Speak about “regime change” among foreign policy experts and you’ll quickly feel as if you cursed the Virgin Mary. From covert operations in Iran (1953) and Chile (1973) to overt military actions in Panama (1989) and Iraq (2003), regime change has had a decidedly mixed record. Nevertheless, regime change is now the only practical option remaining to solve the security threat posed by North Korea.
For those who raise objections, consider the record.
Diplomacy has gotten us nowhere The US, the UN, and other interested powers were in bilateral or multilateral negotiations with North Korea from 1994-2009, aimed at trading North Korea’s nuclear weapons program for trade and aid. The result? North Korea as a nuclear weapons state.
The Clinton administration believed it had resolved the nuclear issue with a framework in 1994, which froze North Korean plutonium production, provided for the removal of nuclear fuel to a third country, and put in place an agreement to replace the fuel-producing North Korean reactor for two light-water reactors incapable of producing weapons-grade plutonium.
That fell apart in 2002 when the North Koreans admitted to a parallel, clandestine nuclear program, and kicked IAEA inspectors out of the country. In 2003, Pyongyang confirmed that they had nuclear weapons and withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The global communities reaction? More talks.
The Six Power talks (US, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia) ran from 2003-2009, premised on the same core principles; 1) a no-attack pledge by the United States, 2) normalized economic and diplomatic relations, 3) verifiable and irreversible nuclear disarmament by North Korea. Failure was almost guaranteed from the start. The Six Powers required a phased and reciprocal implantation plan, with sanctions and normalization predicated on tangible and verifiable North Korean actions to eliminate their nuclear program.
For their part, the North Koreans demanded that full normalization take place before any changes were made to their nuclear program. A not insignificant divide.
Amazingly, these multilateral negotiations continued despite the fact that North Korea tested its first nuclear weapon in 2006. North Korea ultimately withdrew from what was a fruitless process after the UN Security Council unanimously condemned North Korea’s (failed) launch of a satellite and promised sanctions. A second nuclear test was conducted a month later. Two other test detonations were conducted in 2013 and 2016, as Pyongyang continued a rigorous schedule of increasingly advanced missile tests.
As much as sanctions have been a part of the North Korean discussion, the fact is that sanctions have been as ineffective in changing North Korean behavior as the inducements offered in negotiations. In truth, if the global community cannot create sanctions pressure that is at least as grave to North Korea as the economic shock from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, there is no sanctions regime that will be credible.
But aside from the tortured history of North Korea’s emergence as a nuclear power, the question remains; “why”? Why would the North Koreans endure the hardship of sanctions and international isolation, all in a single-minded pursuit of a credible nuclear weapons capability, a course which leaves its people destitute and starving?
That rationale begins with an immutable fact; nothing matters more to Pyongyang that regime survival. Not simply the North Korean government per se, in the way that the US has extensive succession planning in the event of a decapitation strike on America, but specifically the Kims and the ruling elite that gives them total control over the country. Nothing matters more.
Then, there is the cold North Korean calculus on contemporary global power, and the conclusions that have been drawn to ensure the Kims survival.
While the West tends to see non-proliferation in black and white, the actual record is much more grey. The Israelis have never paid a penalty for their nuclear program. Both India and Pakistan came under sanction after successfully testing nuclear weapons in the late 1990s, but 9-11 and the rise of China, made eventual normalization in relations with these countries a real-politik necessity. In fact, in 2005, the US and India signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement, which, ironically, had the US helping the Indian nuclear industry.
It is not hard to look at these examples and see that acceptance of nuclear weapons status can eventually be on the table.
And then there are fates of those countries with nuclear programs in development, but without the capability. Iraq is a prime example; including the Osirak raid by the Israelis in 1981, the US target list of Iraqi facilities in 1991 and the eventual US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which ended Saddam’s rule. In Libya, Gaddafi watched the Iraq invasion in horror and voluntarily gave up his WMD to maintain control through normalization of relations.
The North Koreans saw how that worked out.
The Western example in Iran is also informative to the North Koreans.
Despite considerable bluster about taking out Iranian nuclear facilities militarily, neither the Bush nor Obama administrations were willing to risk the fallout (and the certain asymmetrical reprisal) of an attack on Iran. In addition to the uncertainties of a potential, spiraling regional war, Iran, with 4x the land mass and double the population of Iraq, would not be an easy military target for regime change. The Iranians also had powerful international backers in Russia and China.
The flawed Iran nuclear agreement was ultimately a “kick the can down the road” exercise, which was the best the Obama administration believed it could achieve to reconcile the unacceptable, binary choice of an immediate Iranian nuclear capability or war.
The North Koreans today are not in a dissimilar position. Their conventional military may be outdated, but it is massive and can still cause destruction and death on a scale not seen since WWII.
In addition the North Koreans are estimated to have over 5,000 metric tons of chemical weapons, including the deadly VX nerve agent. With their proven short and intermediate missiles, these chemical agents could cause calamity not simply in South Korea, but also in Japan. Top those missiles with North Korea’s existing nuclear arsenal and you would have multiple Hiroshima’s in South Korea and Japan as well, a horrifying prospect that even the most careful military planning cannot completely eliminate.
