Analysts: U.S. in bind if N. Korea launches
Analysts: U.S. in bind if N. Korea launches
By Evan Osnos
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published June 20, 2006
Copyright by The Chicago Tribune
BEIJING -- A North Korean test launch of a missile potentially able to reach the U.S. would catapult the Korean Peninsula crisis back into the spotlight and leave the Bush administration with little leverage to respond, analysts say.
As a flurry of published reports Monday suggested Pyongyang had finished fueling a missile and could be on the verge of a launch, the U.S. and Japan implored the North not to fire its first flight test in eight years.
Testing a missile would effectively end three years of ailing negotiations, analysts say, and mark the lowest point for U.S. and North Korean relations since talks began.
"North Korea has imposed a moratorium on launching missiles," said White House spokesman Tony Snow. "We hope it will continue that moratorium and we hope it also will abide by commitments it made," last year to dismantle nuclear arms and end further development.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Monday that "it would be a very serious matter and indeed a provocative act" if North Korea tested a missile.
She said the United States is working closely with its allies on the problem but did not say what might be done if North Korea tested the missile.
While the North's rationale might be hard to grasp in Washington, Kim Jong Il watchers say the North Korean leader could be angling for specific benefits: A high-profile missile test could deliver a political boost at home, divide world powers over the appropriate reaction and renew attention from a Bush administration that has been consumed with Iraq and Iran.
North likes attention
"The pattern with North Korea is that they don't like to be ignored, and right now they think the U.S. is not taking them seriously enough," said Peter Beck, a Seoul-based analyst at the International Crisis Group.
Under pressure from abroad, Kim must also play to his domestic audience, and a high-profile launch could rally military and civilian support.
"It makes sense domestically," said Daniel Pinkston, a North Korea expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California.
Pyongyang has grown increasingly frustrated in the seven months since negotiators from the U.S., China and the rest of the nations in the six-party talks last met. North Korea has refused to return to the bargaining table so long as the U.S. is putting new financial pressure on the regime, by accusing powerful companies of money laundering and counterfeiting of U.S. currency.
In the meantime, Pyongyang has watched Washington's focus shift to Iran, culminating this month when the White House offered to convene direct talks with Iran over its nuclear program, something North Korea has sought for years. The day after the U.S. made its offer to Iran, North Korea issued an invitation for direct talks with Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator on the North's nuclear weapons program, but the U.S. rejected the offer.
A test would be the North's first major launch since 1998, when it sent a Taepodong-1 missile over Japanese territory. Pyongyang later adopted a self-imposed test moratorium, but it continued its development of a nuclear weapons program. It is unknown whether the nuclear devices that North Korea claims to have developed could be small and light enough to equip a missile.
Likewise, little is known about what North Korea might be doing. Media reports in the U.S., Seoul and Tokyo have cited satellite images and unnamed officials suggesting that the North appears to have erected and fueled a 116-foot-long ballistic missile system, the Taepodong-2, on a pad in the country's eastern reaches. Some commentators have argued that technical demands would require a fully fueled missile to be fired within a day or two; others say it could wait up to a month.
Either way, the U.S. and allies have little recourse, analysts say. U.S. and Japanese diplomats Monday publicly warned that, in the event of a launch, they might refer the North to the United Nations Security Council and seek economic sanctions. Yet that would be an uphill battle.
Shrewd tactics, perhaps
North Korea could describe the test as a satellite launch, making it hard for countries such as Japan and Russia, which have their own space programs, to condemn it. Moreover, the U.S. would once again have difficulty persuading China and Russia to apply sanctions. Both members of the Security Council would be as unlikely to agree to sanctions on the North as they have been to punish Iran and Sudan.
In that way, a launch could be an effort to drive a wedge between negotiating powers, separating the U.S. from South Korea and China, which frown on Washington's efforts to confront North Korea. And after three years of weakening talks, that wedge might not be difficult to find.
Speaking of a potential launch, Chinese foreign affairs analyst Ren Xiao said, "China would not like that kind of development," but he saw little chance that Beijing would support sanctions.
"China does not like to be pressured, and China does not like to put pressure on anybody," said Ren of the Shanghai Institute for International Studies. "We are consistent."
