea has developed nuclear weapons and will never give them up, their leader, Kim Jong Un, tell the world last month.
The move is “irreversible”; the weapons represent “the dignity, the body and the absolute power of the state” and Pyongyang will continue to develop them “as long as the weapons,” he said. nuclear nuclei still exist on Earth”.
Kim may be no stranger to colorful language, but it’s worth taking his oath – which he signed into law – seriously. Remember this is a dictator who cannot be voted out of power and who usually does what he says he will.
Also keep in mind that North Korea has carried out a record number of missile launches this year – more than 20; claims they are deploying tactical nuclear weapons to field units, which CNN could not independently confirm; and is also said to be ready for the seventh underground nuclear test.
All of this has led more and more experts to question whether now is the time to call a spade and accept that North Korea is in fact a nuclear state. Doing so will cause optimists to give up once and for all – some might say delusional – the hope that Pyongyang’s program is somehow incomplete or that they can be persuaded. to give it up voluntarily.
As Ankit Panda, a Stanton senior fellow in the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, put it: “We simply have to treat North Korea as it is, not as we are. I wish”.
From a purely practical standpoint, North Korea have nuclear weapons, and few people who watch events there strictly oppose that.
A recent Nuclear Handbook column from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists estimated that North Korea may have produced enough fissile material to make between 45 and 55 nuclear weapons. Furthermore, recent missile tests suggest that it has several methods of delivering those weapons.
However, publicly admitting this fact is fraught with danger for countries like the United States.
One of the most compelling reasons for Washington not to do so is fear of sparking a nuclear arms race in Asia.
south KoreaJapan and Taiwan are just a few of the neighbors that might want to match Pyongyang’s status.
But some experts say North Korea’s refusal to acknowledge nuclear power – in the face of growing evidence to the contrary – does not reassure these countries. Instead, the impression that allies are burying their heads in the sand can make them more nervous.
“Let’s accept it,” said Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul. ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) are quite effective.” about North Korea.
Some suggest, a better approach might be to handle North Korea’s nuclear program in a similar way to Israel’s – with tacit acceptance.
That’s the solution favored by Jeffrey Lewis, assistant professor at the James Martin Center for Nuclear Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey.
“I think the important step that (US President Joe) Biden needs to take is to make it clear to both himself and the US government that we are not going to let North Korea disarm and that is basically accepting North Korea. is a nucleus. state. You don’t necessarily have to legally recognize it,” Lewis said.
Both Israel and India provide examples of what the US can expect in dealing with North Korea, he added.
Israel, which is said to have started its nuclear program in the 1960s, has always made vague claims about nuclear while refusing to be a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while India accepts the nuclear ambiguity for decades before abandoning that policy with the 1998 nuclear test.
“In both of those cases, the US knows those countries have bombs, but the deal is, if you don’t talk about it, if you don’t put the problem out of it, if you don’t cause political problems,” he said. . , we will not respond. I think that’s also where we want to go with North Korea,” Lewis said.
For now, however, Washington shows no sign of abandoning its approach in the hope of persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.
Indeed, US Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted this during a recent visit to the DMZ, the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.
“Our common goal – the United States and South Korea – is the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” Harris said.
That may be a worthy goal, but many experts say it’s increasingly unrealistic.
“Nobody agrees that denuclearization will be a very desirable outcome on the Korean Peninsula, it is simply an unpredictable outcome,” Panda said.
One issue on the road to denuclearization is that Kim’s biggest priority is ensuring his regime’s survival.
And if he wasn’t paranoid enough, Russia Invades Ukraine (in which a nuclear power attacked a non-nuclear power) would be timely reinforcement of his belief that “nuclear weapons are the only reliable security,” Lankov said. , from Kookmin University said.
In other words, trying to convince Mr Kim is unlikely to be the start, as Pyongyang has made it clear that it will not even consider dealing with the US administration that wants to talk about denuclearization.
“If the US wants to talk about denuclearization, (North Korea) won’t talk and if the Americans don’t talk, (North Korea) will launch more and more missiles and better and better missiles,” Lankov said. “It was a simple choice.”
There is also the problem that if North Korea’s increasingly concerned neighbors conclude Washington’s approach is going nowhere, this in itself could lead to the arms race the United States so desperately wants. avoid.
Cheong Seong-chang, a senior research fellow at the Sejong Institute, a North Korean think tank, is among a growing number of conservative voices calling for South Korea to build its own nuclear weapons program to against Pyongyang.
Efforts to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, he said, “have ended in failure,” and even now, pursuing denuclearization is like pursuing a miracle.”
However far-fetched the dream of denuclearization may seem, there are still those who say the alternative – accepting North Korea’s nuclear status, however subtle – would be a mistake.
“We (will be) basically (to) Kim Jong Un, after all this tug and fro, (that) you will get what you want. The bigger question (then) is of course: where does that leave the whole area? Soo Kim, a former CIA officer, now a researcher at the US think tank RAND Corporation, said.
That leaves another option for the Biden administration and its allies, though it’s an option that seems unlikely under current conditions.
They could pursue a deal in which Pyongyang offers to freeze its weapons development in return for sanctions.
In other words, not a million miles from the deal Kim then President of the United States made Donald Trump at their summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February 2019.
This option has its advocates. “Freeze is a really solid way to start things off. It’s very difficult to eliminate existential weapons, but what is possible… is to prevent things from getting worse. It will ease some of the pressure and open up space for other types of negotiations, said Lewis from the James Martin Center.
However, the preponderance of the Trump era may make this not the beginning. Asked if he thought President Biden might consider this tactic, Lewis laughed and said, “I’m a professor, so I specialize in giving advice that no one else can.”
But even if the Biden administration were so inclined, that ship may have set sail; Kim of 2019 is much more willing to participate than Kim of 2022.
And that, perhaps, is the biggest problem at the heart of all the options on the table: they rely on some form of engagement with North Korea – something that is completely lacking at the moment.
Kim is currently focused on a five-year military modernization plan announced in January 2021 and has not yet made an offer of negotiation from the Biden administration or others.
As Panda admits, “There is a range of cooperation options that require the North Koreans to be willing to sit down at the table and talk about some of that with us. I don’t think we’re even close to sitting down with North Korea. ”
And, to be fair to Kim, caution is not everything for Pyongyang.
“Major policy changes in the US will require the support of the President, and I really don’t see any evidence that Joe Biden really sees the North Korea issue as a great source of political capital,” Panda said. ,” said Panda.
He added what many experts believe – and what even some US and South Korean lawmakers admit behind closed doors: “We’re going to have to live with an armed North Korea. nuclear at least for the next few decades.”