Thus, any attempt by the US to attack North Korean nuclear weapons facilities unilaterally risks an asymmetrical response that could trigger a regional war and catastrophic casualties. And as with Iran, Pyongyang has the Chinese and Russians in their corner, at least notionally. That should provide sufficient diplomatic cover for the time North Korea needs to perfect a nuclear-armed, ICBM capability.
For the Kims, nuclear weapons – and a credible means of delivering them to the United States – is the only real protection against regime change. And it is only on those terms that North Korea will ultimately bargain about normalization of relations – with a nuclear “deterrent” in place. The divide between that view, and the view of the international community, is unbridgeable.
But Pyongyang’s chosen path does not occur in a vacuum and it does not come without consequences
North Korea today is not unlike late 19th and early 20th century Germany, where Germans could only be secure when all those around them were insecure. While North Korea with nuclear armed ICBMs brings a measure of security to the Kims, it destabilizes the region. If Kim Jong-un continues his missile and nuclear tests without meaningful constraints, other powers in the region will need to reassess their security requirements in an altered dynamic.
South Korea, and more importantly, Japan – the only nation to ever have sustained nuclear attacks – will have to make security decisions of their own, including the sufficiency and credibility of the US nuclear guarantee, and ultimately whether to create and deploy nuclear arsenals of their own.
As a practical matter, Japan could become the third largest nuclear power with the plutonium it has on hand, while the South Koreans could more than match the North Korean arsenal. It is not a matter of nuclear material or know how, it is a political decision.
It is this dynamic that provides essence of leverage for the last, practical option to remove the North Korean nuclear threat.
In the old, bi-polar world, North Korea was a useful chess piece in the global Soviet-American competition. For China, North Korea was a territorial insurance policy to secure their border and keep the capitalists away with a heavily armed buffer state. While 33,000 Americans died in the Korean War, 180,000 ChiCom troops were killed in what Mao saw as an effort to preserve border and his revolution.
But far from walking in lock-step with China after the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea has pursued its own agenda, often at cross purposes with China.
While the basic necessity of a Korean buffer state remains real, particularly given the spectacular growth of South Korea, the North Koreans are increasingly an irritant to China through reckless policies that destabilize the region, without any meaningful benefit to Chinese strategic interests. It is an economic “failed state” that exists almost solely on the charity of Beijing to keep it afloat; an ungrateful failed state that resents its dependence on Beijing as much as it needs it.
From the Chinese perspective, there appear to be few good options.
Negotiations only provide breathing space for greater Kim provocations, while sanctions appear to have little impact. While Chinese trade/aid are often cited as the reason for the overall failure of sanctions, a complete Chinese boycott of North Korea could collapse the Kim regime armed with nuclear weapons that could be pointed at Pyongyang’s previous benefactor.
At a minimum a collapse in North Korea could lead to a refugee crisis on China’s border, with hundreds of thousands of North Koreans trying to escape. In addition, any collapse in Pyongyang would be an invitation for South Korean intervention to provide humanitarian relief and restore order, all with the goal of rapidly uniting the peninsula under Seoul’s leadership. 60 years of Chinese diplomacy has been focused on preventing a united Korea allied with the US.
Beijing simply cannot allow that, so the economic pressure remains tailored, despite the demands of the United States.
But failure to resolve the North Korean situation catalyzes a far more ominous threat to China; South Korea and Japan with an independent nuclear weapons capability. Aside from the deep, historical animosity between the three countries, such a turn would fundamentally shatter the foundation of China’s growing power in Asia since 1978, and deeply complicate its strategic calculations, significantly heightening tensions in Northeast Asia, just as China is making it’s play in the South China Sea.
Ultimately, North Korea is not worth it.
To pursue its regional agenda, Beijing needs is a non-nuclear, “normal” North Korea that does not provoke the US, Japan and South Korea, but is otherwise accountable to China.
Regime change provides the solution. And China is the only nation that has the ties and knowledge to make it possible, though there would be significant predicates to action.
China would need assurance that should North Korea give up its nuclear program and allow intrusive inspections, that South Korea and Japan would forswear development and deployment of nuclear weapons. In addition, the US, UN, Japan, and particularly South Korea, would need to provide assurance that a change in leadership in Pyongyang would not be a catalyst for reunification and democracy building. That the US would agree to restore full diplomatic, trade and financial ties with a de-nuclearized North Korea, and promise, as in the case of Cuba in 1962, never to attack.
If a new leadership in North Korea were reoriented away from militarism and autarky, the road would be open to elimination of North Korea’s chemical and biological weapons stockpiles, and significant reductions in its conventional military capability.
Ultimately the fate of Korea should be up to Koreans. A change in leadership in Pyongyang could open the door to that process. The US would need to be willing to withdraw its forces in Korea to provide the Chinese with the proper incentive to allow an eventual unification of Korea under Seoul’s leadership.
But all of that is hypothetical and down the road. Right now, the situation is getting tense and will grow more so as the Kims continue their single-minded pursuit of strategic nuclear weapons. Talks and sanctions have not worked. An attack is too dangerous and uncertain. It is time to put all the options on the table.