Yesterday the New York Timesreported that the Obama administration had judged that there was a high likelihood that the North Korean freighter, Kang Nam, was probably just leading the US on a wild goose chase. In other words, that the rusty ship probably had no illicit cargo onboard, and was hoping that it could draw the US or one of America’s allies into the embarrasing position of searching the boat only to find no booty. (See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/world/asia/01sanger.html?hp)

The US Navy has been tracking and monitoring the ship’s movements since it left North Korean waters, and it had earlier been speculated that the ship might contain a small arms shipment for Burma. The question has been whether UN Security Council Resolution 1874 that encourages states to board and search North Korean vessels suspected of violating the arms export embargo would be put to the test. The DPRK had said it would consider such a search a violation of its sovereignty, and an act of war.  (See: http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2009/sc9679.doc.htm)

The latest news seems to be that the Kang Nam has turned around, and, for the moment, is headed back in the direction of North Korea. (See: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-tc-nw-briefs-0630-07014jul01,0,3444662.story)

There has been speculation about the rationale for making such a jaunt, but it seems to be a quite beneficial test for the DPRK. I think the little vessel’s voyage is disconcerting. If North Korea wants to ship missiles in order to earn some funds, one of the few ways it is able to, then it would not send those missiles out on the first voyage. Rather, conducting a test is a win – win for the Kim’s. If they don’t get searched, they gain confidence that they won’t be searched in the future – as long as the level of intelligence remains the same. If they had been boarded, they would have also made it hard for the US to repeat the venture in the future without a much higher standard of intelligence. It is true that they would have had to deal with the fact that they had said such a search would be an act of war, but since the Korean War is not legally over, the Kim’s could worm their way out of that threat at low-cost manner.  The question of the day is what happens if the next time the Kang Nam goes out (or the third time or the sixth time) it does have missiles on it. We can’t count on having better information, so at best there is the lucky guess possibility. For those who want to dismiss the Kim dynasty leaders as irrational and incompetent (and I, myself, have certainly had trouble accounting for some behaviors with motives other than childishness or narcissism), consider the masterstroke of this gambit.

No one is more aware of the impermanence of power than old revolutionaries. Individuals who helped topple a government know that angry young men and women, spitting images  of themselves in their former glory, have a vast capacity to turn energy and passion into the death knell of an ineffective, corrupt, or abusive regime.

One approach to ensuring longevity and stability of a new government, as codified in the documents of America’s Founding Fathers,  is to accept the power of people to determine their own governance through democratic elections, rule of law, and limitations on the length and number of terms that office holders can serve. Another approach is to rely on propaganda, brutal suppression, targeted vote buying, and cultivation of cults of personality to maintain a passive populace. Authoritarian regimes have been dying off in the modern era, but are still more common than one would like. However, we are seeing interesting times for a couple of world’s remaining non-democratic revolutionary-born governments including, most notably, Iran and North Korea.

In essence, a non-democratic revolutionary government needs to create a successor to the divine right of kings argument. This argument was historically used to convince people of why they should accept rule by tyrannical forces who showed little or no interest in the citizenry’s well-being. This is unless, of course, you are a country such as Iran where the ”god-as-guarantor of earthly governors” argument still holds sway.  

Communist governents are noted for attempting to delude the people that they, as the citizenry, are, in fact,  in power- or in the process of being handed the reigns of power. One need look no further than the adoption of names, such as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea(there are at least three things wrong with that name), to see the great effort made to convey to an oppressed people a false sense of empowerment. If truth-in-advertising ruled, Kim Il Sung would have named the country the Tyrannical Kim Dynasty House of Famine in Korea, but this would not have kept the pitchforks at bay. Communist regimes tell the members their populace that they are, as George Orwell described, all equal- except in that “some pigs are more equal than others.”  Of course, when you have no power, you are keenly aware of it, and so this leaves control of information, movement, and assembly as the true means by which the old revolutionaries keep from becoming the  former revolutionaries.

