February 13, 2007

The North Korean Nuclear Deal

Today we discover that a tentative deal has been reached with the DPRK regarding it's nuclear weapons program

In a landmark international accord, North Korea promised Tuesday to close down and seal its main nuclear reactor within 60 days in return for 50,000 tons of fuel oil as a first step in abandoning all nuclear weapons and research programs.

North Korea also reaffirmed a commitment to disable the reactor in an undefined next phase of denuclearization and to discuss with the United States and other nations its plutonium fuel reserves and other nuclear programs that "would be abandoned" as part of the process. In return for taking those further steps, the accord said, North Korea would receive additional "economic, energy and humanitarian assistance up to the equivalent of 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil."

Yeah right. On the one hand I fully expect the Koreans to cheat on the deal at the earliest opportunity. On the other, of all the threats we face right now this one is the least amenable to a solution.

As for the agreement itself, if you want the gory details you can find them on the Washington Post's website here.

Here's what I think is going to happen:

One fine day we're going to wake up and North Korea will be in chaos. It will come out of the blue, totally unexpected.

Totalitarian governments are at once very strong and very weak. They're strong in the ways we're all familiar with; total control of socitey. But at the same time they're very brittle. One day it seemed like the Soviet Union would be forever, and in a short time the entire Empire had collapsed. Romania, for example, was totally under the control of Nicolae Ceausescu. Then one day we heard of fighting in the streets and rumors that he and his wife were on the run. The next we learn that they'd both been shot by their own army. The whole thing was triggered by the government's attempt to evict a popular pastor from his apartment. Who could have imagined?

I think the same thing is going to happen with North Korea. Some small event, the type you can never forsee, is going to snowball into something massive.

The question is whether the end will be relatively peaceful or terribly violent. No one in Eastern Europe had nuclear weapons, the Soviets having removed theirs before they evacuated.

Kim Jong il may be tempted to go down in a blaze of glory. He might not have a deliverable weapon for some time, but all he has to do is put one close to the border and light it off and lots of people are going to die.

But they don't even have to do that. Over half of the North Korean army is stationed within 90 miles of the border with the south (GlobalSecurity analysis here). The South Korean capital, Seoul, is almost right on the border itself, and the North has spent fifty years hiding artillery and rockets in the mountains just north of the city. The North could do great damage in a short period of time.

None of this is to say that it is a waste of time to negotiate with North Korea. Far from it. This agreement does stand a chance, but only if China puts pressure on the North to impliment it. They might not, in that I believe China is using the Korean crisis to distract us from their main goal, which is to take back Taiwan. But we shall see.

The real test, I think, will be how we handle the collapse of the North. It might be an unwinnable situation, and we need to recognize that even if we do everything "right", the situation might still get out of control. And it isn't going to be any easier whether the person in the White House is Republican or Democrat.

Posted by Tom at 9:08 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack