Left Flank

With the recent disclosures about DPRK-Syria cooperation at al-Kibar, context is a rare commodity, and The Economist delivers.

Judging by its past behaviour, North Korea would do pretty much anything for cash; there are suspicions that it helped the Khan network supply nuclear material to Libya. That said, providing engineers and designs for Syria's reactor may chiefly have been meant to tweak America's nose, says Michael Green, a former Bush administration official now at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank in Washington, DC.

The Bush administration and North Korea fell out badly in 2002 over charges that Kim Jong Il's regime had secretly been trying to enrich uranium (also a potential bomb ingredient) while plutonium production was frozen by a previous agreement. The following year North Korea privately threatened to expand its «deterrent», test it (which it later did) and even sell it. With little to export beyond counterfeit currency, drugs and crises, says Mr Green, North Korea used Syria to up the ante—and the expected compensation for later agreeing to desist.

Now America and Mr Kim are negotiating again as part of a six-party deal (also including South Korea, Japan, China and Russia) to tempt him to give up his bombs. Senior American officials last week acknowledged that they had debated whether to try a combination of diplomacy and threats to end the Syrian project. For Israel, however, the Syrian reactor was an existential threat-in-the-making. There was no green light from the United States, the officials said: «none was asked for, none was given.»

Hoping to avoid retaliation, and to head off the risk of a wider Middle East war, Israel wanted the intelligence that led to the bombing kept secret. Worried that wider disclosure would sink the six-party effort too, America briefed only a score of senior members of Congress at the time.

But now the administration needs Congress's support for a controversial deal that could fall significantly short of the prize that the six-party negotiations were supposed to deliver: that, in return for oodles of energy aid and a lifting of some key sanctions, North Korea would first provide a full and accurate accounting of its nuclear past and later dismantle all its nuclear programmes. Instead it has merely declared a rather modest stockpile of plutonium and dug its heels in. Trying to move talks forward, American diplomats have struck a tentative deal that would allow North Korea to «acknowledge» American «concerns» about uranium and proliferation activities, in return for better verification of Yongbyon's plutonium haul. But the backtracking led Congress to demand the facts on Syria first.

George Bush said this week that by going public, America wanted to press North Korea's (notoriously impervious) Kim Jong Il into fuller disclosure, and send a message to proliferators everywhere. But the Syrian pictures may just as easily lead Congress to demand that America adopt a tougher stance in the six-party talks.

Another casualty could be the NPT itself. The IAEA's boss, Mohamed ElBaradei, says inspectors should have been given information about the Syrian reactor sooner by America and Israel. Yet Syria, had it not chosen to deny all, could have claimed that technically it was doing nothing wrong. Building a nuclear reactor is not against NPT rules, unless done with weapons intent—and that is hard, if not impossible, for inspectors to prove, says Henry Sokolski of the Non-proliferation Policy Education Centre in Washington. However, under a 1992 rule accepted by Syria, it should have alerted the IAEA to its reactor plans before construction started. North Korea, Iran and now Syria. The NPT seems there for the breaking.

Firstly, comes NPT reform and a proper way to share intelligence. And then, the US can deal with its armistice with the DPRK. In that order!

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Joshua at OFK must be one of the few intelligible pundits on the planet who still seriously takes the CIA at its word. From Total Wonkerr: «Too bad there isn't some international agency with the capacity to provide an independent assessment of this sort of thing…»

Well, perhaps ACW can give us some technical details?

Despite early press reports that the fuel channels atop the Al Kibar reactor core were identical to Yongbyon, I and others — including Geoff Forden, Cheryl Rofer and Richard Wendland — see some pretty significant differences that suggest Al Kibar might have been quite a bit smaller than its North Korean cousin.

To be clear, I don't doubt that Al Kibar was a reactor and, although I think the evidence of North Korean involvement is less impressive than early press reports suggested, that's my working hypothesis too.

But I don't understand the claim that Al Kibar is a copy of Yongbyon in the strict sense — in particular, I don't understand how the IC concluded that Al Kibar is the same size as Yongbyon.

Noah Schachtman is still calling it a 'mystery'.

So, there's something to wait for. If, that is, you don't just believe the CIA!

Image by peace chicken via Flickr

There has already been much discussion about the remaining mysteries surrounding the Syrian plutonium-generation reactor. My own guess (and it is just a guess) is that the Syrian reactor was the fruit of a three-way partnership composed of Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Iran provided the money, idea, and leadership. Iran ordered Syria to provide the site and some of the labor. North Korea provided the expertise, for which Iran paid (directly or indirectly) in cash.