In some sense, the Ayatollah Khamenei’s dictates about how election dissent will be handled seem promising. He has suggested the possibility of an investigation, and has taken actions designed to calm civil unrest pending an investigation. However, he has also asked the foreign press to leave. This is, of course, precisely the thing a government does if it wants to crack heads with impunity, and without losing all appearance of legitimacy abroad. Khamenei seems to be hedging his bets by leaving open a variety of counter-revolutionary activities (note: I am not using this term in the manner that it has come to be used by Communist regimes, which is to say that a counter-revolution is any revolution that throws Communists out on their butts)  designed to ensure the theocracy holds.

I suspect the odd behavior of North Korea of late is also tied to regime control concerns. In this case, Kim Jong Il wants to continue the dynasty begun by his father, but his chosen successor is untried and vulnerable. Kim Jong Un needs to establish some credibility quick or the days of the House of Kim may be numbered. Of course, Kim Jong Il came upon a sure-fire strategy to keep the people from rising up. It includes all the usual element such as spying on them, beating any dissenters down violently, and building a cult of personality,  but it goes further to ensure that the population is starved half to death and are too busy foraging for sustenance to organize an opposition. However, the military will remain a threat unless Kim Jong Un’s primacy can be established.

In the past I have always found the Central News Agency of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) (see: http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm) to be less than compelling and rarely worthy of examination. The stories are generally about how such-and-such Sub-Saharan African dictator sent congratulations to Kim Jong Il, or how the North Korean People wished to pay their respects to such-and-such nation. In essence, it was not only propaganda, but propaganda of the dullest and most mundane sort imaginable.

However, in recent weeks it is becoming increasingly worthwhile to visit the Agency’s site. Oh, it is still wild propaganda, but it is entertaining propaganda. Consider some of the current headlines:

“US Wild Ambition to Dominate Whole of Korea Can Never Come True”

“US Termed Chief Culprit of Nuclear Proliferation”

“Japanese Reactionaries Urged to Stop Their Rash Acts”

This last one is particularly amusing. It essentially rebukes elements inside Japan who would like that country to develop nuclear weapons. The irony is, of course, that the only way the Japanese will be sufficiently motivated to make major changes in their law as required to build a nuclear arsenal is in response to the continued provocations of their nutty newly nuclear neighbor who is constantly shooting missile tests across their bow lately.

Today the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed sanctions against North Korea consisting primarily of a complete arms export embargo and a partial arms import embargo. The big news seems to be China’s support for these efforts. While Chinese diplomats were careful to state that inspections must be carried out in accordance with international law, and, therefore, the sanctions did not equate to open season on DPRK shipping, they did go along with the provisions as stipulated. The Chinese don’t want a nuclear armed Japan any more than the North Koreans do. The difference is that the Chinese recognize that the way to avoid a Japan with nuclear weapons is a sane and stable North Korea.

Besides the long-range missile test that was earlier estimated would take place early next week, it will be interesting to see of what the North Korean response consists. As I have mentioned before, when you go as provocative as nuclear weapons tests, it is hard to up the ante without risking war. While the North Korean rhetoric is harsh, it is difficult to imagine what North Korea can do besides the same old bag of tricks it has been playing.

On April 5th, President Obama gave a masterful speech in Prague, the later half of which was devoted to the topic of nuclear disarmament. The speech began with an homage to people who acted on a belief that change could be achieved against an overwhelming sentiment that it could not (referring, of course, to the Cold War), and then implied that people of the same ilk were needed to advance disarmament in a similar manner.

Those wishing to see any momentum that may have been created by this speech derailed could hardly ask for better intervening world events. North Korea conducted its second test of a nuclear device, and, in the process, displayed an improved capability had been achieved. Following the nuclear test, they proceeded to set off short-range missiles like  some sort of Independence Day display, and it appears that they are preparing for a long-range missile test in up-coming weeks. Meanwhile, the Iran front remains unchanged. In other words, the Iranians are getting progressively closer to having an infrastructure that would support making weapons-grade fissile material in sufficient quantities within a reasonable time period, and this is making many countries (re: Israel) really unnerved.

