Verification key to North Korea's denuclearization

By Liang Tuang Nah

On Feb. 1, Bloomberg Business News reported that according to Stephen Biegun, the U.S. special representative for North Korea, Pyongyang has promised to destroy all its facilities for producing nuclear weapons material, the critical component which actually fuels the massive explosion from such weapons.

What is significant about such denuclearization progress is that this promise covers both pathways to nuclear weapons fabrication, namely plutonium processing and uranium enrichment.

If Pyongyang is truly sincere about demolishing all of its nuclear weapons manufacturing facilities, this will ensure the permanent capping of the DPRK's arsenal, leading to greater certainty in the management of strategic risks from the North.

However, what remains to be seen is what concessions the Kim Jong-un regime will demand from Washington as a quid pro quo for hamstringing the growth of its nuclear munitions. The second upcoming Trump-Kim summit in Vietnam from Feb. 27 to 28 will hopefully reveal more.

Tempering optimistic expectations

Amid the gushing of dovish analysts who opine that this latest development shows that Kim is genuine about implementing permanent denuclearization, as agreed to in the joint declaration inked at the June 2018 summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore, it is prudent to be realistic about what can be expected in nuclear disarmament negotiations.

Reasons for caution and cynicism include disappointments of the past, disarmament verification and North Korean disarmament hesitancy.

Concerning Pyongyang's established track record of disappointing denuclearization expectations, the most recent case of negotiations failure serves as a prime example.

On Feb. 29, 2012, two years of diplomatic efforts led to the signing of the "Leap Day" agreement whereby North Korea agreed to halt its missile and nuclear tests, while allowing international inspections of its nuclear facilities.

In return, it would receive 240,000 tons of food aid which would be monitored by U.S. aid workers to discourage diversions to the military. But within a month, on March 16, the Kim regime announced a planned satellite launch in April that would use ballistic missile technology banned under earlier U.N. Security Council resolutions.

This quashed the "Leap Day" deal and was the latest in a series of failed denuclearization negotiations pointing to the North's untrustworthiness. Correspondingly, skeptical observers are disinclined to believe that the DPRK will honestly demolish all its plutonium and uranium related infrastructure.

Next, there is the issue of objectively verifying that Kim has implemented the permanent decommissioning of the aforementioned facilities. Mass media insiders can attest to the ability of newspapers and TV to mislead and misdirect, as much as they can clarify and inform.

While international news crews might be invited to North Korea's only plutonium facility in Yongbyon to film vital plutonium re-processing facilities being permanently dismantled, it means far less than seeing uranium centrifuges being crushed in a Pyongyang organized media event.

This is because, compared to plutonium production infrastructure, uranium enrichment plants are much easier to hide. For instance, it is known that Iran situates its uranium enrichment facilities underground.

Since North Korea has not submitted a comprehensive list of all its nuclear weapons, associated infrastructure and related capital equipment, there is no way of knowing if the uranium enrichment plant and machinery being destroyed represents the entirety of the DPRK's holdings.

Hence, the only fair assurance that the North is indeed doing away with its plutonium and uranium production capabilities is if the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is allowed to enter the country to independently verify compliance with declared intentions.

Additionally, it needs to be emphasized that it strengthens Pyongyang's bargaining position to retain its nuclear weapons program for as long as possible.

Putting aside the position of hawkish scholars that the Kim regime will never completely relinquish nuclear armaments as these are seen as guarantors of regime survival, and giving Kim's denuclearization discourse the benefit of the doubt, it can be assumed for arguments' sake that Kim would only be prepared to strike a grand denuclearization bargain if the compensation is exceedingly valuable.

As Pyongyang no doubt realizes that its nuclear munitions program is the only thing that enables it to command international attention, thereby avoiding the obscurity accorded to other impoverished dictatorships, it must be expected that the DPRK will hesitate and prolong the process of plutonium and uranium production decommissioning until it receives compensation in full.

It is after all in Kim's interest to do this. Shrewd negotiation on the part of President Trump in the upcoming Vietnam summit is essential.

Further progress?

Lastly, if Special Representative Biegun and Secretary of State Pompeo along with their North Korean counterparts are able to agree on suitable U.S. reciprocation, and the dismantling of the aforementioned plutonium and uranium plants is verifiably accomplished, what forms might future denuclearization take?

Depending on several factors such as the negotiating progress taking place during President Trump's tenure (the next U.S. president might not favor deal making with Pyongyang), and whether the U.S. Senate is agreeable to a future peace treaty with North Korea, such a treaty, which has been a goal of the Kim regime for the past few decades, would be a weighty inducement to sizeable denuclearization progress from the North.

As a quid pro quo for negotiations yielding significant progress toward a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War, Washington could ask for a declaration of the DPRK's nuclear arms stockpile, including warheads, missiles and weapons-grade plutonium and uranium.

Verification of such an inventory might involve IAEA staff from neutral countries, with the possible participation of Chinese officials to ease Pyongyang's discomfort since the PRC is the North's only treaty ally.

When the treaty is signed, an agreed-upon concession from the North could be the relinquishment of set quantities of missiles, nuclear warheads and/or plutonium and uranium.

Liang Tuang Nah, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, a constituent unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.