The Foreign Service Journal, October 2005

by now could have generated enough nuclear material for at least 50 bombs. But when the Republi- cans won control of Congress just days after the October 1994 accord was signed, they quickly denounced the deal as appeasement. Shying away from taking them on, the Clinton administration backpedaled on implementing the agreement. As a result, Washington did little easing of sanctions until 2000. Having pledged to provide two nuclear power plants “by a target date of 2003,” it did not even pour concrete for the first foundation until August 2002. It did deliver heavy fuel oil as promised, but sel- dom on schedule. Above all, it did not live up to its commitment in Article II of the accord to “move toward full normalization of political and economic relations” — to end enmity and lift sanctions. When Washington was slow to fulfill the terms of the accord, Pyongyang threatened to break out of it in 1997. Its acquisition of gas centrifuges to enrich uranium from Pakistan began soon thereafter. Yet that was a pilot pro- gram, not the operational capability U.S. intelligence says it moved to acquire in 2001 after the Bush admin- istration refused talks and instead disclosed that the North was a target for nuclear attack. However, U.S. hard-liners took it as conclusive evidence (as if they needed any) that North Korea was hellbent on arming. After confronting Pyongyang over enrichment in October 2002, Washington retaliated by halting ship- ment of heavy fuel oil promised under the Agreed Framework. The Road to Pyongyang Hard-liners were convinced that Iraq’s fate would chasten North Korea. On the day Saddam Hussein’s statue was toppled from its pedestal in Baghdad, Under Secretary of State John Bolton declared, “We are hope- ful that a number of regimes will draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq.” Yet, far from becoming more pliable, North Korea became more determined to arm itself — and will remain so until the United States changes course. In 2003, as U.S. troops were deploying to the Persian Gulf, Pyong- yang challenged Washington by lighting two nuclear fuses. It resumed reprocessing to extract plutonium from nuclear fuel rods that it had removed from its reactor in 1994 but had stored since then at Yongbyon under internation- al inspectors’ scrutiny. And it resumed making plutonium-laden spent fuel by refueling and restart- ing its nuclear reactor. In an official statement on the start of the war in March 2003, North Korea noted that the United States had first demanded that Iraq submit to inspections, and it had. The United States next demanded that Baghdad disarm, and it began to do so. The United States then attacked it anyway. “This suggests that even the signing of a non-aggression treaty with the U.S. would not help avert war,” a DPRK Foreign Ministry spokesman said on April 6, 2003. “Only military deterrent force, supported by ultra-mod- ern weapons, can avert a war and protect the security of the nation. This is the lesson drawn from the Iraqi war.” Pyongyang’s rhetoric and tactics convinced many in Washington that it was determined to arm and should therefore be punished for breaking its commitments. Other policy-makers interpreted its actions as extortion, intended to secure economic aid without giving up any- thing in return. In fact, it was doing neither, but simply playing tit for tat — cooperating whenever Washington cooperated and retaliating when Washington reneged. It still is. Hard-liners call this approach blackmail. But that’s a misnomer. It’s blackmail when a man menaces you with a baseball bat and demands that you hand over your wallet — and you do. It’s not blackmail when he hands you his bat and says, let’s play ball, and you don’t. That’s what North Korea did after October 1994 and says it is willing to do again now. Skeptics may ask why we should believe Pyongyang would be willing to re-engage in the face of implacable hostility fromWashington. One answer lies in President Kim Jong Il’s October 2001 decision to reform his coun- try’s moribund economy, a policy he formally promul- gated in July 2002. As a result of that policy shift, the North Korean economy has begun to revive — but reform cannot succeed without a political accommoda- tion with the United States, Japan and South Korea that F O C U S 40 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 5 Epithets like “rogue” or “pariah” have predisposed American policy-makers to take a coercive approach to states like North Korea.