It might be argued that such events are a potential boon to disarmament because they underscore the nature of the threat and give impetus for positive action. After all, nonproliferation is unlikely to go anywhere without the major nuclear weapon states showing progress toward disarmament. If the 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference turns out to be a carryover from 2005, then we can expect backward and not forward momentum on nonproliferation. 

Unfortunately, I suspect that current events do not bode well for advancing the agenda President Obama laid out in his Prague Speech. Nuclear weapon states will only ease their grasp if they feel relatively safe from the threat of attack by states. I emphasize “by states” because I don’t think world leaders give much sway to deterrence as a strategy against nuclear terrorism, but they are pretty confident about the value of deterrence against states. While the threat of nuclear terrorism may (or may not) be on the rise, I don’t think that is a non-starter for disarmament. However, the same cannot be said of risk from states.

As the President stated, nuclear disarmament is not likely to be achieve quickly. There were a number of steps that were laid out that are considered intermediary steps including: reduction of the relevance of nuclear weapons to overall security, bilateral reductions between US and Russia, enactment the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), verifiable implementation of the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT), strengthening of inspection authority, development of a fuel bank, and progress with North Korea and Iran.

The question is whether all of these are necessary, and, if so, whether any of them are intractable. Take, for example, the question of verifiability of the FMCT. The Bush Administration dropped this treaty supposedly because it was “impossible” to verify. The present administration seems to take as a forgone conclusion that it can be verified. This tells us one of two things. The best case scenario is that the two camps are working under different assumptions about what constitutes a minimally acceptable level of verification. I say this is the “best case” because there would ostensibly be underlying facts that could be agreed upon, and, therefore, there would be a map to understand what would be necessary to move towards a negotiated agreement (e.g. what technological developments.) The worst case is that politics is leading the facts and science- in which case there may be no room for agreement. By “politics leading” I mean that either the Bush Administration started from from the position that they did not want to support the FMCT and found arguing the unprovable case of non-verifiability a good means to quash it, or the Obama Administration started from the position that they wanted the FMCT and knew it required arguing that it was, in fact, verifiable, or, given the possibility that no one knows the answer yet, both of the above. If this is the case, then there is no incentive for either side to reduce ambiguity, and little prospect for moving forward.

When there is a point of intractability, one needs to determine whether there is a new approach to the subject that can be taken, and what it might be. Too often there is a failure to recognize points of intractability, and then to be creative about how to change the underlying conditions to one where progress is possible.

We are now on missile test number seven, following the test of a nuclear device by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The Obama Administration’s stance seems to be: “just let baby Kim Jong Il do his thing, he’ll cry himself to sleep.” Secretary Gates has indicated that he has seen no reason to suggest a build up of forces on the peninsula, and the US is not taking any action that might be seen as escalatory.

I am not being critical of this strategy as it seems about the only reasonable course to take without having any better understanding of the motivations and thinking that inform Kim Jong Il’s behavior. It would be nice to have a good historical analogy as a guide to what strategy might best be employed. However, the most apropos analogy seems to be a thug that wants something and has decided to act out until others relent. If Kim Jong Il were trying to provoke the US into war, he could easily enough do that by artillery attacks on the South. This would guarantee a fight. However, it is difficult to imagine what Kim might think he could gain from getting into a war with an opposition that holds advantages in every area except perhaps raw number of servicemen. While I have no doubt that, like many dictators, he may be a little deluded as a result of his own narcissism and being surrounded by people too fearful to tell him how the world really is, I doubt that he finds the risk of war acceptable. Furthermore, I have trouble with the idea that Kim Jong Il is trying to get the rest of the world to give him some space while he gets his “house” in order with respect to transition, because his actions are designed to do anything but get others off his back. However, I can believe that there is a domestic driver to his behavior. It is certainly possible that he is trying to show no weakness to those within the DPRK as he tries to set up Kim Jong Un for successorship. He might be worried that certain elements smell blood in the water.

