By Megan G. Oprea
Friday, December 14, 2017
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent shockwaves
through the foreign policy establishment this week when he suggested that the
United States is prepared, for the first time, to come to the negotiating table
with North Korea without any preconditions or promises from Pyongyang that it
would halt, even if just temporarily, its nuclear program.
Tillerson’s startling comments, which mark a major
departure from U.S. policy and part significantly with President Trump’s views
on the North Korea crisis, signal that Pyongyang is truly on the cusp of having
a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and that a
military conflict might be fast approaching.
On Monday, an analysis was released by “38 North,” a U.S.
website specializing in North Korea, indicating Pyongyang may be getting ready
to test another nuclear weapon. The country’s last test, in early September,
was estimated to have been 17 times more powerful than the bomb that was
dropped on Hiroshima.
The September test resulted in a fresh round of
international sanctions, which, apparently, have done nothing to deter the
hermit kingdom from moving ahead apace with its nuclear program. North Korea is
similarly catapulting forward with its ICBM program, making steady progress and
demonstrating this year that it now has the capability to reach the entire
continental United States.
China Is Making
Contingency Plans
By all accounts, the North is far ahead of previous
estimates of when it would attain nuclear capability. With Pyongyang’s rapid
progress, the deployment of anti-missile systems to South Korea, Trump’s
boisterous posturing, and the evident failure of international sanctions, a
growing number of experts estimate that some kind of war or conflagration is
possible in 2018.
China doesn’t seem all that interested in making
significant efforts toward curbing North Korea’s nuclear program, despite the
Trump administration’s persistence in believing that it is. Yet Beijing is
forming a contingency plan in the event of the collapse of its neighboring
client state, either from an outside pre-emptive strike or a self-imposed
political implosion.
China is preparing for the waves of refugees that would
attempt to enter China under such a scenario. According to recent reports,
China has been setting up refugee camps along its border with North Korea and
has conducted several military drills in that region. An even greater sign that
China is fully cognizant of how fragile the situation has become is the fact
that China and the United States are discussing contingency plans for North
Korea’s collapse for the first time ever.
No doubt with all of this in mind, Tillerson told an
audience at the Atlantic Council on Tuesday that the United States would come
to the negotiating table with North Korea without any preconditions. He did,
however, say this would only be possible after a “period of quiet” in which the
North didn’t test any nuclear weapons or missiles.
A Shift from
Nuclear Prevention to Nuclear Containment
Tillerson’s comments mark a significant change from the
policy of previous U.S. administrations. More importantly, his remarks are a
tacit acknowledgement that America has failed to stop Pyongyang from developing
its nuclear and ICBM programs. It is, in effect, an admission that we are shifting
our North Korea policy from nuclear prevention to nuclear containment.
Even so, Tillerson insists containment is not a strategic
option. The secretary of state said the United States would not settle for a
North Korean containment strategy, whereby American would learn to live with a
nuclear North Korea while deterring it from using its nukes, with promises of a
second strike that would wipe the country from the map. He argued that North
Korea is different from other nuclear powers because it wouldn’t simply content
itself to sit on its nuclear technology the way Russia did during the Cold War.
Instead, it would “become a commercial activity for them,” selling that
technology to the highest bidder.
It’s hard not to have some sympathy for Tillerson. The outbreak
of hostilities on the Korean peninsula is increasingly possible and North Korea
doesn’t appear interested in accepting anything less than retaining its nuclear
weapons and ICBMs. Tillerson is hoping that if he can just get the North
Koreans to the table then surely they can be reasoned with — surely war can be
avoided without having to accept a nuclear North Korea.
But years of diplomacy have proven that Pyongyang is not
persuadable on the nuclear question. That doesn’t mean diplomacy should be given
up, but starting out by conceding something like preconditions sends a message
of weakness and signals that the United States is desperate — which, maybe it
is.
We Have No Good
Options Here
Meanwhile, 58 retired American military leaders wrote to
President Trump on Wednesday, urging him to seek a diplomatic resolution to the
conflict and not to take military action. They wrote that “Military options
must not be the preferred course of action,” and pleaded with the president to
“exhaust every possible diplomatic solution.”
The retired military leaders are clearly worried that the
United States is going to launch a pre-emptive strike, in part based on Trump’s
penchant for posturing. However, it’s not clear what exactly they want the
Trump administration to do diplomatically, unless it’s along the lines of
Tillerson’s proposed negotiations without preconditions.
Or perhaps they think that the United States should give
in to Pyongyang’s own preconditions for negotiating, which Beijing supports:
that the North will only negotiate if the United States and South Korea desist
all military drills in the region. But this would be naïveté of the highest
order, leaving the America, South Korea, and Japan exposed and vulnerable to
Chinese domination and North Korean brinkmanship, while weakening America’s
negotiating position.
Henry Nau argues in his book, “Conservative
Internationalism,” that diplomacy must be conducted hand-in-hand with the
threat of force. Using armed diplomacy means not waiting to use force until
negotiations have failed, but using force, and the credible threat of force,
alongside negotiations, to help make diplomacy actually work.
In Nau’s words, one ought to “time diplomatic initiatives
to coincide with maximum military strength.” Let’s hope Tillerson understands
this as he and Kim Jong Un dance around the negotiation table.
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