But where Westhawk is even more helpful is the other half of his post: , the NPT system is broken, so he asks, «What will replace the broken NPT-IAEA system?» I would argue that the system is fundamentally sound, if only nuclear powers with intelligence assets would share information and let the IAEA do its job.

The challenge of proliferation control lies not in the lack of proven techniques but in the absence of moral suasion and sustained diplomacy by the world leaders. The American government subsidized the spread of nuclear knowledge through the Atoms for Peace program to counter Soviet influence, and at virtually every critical juncture since then successive administrations have set aside long-term proliferation goals in favor of short-term strategic priorities. (Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz, The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World's Most Dangerous Secrets, and How We Could Have Stopped Him, p. 1844, Palm e-book)

Collins and Frantz advocate the following proposals to fix the system:

• a moratorium on enriched uranium;
• revision of the NPT, including eliminating the right to opt-out and a UN commitment to sanction violators;
• the reduction of nuclear arsenals and a moratorium on the creation of a new generation of weapons;
• restrictions on sales of nuclear technology;
• monitoring of civilian nuclear industries;
• intelligence-sharing

With the exception of sanctions, which are generally a worse remedy than the problems they seek to cure, this is a sane international nuclear policy

DPRK Forum creditably serves up the video facts and timeline on the Dayr az-Zwar reactor incident. The Economist is skeptical:

Many facts remain contested. White House officials told Congress that the reactor had «striking similarities» to North Korea's facility at Yongbyon. Footage presented to Congress is said to show Korean faces at the Syrian site. But David Albright and Paul Brannan, in an analysis for the Institute for Science and International Security, an American think-tank, note that evidence is missing for a Syrian weaponisation programme or for plutonium-separation facilities. The North Koreans may well have helped to build the site, but they say more evidence is needed to be sure that Syria had a bomb programme.

The target of Thursday's hearing was not Syria in the main. The Bush administration is divided over North Korea. Years of efforts to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear programme have been driven both by the American government and by six-party talks that involve China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, North Korea and America. Last year North Korea agreed to dismantle the Yongbyon facility, as part of a deal agreed in 2005 that requires it to declare and dismantle all of its nuclear programmes. However progress was stalled several times, including after a row over the release of funds claimed by North Korea.

A smooth-talking American diplomat, Christopher Hill, was deployed to persuade North Korea to take the steps needed to move ahead with the deal. North Korea has publicly acknowledged its plutonium-making but is reluctant to own up publicly to efforts to import equipment for producing uranium and about nuclear help to Syria. Mr Hill has been working on a deal that would let North Korea acknowledge America's concerns about both these activities, while pushing ahead with dismantling its plutonium-making reactor at Yongbyon. But hawks in the administration, and outside critics, dislike the idea of any concessions to North Korea and want to ensure that the country is compelled to account for and dismantle the parallel uranium programme, such as it was.

Congress began threatening to cut off funding for Mr Hill's efforts unless the administration produced all the information it had about North Korea's proliferation activity. This resulted in the hearings on Thursday. Some conspiracy theorists think that the briefing was designed to embarrass the North Koreans and to provoke them to flounce out of the deal, pleasing the hawkish types who never liked it.

But it comes at a curious time on several fronts. Another American diplomat was in North Korea as the briefing took place, and the country's news agency reported that talks were held «in a sincere and constructive manner». Jamie Metzl, a Korea expert at the Asia Society in New York (and a former National Security Council staffer under Bill Clinton), notes that the agreement with North Korea essentially forgives past sins and focuses on disarming North Korea in the future. Thus the North Koreans have an incentive to confess and get this behind them, in order to get promised aid and other concessions.

Nukes of Hazard also points readers to an April 24 ISIS statement on the US video:

The release of this information is likely to prompt a fresh wave of questions about North Korea's commitment to verifiably dismantle its nuclear arsenal and halt its proliferation activities. This new information confirms the need to be concerned about Syrian and North Korean actions, including their nuclear cooperation which dates back many years. However, it should not be seen as a casus belli against Syria or a reason to scuttle the progress being made at the Six Party Talks in disabling and dismantling North Korea's nuclear arsenal.

First, the United States does not have any indication of how Syria would fuel this reactor, and no information that North Korea had already, or intended to provide the reactor's fuel. This type of reactor requires a large supply of uranium fuel. The lack of any identified source of this fuel raises questions about when the reactor could have operated, despite evidence that it was nearing completion at the time of the attack.

Second, the United States and Israel have not identified any Syrian plutonium separation or nuclear weaponization facilities. The absence of such facilities gives little confidence that the reactor was part of an active nuclear weapons program. The apparent absence of fuel, whether imported or indigenously produced, also lowers confidence that Syria has an active nuclear weapons program.

