21 April 2022, NIICE Commentary 7832
Nichole Ballawar & Shivani Madne
Introduction
Years of talks between the United States and the international community have centred on North Korea’s nuclear and missile development, as well as its sale of ballistic missile technology. North Korea has long been a critical problem for the international nuclear non-proliferation system, with periods of crisis, stagnation, and modest progress toward disarmament. North Korea’s nuclear and missile development has been a subject of negotiations for years between the US and the international community. North Korea has long been a key challenge for the global nuclear non-proliferation regime technologies. There have been a lot of phases in their endeavours.
The United States has sought a number of policy solutions to North Korea’s proliferation issues, including military cooperation with US partners in the area, broad sanctions, and non-proliferation procedures like export controls. In addition, the US also launched significant diplomatic endeavours to persuade North Korea to halt its nuclear weapons programme in exchange for help.
Faced with North Korea’s proclaimed intention to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), which mandates non-nuclear armed nations to refrain from developing and acquiring nuclear weapons, the US and North Korea signed the Agreed Framework in 1994. In exchange for help, Pyongyang agreed to freeze its clandestine plutonium weapons programme under this pact.
The Six-Party Talks, which began in August 2003, were the second major diplomatic endeavour, involving China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea, and the United States. Between moments of impasse and crisis, the discussions reached important junctures in 2005, when North Korea vowed to renounce “all nuclear weapons and current nuclear programmes” and re-join the NPT, and in 2007, the parties agreed on a set of actions to fulfil that 2005 agreement.
Those discussions, however, fell down in 2009 due to differences about verification and a North Korean rocket launch that was widely denounced across the world. Pyongyang has since claimed that it would never return to the negotiations and that the commitments reached are no longer binding on it. North Korea, hereafter, continues with its nuclear weapons program till day defeating the chances of reinvigorating a new nuclear diplomacy and as a result increasing tensions in the Korean Peninsula.
Falling Short
North Korea had promised to halt and eventually dismantle its nuclear programme in exchange for complete normalisation of political and economic ties with the United States under the parameters of the 1994 agreement. This entailed three things. First, to compensate for the loss of nuclear power, a US-led consortium would construct two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea by 2003 but until then, the US would provide the North with 500,000 tonnes of heavy fuel each year. Second, the US would suspend sanctions, remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, and, probably most crucially, normalise the political relationship, which is still governed by the provisions of the Korean War armistice of 1953. Finally, both parties would submit “formal assurances” that nuclear weapons would not be threatened or used.
But on its own pledges, Washington failed to follow through the light-water reactors which were never constructed. The US-led consortium charged with building them was deeply in debt, and lawmakers accused Clinton of underestimating their cost while exaggerating how much US partners would pay to finance them. Conservative Republicans in Congress slammed the framework for allegedly incentivizing the deal.
Although it had long matched the requirements for removal, North Korea was not removed off the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism until 2008. A small amount of US sanctions were lifted, but only in 2000, six years after the Agreed Framework promised. Most crucially, by substituting the 1953 ceasefire with a peace deal, no action was done to effectively end the Korean War, which was never technically finished. Six years after the framework was agreed, the US issued “formal assurances” that it would not attack North Korea. Meanwhile, the Clinton administration continued to characterise North Korea as a “rogue” or “backlash” state, and US military preparation in the 1990s was premised on the notion of conducting a simultaneous two-front war against Iraq and North Korea.
Present Day
After more than two decades of testing, North Korea now possesses a missile capable of delivering a nuclear payload to US territory — that is, Alaska, Guam and Hawaii, assuming the estimates are correct. This is a very perilous development, and if the current US administration wants to prevent a nuclear conflict with North Korea, it must first understand what North Korea wants and why it behaves the way it does.
As the former nuclear diplomacy has been broken down time and again, North Korea is closer than ever to achieving full-fledged nuclear missile capabilities, putting the current Biden administration under huge pressure. If the White House wants to get its North Korea policy right, it must first figure out what is the US’s last best chance to end the problem.
In January 2022, North Korea tested its ballistic missile test despite sanctions from the United States. It appeared to be the most powerful missile it has tested since US President Joe Biden took office. The launch may have violated a self-imposed ban on testing longer-range weapons, as it resurrects its old brinkmanship strategy to win concessions from Washington and neighbours amid a long diplomatic impasse. After the Biden administration announced further restrictions following launches of a putative hypersonic missile early January 2022, North Korea defended its testing activities as an exercise of its right to self-defence and threatened harsher punishment and regime survival.
A New Nuclear Diplomacy
With no agreed roadmap for denuclearisation, the nuclear talks reached a stalemate between the two nations. The US officials continue to reiterate that the sanctions would continue to remain intact until a full disarmament is achieved. President Biden also mentioned that his goal towards North Korea is “total denuclearization” of the region. Biden furthered that a commitment has to be there to completely disarm the nuclear arsenal. Today the ball is in North Korea’s court, but when, how, and in what direction Kim decides to toss it back to the US will define Washington’s policy options and Kim’s fate.
On the 10th anniversary of Kim’s exercise of power he reassured the nation that rebuilding the faltering economy will be the utmost priority. This might be an indication that the supreme leader might want to join the negotiating table. Therefore, to reinvigorate a new nuclear diplomacy the past barriers need to be ironed out with new positive endeavours. A conglomeration of like-minded countries is the need of an hour to propose policy alternatives to approach North Korea. A progressive approach towards peace and disarmament is much needed to curtail the North’s occupation.
Nichole Ballawar is a Senior Visiting Faculty member at Nagpur’s Government Law College and has also served as a Research Associate at the Centre for Air Power Studies, India. Shivani Madne is a student at Babasaheb Ambedkar College of Law, India.
