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SINGAPORE: To most of the world, North Korea is playing a dangerous game.
Whether it turns out to be nuclear poker with Washington or just word scrabble may depend on US victory in an expected war on Iraq, South Korea’s desire to negotiate a compromise and how much hunger its own starving people can endure.
The latest confrontation is with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which said on Monday that North Korea had one more chance to cooperate with its inspectors. It did not specify the consequences of non-compliance.
Pyongyang may be calculating that no one, not the IAEA and certainly not the United States, will have the will to take it on while Iraq holds the diplomatic limelight and an incoming South Korean president is eager for reconciliation. But it risks overplaying its hand.
“In some ways Pyongyang has played this very badly by being so obvious in their defiance of the IAEA,” said North Korean expert Marcus Noland at the Institute of International Economics in Washington.
TRUMP CARD: Fellow neighbour and major aid donor China, one of Pyongyang’s few remaining friends, has been playing its cards close to its chest, but Beijing too is loath to see a nuclear Korean peninsula and may exert pressure.
South Korea is trying to be conciliatory. National Security Adviser Yim Jung-soon, sent to Washington on Tuesday, is expected to suggest that the United States give North Korea security assurances and promises and to resume energy supplies in return for the North abandoning its nuclear programme.
Washington may be less than keen on the basis Pyongyang has already broken many promises and so can’t be trusted again.
For the Americans “they must show sincerity by deeds”, said James Cotton of the Australian National Defence Academy.
“It’s just possible that South Korea may broker some kind of new formula, perhaps involving other parties — the Japanese, the Chinese, the Russians... We may see some proposal.”
Such a proposal gives Washington time to focus on the pressing Iraq crisis.
“The Bush administration is quite content to allow the IAEA to get involved in this to temporise and eventually bring this to the (United Nations) Security Council,” said Noland.
US President George W. Bush has said he is ready for dialogue and has no intention of invading North Korea.
If North Korea’s game is scrabble, then its rhetoric on Tuesday reached hyperbole, describing sanctions as war.
Washington and its allies, South Korea and Japan, halted fuel aid after Pyongyang’s stunning October admission it was enriching uranium for nuclear weapons. Food aid, too, has been diminishing. Without those items — particularly fuel — Pyongyang has scant means to feed its 26 million people. It has faced famine before, particularly in 1996 when the reduction of Chinese fuel and food aid followed by disastrous floods spread starvation.
But times change. North Korean fledgling economic reforms last year mean its people can no longer count on government handouts but must go to the market. And the markets are empty, said Cotton, a frequent North Korean visitor.
“How much more can you sustain? ... There must come a breaking point.”
IRAQ: Iraq could prove that breaking point. Much indeed depends on the outcome of any conflict with Iraq.
“The Americans want to get Iraq out of the way first,” Cotton said. “If the Americans hand out punishment in Iraq, then North Korea may be chastened, but if they don’t this may be an accomplishment for North Korea.”
It is a view echoed by other analysts of North Korea’s game.
“North Korea clearly has watched the US fascination with Iraq and has calculated that a crisis now could extract for it maximum advantage from Washington,” wrote George Friedman for Stratfor, a think tank founded by former US intelligence analysts, earlier this month.
“Pyongyang has gone out of its way to cause Washington to perceive a nuclear threat, with the perception quite possibly greater than the reality,” he wrote, adding that Pyongyang calculated that Washington could not afford war on two fronts.
“They expect Washington to make political and economic concessions, calculating that it cannot engage in confrontation. Pyongyang’s calculation is proving correct,” he wrote.
“This would not be the case if the Iraq matter were settled,” he added.—Reuters