If OFK's account of the Congressional hearings and this exchange on the Lehrer Newshour are any indication of the useless invective with which conservatives have infused this debate, it's hard to evaluate any of this. One aspect of the A.Q. Khan investigations troubles me in this regard. CIA knew of Khan's activities as far back as the 70s before Khan even assembled a centrifuge in Pakistan. Yet, intelligence officials refused to share their evidence with international agencies, like the IAEA, whose job it is to investigate and regulate, out of simple ideological pique.

WangKon936 asks, "So, is the Bush administration genuinely concerned about proliferation and North Korea, or is this a clumsy neocon plot?" The goal then, as now, is partisan, and not on improving the international regime, or even presenting a unified national position in a diplomatic negotiation.

I'm still decelerating from a guest lecture by Johan Galtung, "Peace in the Global Era and Perspectives of the Unification on the Korean Peninsula", I attended this afternoon at Dong-A University. As usual I forgot my camera, because I honestly thought the panel discussion would be an examination of Galtung's work by South Korean professors applied to the North Korean problem, not a guest lecture. OK, he's not Beckham, but now I can but a face to articles I have read in IR grad classes. And, his treatment of the North Korean problem was inspiring.

Galtung deviated from the script immediately. Kudos to the Dong-A professor who suddenly was forced into the role of translator. The younger South Korean and Galtung exchanged some tense words, and Galtung often had to repeat for him, but the man did an admirable job. Well, his boss, the dean, who is "friends" with Galtung, was sitting right there at the table, too. But, that was nothing compared to the fireworks later, when another professor lit into Galtung for his arguments. The dean had to wave him off! More later...

After a late start (15 minutes), and the dean's fulsome praise (which bordered on lavish), Galtung quickly laid out his five-point lecture. He began with his distinction between negative and positive peace, and applied it the Korean peninsula. The goal of resolving the Korean armistice precedes political unification. After characterizing the North Korean state as "fundamentalist Confucian", Galtung then argued that unification only necessitated the free flow of people, goods and services, and information and ideas between the two Korean states, not the dissolution of ROK and DPRK into a single Korean state. Galtung buttressed this point by that of three other scenarios, conquest, collapse, or peaceful dissolution, the first two were violent, and the last has never occurred in human history. Galtung termed this "national reconciliation without the unification of two states". Galtung subsequently considered confederation as a starting political point, but unnecessary.

Topically, Galtung predicted that DPRK, following Hu Jintao's lead in this 17th Party Congress address would adopt Chinese economic reforms, and experience double-digit economic growth in the next ten years. The stumbling point before now was the Chinese emphasis on "jungle capitalism" and the Juche emphasis on distribution. But with Hu's embrace of distribution, Kim Jong-il can now embrace the PRC model. So, let's put a marker on that prediction.

Also, Galtung examined the Six-Party dynamics, as the historical result of a century's worth of diplomacy beginning with the Taft-Katsura Agreement of 1905. With DPRK and PRC on one side, and Japan and US on the other, ROK has vacillated between the two sides. Under Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, Seoul favored the DPRK-PRC axis, but Lee Myung-bak looks fit to swing back to the Japan-US side. Galtung predicted this latest swing would fail, and ROK would swing back again in the future. But, as an honest broker between the US and DPRK, ROK can take a step toward positive peace. Galtung criticized the decision not to award both Kim Jong-il and Kim Dae-jung the Nobel Peace Prize for the June, 2000 Summit. For Galtung, ROK has to act a third-party mediator, or escrow account, as he used for an example, between DPRK and US.

The US wants denuclearization; DPRK wants normalization. Both states should give the instruments of both processes to Seoul, after which Seoul can decide to verify both simultaneously. Or, another organization, such as the UN Security Council (minus the US), the IAEA, or the remaining four parties in the Six-Party process can also be alternative mediators. Galtung emphasized, though, that ROK's role was insignificant in the regional and global contest between DPRK and US, if it did not operate even-handedly between DPRK and US. Galtung remained hopeful, that, if ROK and DPRK can become diplomatic equals, the human rights situation will improve, but that the US, and those still desiring collapse or conquest, are "arrogant". "Peace is a relation," Galtung stated.

It was during the Q&A, that Professor X launched into an emotional tirade (in English) about North Korean human rights abuses. He also correctly lectured about the persecution of religious denominations in the DPRK, including the Confucian religion Galtung had argued typified the North Korean state. Although I agreed, this man was rude. The dean prompted him to repeat his comments in Korean for the audience, but then had to quiet the man repeatedly afterwards. Galtung repeated his argument and agreed with the professor, that the North Korean regime is "terrible". At this point, he emphasized again, that peace is relational.