The options seem to be: contain and ignore, attack and destroy, or relent and be played. Attacking North Korea would be exceedingly costly given their ability to reign down artillery on heavily populated areas of South Korea. I’ve heard this capacity is pretty well hardened against possible preemption. Relenting just takes us down a dangerous path that we have been before, and it encourages bad behavior in others. This leaves the option of letting Kim do as he pleases as long as his activities don’t become a direct threat, and not giving him the attention and concessions he seeks, as probably the best course at the moment.  

It should be noted that there is also the argument that the tests are a signal to potential arms buyers. I would not be surprised if this were true. I am presuming /hoping that during the period when the IAEA and US were verifying dismantlement that there were  samples taken at the reprocessing facility such that attribution could be definitively made if a nuclear device using North Korean material were to go off anywhere in the world. It must be made clear to the DPRK that if a nuclear explosion occurs using their material anywhere in the world and by any perpetrator, they suffer massive retaliation.

Source: CIA Factbook

North Korea followed up on its underground test of a nuclear explosive device with two missile tests while the intervening hours were filled with statements of outrage by world leaders. The South Koreans have since responded by announcing their intent to formally join onto the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). The PSI is designed to hinder trafficking of materials and technologies used in Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) production by way of inspections of suspect ships, containers, and vehicles transiting through the participant’s territory or territorial waters. The North Koreans are on-record publicly opposing South Korea’s participation even on an ad hoc basis as it has in the past. The South Korean response will no doubt spur further attempts to up the ante from Kim Jong Il. 

Of course, by going to a high level of provocation with the tests, there is little Kim Jong Il (or whoever controls the country in the future, e.g. Kim Jong Un) can do without a severe risk of overplaying his hand. No doubt the appeal of the tests for Kim is that they are concrete actions, and, therefore, have more effect than mere rhetoric – which no one need take particularly seriously because of its low cost. However, what action do you follow up nuclear and missile tests with, if you are not eager to get into a war that will likely pit the rest of the world against you?

On the other hand, the international community also has limited acceptable options. Certainly, there exists, given the lack of economic self-sufficiency of the DPRK, an ability to make life hard on the North Korean people, but nobody is eager to further starve people who are already suffering and who do not have means to control the provocative decisions of their leaders. One has to feel bad for the North Korean people who have experienced famine in a region otherwise characterized by rapid growth and development (i.e. famine solely due to bad governance), and who will no doubt suffer more before this escalatory spiral has played out. That being said, to give in to such escalatory provocations will put us back on a path we have all too many times trod before.  

Had Saddam Hussein not been executed, I would suggest Kim Jong Il give him a call and get some tips for opulent living in a spider hole.

North Korea conducted a second nuclear weapons test today [Pyongyang time]. Reports on estimation of yield have not appeared in the journalistic accounts that I have seen as of the moment. Reports of the Richter Scale measurements of the event indicate that it was a few tenths higher on that non-linear scale of seismic activity than was the fall 2006 test.

The first test was believed a fizzle because its low yield indicated a limited ability to sustain a chain reaction. It will be interesting to see how this test compares to the last, and whether it indicates that they have made significant or little progress with the effectiveness of their device. It seems likely that the decision to test and, within a range, the timing of the test are politically rather than technically driven. That is to say, the test probably did not come about because the engineers and scientists wanted test improvements to their design, and, therefore, it is possible that there have been no technological breakthroughs since the last test. If they are still struggling with their design, it is difficult to see what the test gets Kim Jong Il in net from a strategic standpoint. It gets the world’s attention (as it has done), but it also eliminates ambiguity about how advanced the DPRK’s program is. (This, arguably, creates a first mover incentive for countries to attack while the North Korean deterrent is not yet effective.) It is not clear that Kim Jong Il is that deep of a thinker, or whether foreign governments are at the forefront of his mind at the moment.

While the DPRK also quite recently tested a long-range missile, it is not clear that they are on the cusp of a launchable weapon. The nuclear explosion has to not only work, but be delivered in a sufficiently small package.