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eosnos@tribune.com
By Evan Osnos
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published June 20, 2006
Copyright by The Chicago Tribune
BEIJING -- A North Korean test launch of a missile potentially able to reach the U.S. would catapult the Korean Peninsula crisis back into the spotlight and leave the Bush administration with little leverage to respond, analysts say.
As a flurry of published reports Monday suggested Pyongyang had finished fueling a missile and could be on the verge of a launch, the U.S. and Japan implored the North not to fire its first flight test in eight years.
Testing a missile would effectively end three years of ailing negotiations, analysts say, and mark the lowest point for U.S. and North Korean relations since talks began.
"North Korea has imposed a moratorium on launching missiles," said White House spokesman Tony Snow. "We hope it will continue that moratorium and we hope it also will abide by commitments it made," last year to dismantle nuclear arms and end further development.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Monday that "it would be a very serious matter and indeed a provocative act" if North Korea tested a missile.
She said the United States is working closely with its allies on the problem but did not say what might be done if North Korea tested the missile.
While the North's rationale might be hard to grasp in Washington, Kim Jong Il watchers say the North Korean leader could be angling for specific benefits: A high-profile missile test could deliver a political boost at home, divide world powers over the appropriate reaction and renew attention from a Bush administration that has been consumed with Iraq and Iran.
North likes attention
"The pattern with North Korea is that they don't like to be ignored, and right now they think the U.S. is not taking them seriously enough," said Peter Beck, a Seoul-based analyst at the International Crisis Group.
Under pressure from abroad, Kim must also play to his domestic audience, and a high-profile launch could rally military and civilian support.
"It makes sense domestically," said Daniel Pinkston, a North Korea expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California.
Pyongyang has grown increasingly frustrated in the seven months since negotiators from the U.S., China and the rest of the nations in the six-party talks last met. North Korea has refused to return to the bargaining table so long as the U.S. is putting new financial pressure on the regime, by accusing powerful companies of money laundering and counterfeiting of U.S. currency.
In the meantime, Pyongyang has watched Washington's focus shift to Iran, culminating this month when the White House offered to convene direct talks with Iran over its nuclear program, something North Korea has sought for years. The day after the U.S. made its offer to Iran, North Korea issued an invitation for direct talks with Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator on the North's nuclear weapons program, but the U.S. rejected the offer.
A test would be the North's first major launch since 1998, when it sent a Taepodong-1 missile over Japanese territory. Pyongyang later adopted a self-imposed test moratorium, but it continued its development of a nuclear weapons program. It is unknown whether the nuclear devices that North Korea claims to have developed could be small and light enough to equip a missile.
Likewise, little is known about what North Korea might be doing. Media reports in the U.S., Seoul and Tokyo have cited satellite images and unnamed officials suggesting that the North appears to have erected and fueled a 116-foot-long ballistic missile system, the Taepodong-2, on a pad in the country's eastern reaches. Some commentators have argued that technical demands would require a fully fueled missile to be fired within a day or two; others say it could wait up to a month.
Either way, the U.S. and allies have little recourse, analysts say. U.S. and Japanese diplomats Monday publicly warned that, in the event of a launch, they might refer the North to the United Nations Security Council and seek economic sanctions. Yet that would be an uphill battle.
Shrewd tactics, perhaps
North Korea could describe the test as a satellite launch, making it hard for countries such as Japan and Russia, which have their own space programs, to condemn it. Moreover, the U.S. would once again have difficulty persuading China and Russia to apply sanctions. Both members of the Security Council would be as unlikely to agree to sanctions on the North as they have been to punish Iran and Sudan.
In that way, a launch could be an effort to drive a wedge between negotiating powers, separating the U.S. from South Korea and China, which frown on Washington's efforts to confront North Korea. And after three years of weakening talks, that wedge might not be difficult to find.
Speaking of a potential launch, Chinese foreign affairs analyst Ren Xiao said, "China would not like that kind of development," but he saw little chance that Beijing would support sanctions.
"China does not like to be pressured, and China does not like to put pressure on anybody," said Ren of the Shanghai Institute for International Studies. "We are consistent."
----------
eosnos@tribune.com
posted by Carlos T Mock at 11:47 AM
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