hankyoreh

By Selig S. Harrison, director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy

Getting North Korea to denuclearize completely will not be easy. By demanding its money back before shutting down the Yongbyon reactor, Pyongyang has served notice that it will insist on closely-synchronized reciprocity in carrying out every step of the February 13 agreement. But there is still a much better chance to roll back the North Korean nuclear program than to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons option - and thus a much greater danger of a military explosion in the Persian Gulf than in Northeast Asia, touched off by Israeli or U.S. air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

There are two major reasons why a nuclear-armed Iran ten years from now is more likely than a North Korea with operationally-deployed nuclear weapons.

First, Iran has petroleum riches, so it doesn’t need a deal for economic reasons. Economic incentives will buy much more significant concessions in Pyongyang than in Teheran.

Second, Iran has a strong sense of historically-based national identity and high confidence in its destiny as a major power. By contrast, Korean identity is not the monopoly of either the North or the South. Korea must confederate and later reunify before it can realize its national destiny. Kim Jong-il presides over a deeply insecure regime struggling only for short-term survival. His reason for seeking to develop nuclear weapons is to deter U.S. military and financial pressures that threaten his immediate power and perquisites.

The drive for major power status has motivated Iran's nuclear ambitions from the start. Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlevi initiated the nuclear program 33 years ago, with the covert help of U.S. and European companies, as part of a broader effort to establish himself as a nationalist modernizer who would restore the position of regional preeminence that Teheran had intermittently enjoyed in earlier centuries. To erase his image as a CIA-installed U.S. puppet, the Shah continually appealed to Persian pride by evoking historical memories of past Persian empires and by developing ambitious military power projection capabilities.

To be sure, concern about what was then a nascent Israeli nuclear weapons program and the desire for civilian nuclear energy to supplement petroleum made the acquisition of advanced nuclear technology attractive. But the Shah wanted visible progress in nuclear development primarily to enhance his domestic political stature, I was told by Jafar Nadim, then undersecretary of foreign affairs, during a 1978 Teheran visit. It would be a symbol of Persian technological superiority over Arabs, Nadim said, and would "help us to get the respect we feel we deserve from you people. You should understand, we Persians have a very ancient, very advanced culture, yet we have been a victim of so many insults and invasions, and now we have to stand up."

After winning the presidency last year, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad quickly recognized that the nuclear weapons option could be utilized as an emotive symbol of national sovereignty. He has systematically exploited nationalist resentment of U.S. pressure on the nuclear issue to strengthen his position in dealing with the United States and to counter domestic political rivals.

Just as a freeze has been acceptable to North Korea, so a suspension of its uranium enrichment may well be negotiable as part of a "grand bargain" with Iran following the U.S. presidential election next year. But in both cases, going beyond a freeze to complete denuclearization will be uncertain unless the United States is prepared to rule out the use of U.S. nuclear weapons against Pyongyang and Teheran.

As North Korea points out, both before and after its first freeze in 1994, the United States has had intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear-capable cruise missiles in its Pacific submarine fleet, within range of North Korea, together with nuclear-capable aircraft on its Pacific aircraft carriers.

More important, despite its withdrawal of tactical nuclear weapons in the South, the United States has not ruled out their redeployment, nor has it ruled out the right of "first use" against North Korean conventional forces. For this reason, North Korea has repeatedly called for lifting the U.S. nuclear umbrella over the South as a prerequisite for movement toward a nuclear-free peninsula. Pyongyang agreed to the 1994 nuclear freeze only after the United States pledged in Article Three, Section One, of the Agreed Framework, to "provide formal assurances against the threat or use of nuclear weapons by the United States."

The United States never had to honor that pledge because the Bush administration abrogated the freeze agreement in December 2002, alleging North Korean cheating. In any case, given China's security treaty with Pyongyang, the United States could not have formalized a unilateral pledge of this nature without undermining its implicit commitment, in the U.S.-South Korea Mutual Security Treaty, to use nuclear weapons if necessary in the defense of the South.

The most feasible way to remove the nuclear umbrella over South Korea would be to do so as part of a six-power agreement to establish a Korean Peninsula Nuclear-Free Zone. The United States, China, Russia, and Japan would rule out the use or deployment of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons in Korea. The two Koreas would agree not to develop or deploy such weapons and to permit the international inspection necessary to verify this commitment. Such an agreement is indispensable to the long-term resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue.

Iran first proposed a Middle East-Persian Gulf nuclear weapons-free zone in 1974, and Egypt and Saudi Arabia have since pushed the idea vigorously. But strong U.S. support would be necessary in both cases to get serious negotiations started. Israel has yet to acknowledge its nuclear weapons capabilities, and would come out in the open only with U.S. approval. If it is not prepared to do so, Saudi Arabia has suggested the possibility of a zone limited to the Gulf region. But Israel’s Dimona reactor would have to be covered as part of a nuclear weapons-free zone agreement acceptable to Iran.

To make any security assurances to Iran and North Korea credible, the United States would have to join in supporting regional nuclear-free zones. Such assurances would be meaningless in the context of U.S. security commitments to South Korea and Israel that do not preclude the use of nuclear weapons.

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