North Korea’s long, subtle game

By announcing he has nuclear weapons and withdrawing from disarmament talks, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is playing out a long, subtle game. Probably not a wise one, says Aidan Foster-Carter, adding that it’s not the end of the world - not today, at least. What counts now is how others react, particularly Beijing and Washington.

Oops. What a difference a few hours make. I say this without schadenfreude, having been similarly caught out myself. Days earlier, I wrote a piece criticizing the six-way talks on North Korea’s nuclear issue as "Five caveats and a long shot". You read it here in the February 11 edition- swiftly reworked to take account of the analyst’s lifeblood and nightmare: what former British prime minister Harold Macmillan blearily called "events, dear boy, events".

So what did happen on Thursday? Pyongyang’s official Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) put out a statement by North Korea’s Foreign Ministry. The main point was a refusal to return to the six-way talks, because the United States under President George W Bush was still hostile and plotting for regime change. So, Pyongyang warned, "we ... have manufactured nukes ... to cope with the Bush administration’s evermore undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the DPRK" (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea).

It was the nukes that most comment picked up. But is this really the main news, or indeed news at all? True, this is the North Koreans’ most explicit claim yet. But the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reckons North Korea may have had one or two nuclear devices for a decade or so. For its part, after years of indignant denial, for two years Pyongyang has boasted of developing a nuclear deterrent; though no one knows how far they’ve gotten, or even whether it might all be a big bluff (better not bet on it).

But they do still deny having a second program, using highly enriched uranium (HEU). It was this charge, put in Pyongyang by a US delegation in October 2002, that triggered the ongoing second North Korean nuclear crisis. The DPRK kicked out International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and resumed reprocessing plutonium.

It’s strange how hard the United States has found it, then and since, to make the HEU claim stick. You’d think Pakistan’s Dr Abdul Qadir Khan, purveyor extraordinaire of nuclear materiel, would have sung like a canary by now: naming places, dates, and batch numbers. Maybe he has.

One theory why Pyongyang has picked this moment to take its bat home is that a White House emissary, Michael Green - the new National Security Council senior director for Asia - has just been touring Beijing and other skeptical Asian capitals; supposedly with proof that a uranium compound, UF6, found in Libya came from North Korea. UF6 is a strong indication of an HEU program, while any hints of proliferation must be a red line.

Well, maybe. But I reckon other factors are in play, including domestic ones. An earlier shock, the big missile fired across Japan in August 1998 - and at least this time we’ve not seen an actual nuclear test, just a boast - was the DPRK’s 50th-birthday present to itself.

Look at the timing now, too. Such fun to catch South Korea and China off guard, as the Year of the Rooster kicked in. North Korea’s equivalent holiday comes next week: Kim Jong-il’s 63rd (or maybe 64th) birthday on February 16. Also due is the 10th anniversary of Kim’s Songun (army-first) policy, the Dear Leader’s very own doctrinal contribution.

What better way to celebrate than to affirm proudly, "We got nukes, and we ain’t talking"? Moreover, as in Iran, the nuclear umbrella may be one under which factions divided over other issues, such as economic reform, can huddle together. Kim Jong-il’s purging last year of his brother-in-law Chang Song-taek is one sign that the veneer of unity is cracking. Or the new hard line could mean, as some aver, that the Dear Leader is in thrall to hardline generals who won’t let him do a Libya, make peace, disarm, and collect loads of dough.

But whatever the motives, it takes two to tangle. As ever, whether or not North Korea’s latest provocation sparks a crisis depends on how others react. So far, this has been calm.

Quite contrary to the way Pyongyang purports to read Washington (and you do wonder if denizens of one system could possibly understand the other), both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sounded more sad and skeptical (respectively) than angry. After all, the US is busy for the duration in the Middle East. It really does not want a crisis in Korea as well. Which, of course, makes this an excellent time for Kim to rattle the cage.

But it is the responses (not just the immediate ones) of others that will be crucial to track. South Korea, for one, must surely rethink a "Sunshine Policy" so one-sided that it continues to give aid, no matter what the North does, without demanding any form of reciprocity. Indeed, the rethink had already begun. Recently Pyongyang asked for 500,000 tonnes of fertilizer, even more than usual. South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young’s encouragingly robust response was that this would be top of the agenda - just as soon as North Korea returned to the various inter-Korean committees that it has been boycotting since last July.

But the real challenge is to China. Having invested much time and face in creating and hosting the six-party talks, Beijing must be furious at Pyongyang’s insolent truancy. As North Korea’s main partner for trade and aid, China alone has the muscle to squeeze Kim Jong-il - should it so choose. The Dear Leader should be more careful of whom he riles.

For both China and Russia (the latter quick to deplore the official KCNA statement, for once), one dilemma is how to vote - or veto - if the North Korea problem is sent to the United Nations Security Council, as the IAEA long since voted that it should be. Neither Beijing nor Moscow wants to burn its boats with Pyongyang, even as it sorely tries their patience.

Japan is a case on its own, with the kidnap issue driving everything. KCNA’s statement, which mainly was aimed at the US, also asked rhetorically how North Korea could sit down with a state that denies that victims’ remains that it returned are authentic. But DNA does not lie - so what on earth was Pyongyang playing at? Even the sober Economist speculated that one of Kim’s foes may have swapped bones, just to spite him.

Here’s a rash prediction. Thursday’s shock headlines will fade as swiftly as, less than a month ago, the brief hurrahs for an outbreak of peace and love in Pyongyang. Then, just after two US congressional delegations had visited, KCNA said North Korea was ready to treat the US as a friend. We really should know by now to avoid knee-jerk reactions: be it to crack open the bubbly, or run for cover. Kim Jong-il is playing a long, subtle game. Whether it’s a wise one, I doubt. But the end of the world it ain’t. Not for today, at least.