I asked about the South African and Libyan cases as models for denuclearization, which Galtung acknowledged as examples of successes. I also argued that political unification is impossible geopolitically on a peninsula. Here Galtung emphasized, that "unification is not important", but the free flow of people and goods is. He also advocated an "East Asian Community", to integrate the Korean peninsula into a regional and global framework.

Galtung's emphasis on reconciliation without unification is a thousand times more agreeable to me than an internecine conflict over how to unifiy the peninsula into one state. The tension in the auditorium, full of students, who honestly were more concerned with verifying their attendance than listening, rose and hit newer levels every time Galtung slighted ROK, or dissed unification. I don't believe these students knew who the man was, or respected his career. I think the only South Korean who admired him was the dean. Unfortunately, whatever Galtung argued was binned as another foreigners' lack of appreciation for the present situation, not as an application of Galtung's peace studies to a current crisis. As the one professor demonstrated, engaging with arguments dispassionately might be utopian in an emotionally-charged political situation where even students feel Koreans own the debate.

Mathew Yglesias brings up a good link on McCain's 1999 DPRK arguments:

From Senator McCain's 1999 Landon Lecture at Kansas State University:

But procrastination defined the administration's response to North Korea's nuclear ambitions -- the greatest, most immediate danger to the United States and our closest allies in Asia.

The "Agreed Framework" between North Korea and the United States promised North Korea food and energy support, as well as state-of-the-art nuclear reactors, in exchange for the de facto cessation of North Korea's nuclear weapons program. In essence, the agreement constituted a dangerous gamble that time would inevitably work to our advantage.

Rather than take difficult coercive measures such as sanctions to stop an irrationally hostile North Korean regime from possessing nuclear weapons, we chose a prevent defense. We made concessions to the North Koreans, accepted whatever fissionable material they already possessed, and hoped that they would delay their nuclear advances until their collapsing economy forced them to recognize the necessity of peaceful integration into the world community, and a carefully managed reunification with the South.

Five years later, the North Korean economy has not just collapsed, but practically disappeared. Most North Koreans are starving. The exception, of course, are large elements of the North Korean military, which the regime has managed to sustain -- partly with food and energy it has received from the United States and its allies. Far from delaying its nuclear program, North Korea simply moved the program from the reactor site that they ceased operating as part of the agreement to another facility underground.

Worse, while we have waited for North Korea to recognize the reality of its desperate straits, the regime has managed to greatly improve its missile technology. And to underscore just how aggressive and irrational they remain, they fired a three-stage missile at Japan.

A firmer response to North Korea might have triggered a war, a war we would win, but not without paying a terrible price. Moreover, refusing to help ease the deprivations in the North, and hastening the collapse of the regime might have also resulted in war as the North's last desperate measure, or at least a very messy reunification with the South. Instead, we have sustained North Korea long enough for it to develop missiles that might be capable of striking the United States, and allowed it to proceed with its program to develop nuclear warheads. North Korea is still inexorably nearing total collapse, and its leaders remain quite capable of launching in their country's death throes one final, glorious war. But now, they are much, much better armed.

Hmmmm...perhaps a little too much temper, John!

Matthew Yglesias and Chris Bowers have excellent reasons why America should not have a manned space program.

Matt's rationale against a manned space program: "Unmanned missions are, at the moment, the ones really pushing the frontiers of our knowledge and that's going to continue to be the case for the foreseeable future. That's where we ought to be focusing our energies."

Chris' rationales against a manned space program: "Space exploration is not an issue with clear partisan divisions. Some conservatives view it as a wasteful government expenditure that is better handled through private enterprise, while some progressives view it through a utilitarian lens in that it does not provide much direct benefit to humanity."

I have another reason: without international cooperation on terrestrial weapons programs, space exploration will create an exponentially more dangerous space and terrestrial environment for military and civilian participants and the average layperson.

Confusingly, pundits, politicians, and experts cannot even use clear terminology. The Russians and Chinese propose a space treaty? No, it's an anti-missile, or an anti-satellite treaty. The satellites and missiles are landing and falling on earth! Please stop calling it "outer space"! We have no idea what "outer space" is, so stop trying to appropriate the word, like you know something other than how to use clubs and knives!

Speaking of which, it seems the Bush administration has not progressed past the point of cowboy instincts.

This logic — «hey, why not?» — is always suspect. It reverses the burden of proof, placing the emphasis on those who oppose the intercept.

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