It should be noted that at least one of the political reasons for the test is apparently an adverse counter-reaction to the world’s reaction to the aforementioned missile test. That is, Kim Jong Il is in the midst of a temper tantrum over the rebuke delivered by way of the United Nations. Another possible reason includes the need to prove potency to the North Korean people during a period in which Kim Jong Il is looking like he is not long for this world, and the leading contender for his successor, youngest son Kim Jong-Un, is inexperienced and has not yet effectively asserted his claim to rule. This leads me to the question of the day which is whether the primary driver for the test is international, domestic, or some inexorable combination of both of the above.

A withered and pale Kim Jong il made a public appearance to issue threats regarding his intent to step away from the Six-Party talks and to resume production of fissile material. The North Koreans expelled United Nations (UN) inspectors and observers from the United States who had been monitoring activities at the DPRK’s nuclear facilities. The threat was delivered in response UN Security Council’s condemnation of the recent North Korean missile test.

This is typical Kim Jong Il. It is about as juvenile and unsophisticated a way as one can imagine to handle the dispute. Suffering from a bad case of hurt feelings, the frail leader has decided to take his ball and go home. His “ball” in this case being the promise of nuclear disarmament with which he strings along the US and the world. Of course, the six year old who pulls the ball out of the game hurts everybody else while giving the ball owner a level of satisfaction albeit a petty one. In this case, the rest of the world can go on about its business, and the feeble nation of North Korea will suffer the economic and political consequences that result from its dear leader’s provocative behavior.

From a strategic point of view, one has to wonder whether Kim Jong Il really does have a mentality in which petty impulses and emotionality override all ability to systematically, calmly, and strategically think through to an optimal response, or does he hope to increase his security and status by appearing irrational beyond all comprehension. In other words, is he trying to convince the world that he is an intellectual six year old who cannot be trusted to reason through to his own best interest, so that they will give him a wide berth in their dealings with him. In an anarchic society, one lets the cacophonous, seething, and smelly knife-weilding midget do pretty much as he pleases, because the fact that he doesn’t care and appears irrational makes him dangerous- even if he is three foot tall. The thing is that, at some point, the rest of humanity may become tired enough of him to throw as sack over him and kick him off a cliff.

On February 26th a conference took place at Georgia Tech in Atlanta entitled “The Six Party Talks and Korean Energy Security”. Conference speakers included Mr. Kurt Tong- Director of the Office of Korean Affairs at the State Department, Minister Kim Myong Gil of the North Korean Mission to the United Nations, former Ambassador to South Korea James Laney, and a number of prominent experts from academia and think-tanks. The conference covered a range of issues involving energy needs on the Korean Peninsula, and lent particular focus to questions of energy as both a vital resource for economic development and as a bargaining chip in negotiations with North Korea.

The central bargain of the 1994 Agreed Framework agreement between the US and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was the provision of energy to North Korea in exchange for movement away from nuclear arms development. The energy in question included fuel oil shipments as well a commitment to provide about 2000 MWe in electrical capacity in the form of light water nuclear reactors. The 1994 agreement, like all other agreements with North Korea to date, eventually unraveled in a raft of mutual accusations about failure to comply with the provisions of the bargain.

The use of energy as a bargaining chip makes a good deal of sense because the DPRK is desperately under-provided with electricity and heat, and the amount of electricity generated in recent years is even substantially below 1994 levels. Many readers have probably seen nighttime time-lapse satellite photographs in which South Korea looks like an island in the sea of Japan, with only a single dot recognizable between the Republic of Korea and the coast of China. One speaker at the Georgia Tech conference, Leon Sigal, had recently traveled to the DPRK, and spoke about how meetings were conducted in winter coats because the little space heaters in the Ministry conference rooms could not adequately heat the big rooms in a timely manner. As I once heard from a medical student who had traveled to North Korea, it is telling how deficient even the showplace facilities are in the DPRK (the student was talking about the atypical, yet still out of date and unhygienic, hospitals to which his delegation was taken.)

