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The Stalker State: North Korean Proliferation and the End of American Nuclear Hegemony
By Peter Hayes
Presenter: Lee Soo Hyun
★diagnosis
-US administrations have failed to avoid North Korean breakout from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a gaping hole in the IAEA safeguards system. The North's announcement on October 4, 2006 that it intends to test a nuclear weapon underscores this failure.
★Intro
-So long as the Cold War threat environment persisted, the United States was able to construct and sustain a system of nuclear hegemony that revolved around shared understandings of the role played by US nuclear weaponry. However, this system proved completely incapable of encompassing North Korea.
-2 questions need answering.
1. Why did US nuclear hegemony fail so completely to curtail Pyongyang's nuclear challenge?
2. Was this outcome inevitable, or are there lessons from this decade of nuclear confrontation that might lead the DPRK to abandon its nuclear weapons, even at this late stage?
★Stalking the United States
-The DPRK first tried to use the nuclear threat to establish a dialogue and eventually achieve a security relationship with its nuclear arch enemy, the United States. Unsurprisingly, North Korea's 'stalker' strategy was bound to fail. In part, the United States was unmoved because it had other, more important concerns and could afford simply to ignore North Korea's threat and rely on raw power to respond rather than negotiate on Pyongyang's terms.
-Conversely, the failure of the nuclear hegemony to overcome nuclear threat from a small state has damaged badly US leadership in the region as well as the global non-proliferation system.
-North Korea's apparently successful proliferation of nuclear weapons poses the possibility of a chain reaction of proliferation in East Asia involving Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and possibly Australia, Indonesia and so on.
-The core deal underlying US nuclear hegemony that it would stop proliferation of nuclear weapons on the one hand; and between nuclear weapons states, that it would not foster the spread of nuclear weapons among such key US allies as Germany and Japan on the other had all but failed.
★Compellence, Not Deterrence
-The DPRK used nuclear threat as a form of compellence of its own, to force the United States to engage it on critical security and regime survival issues. Such threats have been left deliberately ambiguous and its capacities to act on these implicit and explicit threats remain very uncertain. However, it is clear that the DPRK could threaten vital US interests with a nuclear weapon at the brink of a war in Korea, either directly in Korea or in Japan, or even against the United States itself.
-It also plays on the fear, linked for many to the post-9/11 mentality, that the DPRK might sell nuclear materials or even whole weapons to other states or to non-state terrorist organizations. In the case of the DPRK, the nuclear weapon is a weapon of the weak and the desperate, but one with a very unusual leveling capacity due to its exceptional power.
-There is no place in US nuclear ideology for an adversary who uses nuclear weapons to try to assert its right to achieve a security relationship. For this reason, US nuclear strategists failed to perceive what the North Koreans were doing, over and over again.
★Regional Makeshift Repair
-The only way to repair the damage is to make regional system of nuclear non-proliferation to be developed by local states, consistent with the global NPT/IAEA system.
-The obvious starting point for such an approach is to expand the scope and participation in the existing Korean Nuclear Weapons- Free Zone (NWFZ) declared in 1992 by the two Koreas to cover parts of China, the Russian Far East, Japan and Taiwan.
-Maintaining the South Korea's non-nuclear commitments is now the highest non-proliferation imperative in the region.
-It is critical to ensure that Japan does not seek nuclear weapons in response to a blatant demonstration of North Korean nuclear weapons capacity.
★Reducing the Risk of Nuclear Next-Use
-The DPRK is likely to continue to use nuclear threat to stalk the United States until it achieves what it perceives to be a genuine shift in Washington's attitude.
-Continued rebuffing of Pyongyang's overtures may lead to more 'nuclear stalking' that is, the development of creative and unanticipated ways of using nuclear threats, deployments, and actual use in times of crisis or war.
★Conclusion
-The scenario of nuclear next-use in Korea that is most worrisome is rather, it involves the consequences of the DPRK falling into a state of war with itself. then its nuclear weapons or fissile material might be commandeered either for provocative use in order to draw the South Korea into such a war by one or other faction in the North Korea, or simply spirited out of the country by the residual narco-criminal networks operating out of the North Korea and become available to another proliferating state or a non-state actor with nuclear aspirations.
-Therefore, it is urgent that the international community cooperate to stabilize the political and economic situation of the North Korea.
