President Lee Myung-Bak, left, and U.S. President Barack Obama move to shake hands during a news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Tuesday. / Korea Times Photo by Sohn Yong-seok |
 By Andrei Lankov
Korea Times Columnist
During the recent U.S.-ROK summit in Washington, the North Korean issue played a major role in talks. Both sides, as expected, condemned Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. President Obama said: ``We will pursue denuclearization on the Korean peninsula vigorously, so we have not come to a conclusion that North Korea will or should be a nuclear power."
This sounds all right, but what tools does the international community have at its disposal if it is serious about the denuclearization of North Korea?
Right now, the most frequently heard answer to this question is ``sanctions and pressure." Indeed, at first glance, the prospects for such pressure look promising. The U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 1874 which ``strongly condemned" the North Korean nuclear test.
Even China and Russia, which were quietly looking for excuses for North Korea's moves, finally voted for this document. So the international pressure is mounting. Does it not seem as if North Korea, facing a united front, will soon rush to the negotiation table to surrender its nukes?
Of course not. Unfortunately, the strongly worded resolution is nothing but a symbolic gesture. Diplomats and international bureaucrats had to make something when faced with such a blatant challenge to the non-proliferation regime. The resolution does look good on paper, but its practical efficiency is close to zero.
To start with, the united front is a fiction, and this means that sanctions are unlikely to be implemented with sufficient thoroughness. The very idea of sanctions is based on the assumption that the United Nations represents the international community and whose members share similar goals. This is not the case, of course: The ``international community" consists of nation states, each driven by its own set of interests. It is true that none of the Security Council member states approves of Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, but some of those states have other, more pressing concerns.
The key player is, of course, China. It is the leading trade partner of North Korea: Some 45 percent of North Korea's foreign trade is conducted with China.
South Korea is Pyongyang's second largest partner, with some 35 percent of the total. It also provides significant aid to Pyongyang. Chinese vendors and businessmen visit North Korea in large numbers and can travel across the country with relative ease. Last, but not least, China shares a lengthy border with North Korea and is a major hiding place for North Korean refugees.
It might seem that China is positioned to exercise great influence on North Korea. However, even if it has some potential to influence the North, it is not too eager to use this potential. China now faces a choice of two evils, and a nuclear North Korea seems to be the least undesirable alternative.
For many reasons, China does not want a nuclearized North. However, in order to be efficient, sanctions have to be tough, coming close to a full-scale economic blockade. Subtle pressure will not work, as decades-long experience of dealing with North Korea has demonstrated.
Unfortunately, really tough measures might lead to an increase in domestic instability in the North, and this is what China fears most. If the North Korean government loses control over the internal situation, China will have to deal with millions of refugees and general instability in the strategically vulnerable region.
It also worries about stockpiles of nuclear and chemical weapons, which might be smuggled from a collapsing North Korea into Chinese territory. And, lastly, China is not exactly happy about the most probable final outcome of the crisis: the emergence of a unified Korea that is likely to be a U.S. ally.
Facing such a choice, China has compelling reasons to perceive a nuclear but stable North Korea as a lesser evil, and is unlikely to do anything which might trigger dramatic changes. No doubt, China will find manifold ways to demonstrate how unhappy it is about North Korea's antics. However, after some symbolic delays, the aid and subsidized trade will continue.
Similar things can be said about Russia, whose approach to the North Korean issue does not differ much from the Chinese position. The only major difference is that Russia's stakes are much lower ― for Moscow, North Korea remains a marginal problem.
Therefore, the tough wording of the resolution should not mislead: At least one of the key players has no incentive to be persistent with the implementation of sanctions. But is this really bad? Perhaps not. If sanctions are really implemented (a big ``if," of course), they are unlikely to produce a desirable effect on North Korean policy.
Even in the improbable case of Chinese and Russian resistance being overcome, the sanctions are not likely to influence Pyongyang. North Korean society is designed in a way that makes sanctions politically irrelevant.
Generally speaking, sanctions seldom work in a direct way. Sanctions will have almost no impact on the lifestyle of the top North Korean families ― and those are the only people who matter in the political decision-making. The top bureaucrats and army generals will still sip their Hennessy and ride in their beloved Mercedes cars. In other countries, however, the top elite has to take into account popular feelings. In North Korea, such feelings can be safely ignored.
If a more conventional country is placed under international sanctions, the material life of its citizens becomes less comfortable and more stressful. This leads to growing discontent as the public begins to blame their government for their declining living standards. The strategy of economic sanctions is based on the assumption that dissatisfied people will press for changes in the policy, or simply overthrow their non-compliant government.
However, none of these mechanisms is likely to work in the case of North Korea. Despite the changes of the past 15 years, North Korea is not liberal enough for its people to have any influence in matters of governance. North Koreans do not vote. Well, they vote with a predictable 100-percent approval for a single government candidate.
They do not rebel either. They are terrified and isolated, they don't even have any rudimentary self-organization, which is necessary to initiate a resistance movement, and they are still to a large extent unaware that other modes of life exist.
In other words, in the unlikely case that China eagerly cooperates with a sanctions regime for a long period of time, they would merely help another few hundred thousand North Korean commoners to starve to death without producing any desired effects.
Needless to say, Kim Jong-il will not lose sleep when briefed about starving farmers. The death of a few hundred thousand would be seen by the tiny Pyongyang elite as a somewhat regrettable but necessary price to pay for the survival of their regime.
This is not to say, of course, that Resolution 1874 was a mistake. It was a necessary - even somewhat useful - symbolic gesture, and the United Nations is largely about political and diplomatic symbolism, so it is only natural that U.N. bureaucrats conducted a proper ritual. However, one should distinguish between actual policies and symbolic actions, and not pin excessive hopes on the latter.
The writer is an associate professor at Kookmin University in Seoul. He can be reached at anlankov@yahoo.com
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