Dark Nights

 The North Koreans are apparently still angling for light water reactor technology to be part of a negotiated agreement. Selig Harrison, Director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy and occasional visitor to the DPRK, wrote in a February 17th Washington Post Column that he was told that completing the two reactors negotiated under the Agreed Framework would be part of the requirement for continuing dismantlement of the existing Yonbyong reactor. The US now apparently takes the stand that it is not the time to discuss light water reactors as part of an agreement.

What is interesting is that the North Korean grid,  as it exists, is incapable of handling the two 1000MW(e) plants. This point was made several times during the conference at Georgia Tech, and may be clear even to neophytes to capacity planning such as myself. North Korea’s electrical grid is not international in nature. In fact, North Korea’s electricity is supplied by a number of small grids that are not all interconnected even within the country. It has been said that any more than 10-15 % of electricity on a grid coming from a single plant is problematic. If North Korea’s grid were a single interconnected grid, one 1000MW(e) plant would produce about 20% of the electricity being generated on the grid in 1994. However, since it is not a single grid, this would be much larger proportion. Furthermore, the electrical grid, like much of the DPRK’s infrastructure, has been steadily deteriorating. The idea of installing such a massive source is a recipe for failure.

There have been a number of suggestions that might make nuclear power plants feasible in the DPRK such as bringing the North’s grid up to date and / or hooking part of it into Russia’s elecrical grid, but it is intriguing that such an essential component for nuclear power plants to be feasible was not a central part of the discussion. It would seem that North Korea is eager to gain access to the technology and, perhaps, to have the feather in its cap of having such advanced technology.  Meanwhile, the US, at least in 1994, has seen provision of reactos as a means to buy North Korea’s compliance at a low proliferation risk, and was not overly concerned with the reasonableness of the “solution”.

A South Korean news agency, Yonhap, reported yesterday that Republic of Korea (RoK) intelligence sources believe that Kim Jong Il selected his successor  on January 8th.

(see: http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/new_audio/2803210000.html)Reportedly)

If true, Kim Jong Un, the dictator’s third son and youngest son, would be the next successor to the Kim dynasty. According to Merrily Baird, a former CIA analyst and expert on North Korea’s leadership, Jong Un is a son by a woman named Ko Yong Hui to whom Kim Jong Il is not beleived to be married.

Of course, the selection of a successor does not necessarily mean anything in and of itself. Kim Jong Il was appointed to succeed his father in 1974, 20 years before Kim Il Song passed away. That appointment was carried out  without any formal announcement being made, just as there are no reports from the Central Korean News Agency of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to corroborate the the succession appointment. So it is unclear whether this news, if accurate, has any great significance. However, indications of Kim Jong Il’s poor health does lead one to wonder what this might mean for the future of North Korea and the region more generally.

According to the Yonhap story, Jong Un is only 25 years old, was educated abroad, and is a fan of NBA basketball. Kim Jong Un is believed -like his father- to have diabetes , but, given his youth, this is not as likely to prove fatal in the near term as might be a power struggle. Presuming that Kim Jong Il is not long for this world, Jong Un would come to power at about half the age that his father did and about seven years younger than his father was when the elder Kim was selected to succeed. Jong Un will not have established himself as a rightful heir through many years in positions of power. The fact that there are two older sons, though  to women to which the dictator is not believed to have been married (the women he married bore him daughters), could also make Jong Un’s transition more challenging than his father’s (who was an eldest son.)

It will be interesting to see whether Kim Jong Un will be able to take and maintain the mantle of power, and what that would mean for Korea and the region. Of course, I would not expect any great changes in North Korea regardless of whether Kim Jong Il passes on and who succeeds. Even if Kim Jong Un were inclined to be a reformer, this would likely antagonize many people in key positions. (i.e. When you are involved in as despicable a regime as that of Kim Jong Il, more power for the people may mean a rope around your neck.) However, whoever or whatever (e.g. the military) assumes leadership in the DPRK may radically increase regional stability if they can merely reduce the government’s penchant for crisis bargaining (i.e. that common trait Kim Jong Il stratagem of conducting provocative maneuvers such as  missile and nuclear weapons tests or quiting the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty [NPT] as attempted negotiating strategies.)