By Peter Hayes
Presenter: Lee Soo Hyun
★diagnosis
-US administrations have failed to avoid North Korean breakout from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a gaping hole in the IAEA safeguards system. The North's announcement on October 4, 2006 that it intends to test a nuclear weapon underscores this failure.
★Intro
-So long as the Cold War threat environment persisted, the United States was able to construct and sustain a system of nuclear hegemony that revolved around shared understandings of the role played by US nuclear weaponry. However, this system proved completely incapable of encompassing North Korea.
-2 questions need answering.
1. Why did US nuclear hegemony fail so completely to curtail Pyongyang's nuclear challenge?
2. Was this outcome inevitable, or are there lessons from this decade of nuclear confrontation that might lead the DPRK to abandon its nuclear weapons, even at this late stage?
★Stalking the United States
-The DPRK first tried to use the nuclear threat to establish a dialogue and eventually achieve a security relationship with its nuclear arch enemy, the United States. Unsurprisingly, North Korea's 'stalker' strategy was bound to fail. In part, the United States was unmoved because it had other, more important concerns and could afford simply to ignore North Korea's threat and rely on raw power to respond rather than negotiate on Pyongyang's terms.
-Conversely, the failure of the nuclear hegemony to overcome nuclear threat from a small state has damaged badly US leadership in the region as well as the global non-proliferation system.
-North Korea's apparently successful proliferation of nuclear weapons poses the possibility of a chain reaction of proliferation in East Asia involving Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and possibly Australia, Indonesia and so on.
-The core deal underlying US nuclear hegemony that it would stop proliferation of nuclear weapons on the one hand; and between nuclear weapons states, that it would not foster the spread of nuclear weapons among such key US allies as Germany and Japan on the other had all but failed.
★Compellence, Not Deterrence
-The DPRK used nuclear threat as a form of compellence of its own, to force the United States to engage it on critical security and regime survival issues. Such threats have been left deliberately ambiguous and its capacities to act on these implicit and explicit threats remain very uncertain. However, it is clear that the DPRK could threaten vital US interests with a nuclear weapon at the brink of a war in Korea, either directly in Korea or in Japan, or even against the United States itself.
-It also plays on the fear, linked for many to the post-9/11 mentality, that the DPRK might sell nuclear materials or even whole weapons to other states or to non-state terrorist organizations. In the case of the DPRK, the nuclear weapon is a weapon of the weak and the desperate, but one with a very unusual leveling capacity due to its exceptional power.
-There is no place in US nuclear ideology for an adversary who uses nuclear weapons to try to assert its right to achieve a security relationship. For this reason, US nuclear strategists failed to perceive what the North Koreans were doing, over and over again.
★Regional Makeshift Repair
-The only way to repair the damage is to make regional system of nuclear non-proliferation to be developed by local states, consistent with the global NPT/IAEA system.
-The obvious starting point for such an approach is to expand the scope and participation in the existing Korean Nuclear Weapons- Free Zone (NWFZ) declared in 1992 by the two Koreas to cover parts of China, the Russian Far East, Japan and Taiwan.
-Maintaining the South Korea's non-nuclear commitments is now the highest non-proliferation imperative in the region.
-It is critical to ensure that Japan does not seek nuclear weapons in response to a blatant demonstration of North Korean nuclear weapons capacity.
★Reducing the Risk of Nuclear Next-Use
-The DPRK is likely to continue to use nuclear threat to stalk the United States until it achieves what it perceives to be a genuine shift in Washington's attitude.
-Continued rebuffing of Pyongyang's overtures may lead to more 'nuclear stalking' that is, the development of creative and unanticipated ways of using nuclear threats, deployments, and actual use in times of crisis or war.
★Conclusion
-The scenario of nuclear next-use in Korea that is most worrisome is rather, it involves the consequences of the DPRK falling into a state of war with itself. then its nuclear weapons or fissile material might be commandeered either for provocative use in order to draw the South Korea into such a war by one or other faction in the North Korea, or simply spirited out of the country by the residual narco-criminal networks operating out of the North Korea and become available to another proliferating state or a non-state actor with nuclear aspirations.
-Therefore, it is urgent that the international community cooperate to stabilize the political and economic situation of the North Korea.
