By Ben Kolisnyk
In Victor Cha's lexicon, I am a North Korean apologist. Cha employs the label ``apologist'' in his recent Washington Quarterly article, ``What Do They Really Want?: Obama's North Korea Conundrum,'' to refer to those who ascribe North Korea's nuclear weapons motivations to anything other than what the international community considers acceptable or reasonable.
Cha's language and rationale resembles many analysts and other interested parties in the North Korean nuclear issue who refuse to accept, and fail to understand, why North Korea chooses to pursue policies that apparently are not in the North Korean national interest. Cha is a professor director of the Asian Studies program at Georgetown University.
According to Cha, the problem with North Korea is that it doesn't know what it wants ― or if it does, it won't say it. Cha's assumption is mainly based on the notion that North Korea has for decades cited security reasons as its motivation for pursuing nuclear weapons.
The United States apparently offered a ``negative'' security assurance in the second George W. Bush term (i.e. that the U.S. put in writing in the fourth round of six-party talks in 2005 that it has ``no intention to attack or invade the DPRK with nuclear or conventional weapons''), yet North Korea continued to ostensibly develop nuclear weapons and test ballistic missiles.
So Cha concludes that North Korea is after more than simply security guarantees. Cha goes on to speculate that North Korea is probably after a deal with the United States that resembles the conditions granted to India, whereby India was ``allowed'' to keep its nuclear program and maintain a portion of control over its civilian and weapons programs outside of international monitoring.
There are several noteworthy points. The first is that he may very well be right. If indeed North Korea truly sought (and continues to seek) security guarantees, and yet did not accept the U.S. overture, then perhaps it is interested in gaining more out of its program than security.
At the same time however, Cha fails to consider the possibility that North Korea did not have absolute faith in this so-called guarantee. After all, at this stage of the DPRK-U.S relationship, asking North Korea to give up what it perceives to be its ultimate security guarantor (i.e. its nuclear weapons) quid pro quo for a pledge that the U.S. will leave North Korea alone is tantamount to telling a hostage taker that if they just give their gun to the police everything will be fine and everyone can go home.
Of course, this assumes that the U.S. would be interested in invading North Korea in the absence of nuclear weapons in the first place. In Cha's opinion, there is no reason to believe it would, especially in light of Obama making known his willingness to negotiate with North Korea.
Let us not forget that it took the U.S. more than 50 years to offer such a security assurance to North Korea. Indeed, even Cha expresses surprise that the administration was willing to include the statement in the 2005 agreement.
If the security guarantee were to be honored as closely as the U.S. upheld its promise in the 1994 Agreed Framework to provide the North with light water reactors in exchange for North Korean denuclearization (the U.S. stalled on these reactors and they were never provided), such a security guarantee would be meaningless.
What is more, and this has been frequently mentioned in literature but less so in the media, at one point the U.S. believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which did not prevent them from deciding to invade it and bring about regime change.
So any concerns that North Korea has over U.S. security assurances are understandable, and these concerns would only be exacerbated in the case that North Korea actually denuclearizes.
North Korea's insecurity predates the 1950-53 Korean War and is merely a continuation of the occupation anxiety felt by the entire Korean Peninsula for millennia.
It is not necessarily the case that it is seeking more than security in the form of a U.S.-India deal; however, until it can achieve a genuine security guarantee that it can feel confident about, the outside world will never know for sure.
While it is true that North Korea's behavior appears erratic to the international community, its actions are actually quite rational as far as sovereign state behavior goes. Calling this an ``apologist'' or ``sympathizer" line of reasoning does not strengthen the case against North Korea but rather hinders academic debate and constructive public discourse on the matter.
Ben Kolisnyk is an M.A. candidate in political studies at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. His thesis will focus on the evolution of North Korean motivations for its nuclear weapons program. He can be reached at benkolisnyk@hotmail.com. The views expressed in the above article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial policy of The Korea Times.