Explaining North Korea's Nuclear Ambitions

32 Pages·2017·0.45 MB·English

by  Nicholas Anderson

Explaining North Korea’s Nuclear Ambitions: Power and Position on the Korean Peninsula

Nicholas D. Anderson
Department of Political Science, Yale University
115 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT, 06511, USA
[email protected]

ABSTRACT: The United States has long called for the “complete, verifiable, and irreversible
denuclearization” (CVID) of the North Korea. But is this a realistic policy option? To address this
question, a broader question needs to be answered: what are the primary drivers of North Korea’s
interest in nuclear weapons? Most answers to this question take one of two basic positions. Doves,
on the one hand, see North Korea developing nuclear weapons because of the threatening foreign
policies of the U.S. and South Korea. Hawks, on the other hand, see North Korean nuclear
development as driven by factors internal to the North Korean regime, inherent in its personality. I
examine these two arguments against the evidence and find them both wanting. In contrast, I put
forth an alternative argument focused on the power of the global hegemon, the United States, and its
position on the Korean Peninsula. This power and positional alternative is shown to be better reflected
in the evidence presented.

Forthcoming in Australian Journal of International Affairs (2017).

April 20th, 2017
10,130 Words

Nicholas Anderson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Yale University. He would like to
express his gratitude to Victor D. Cha, Yasuhiro Izumikawa, Barbra Kim, Tongfi Kim, Jiyoung Ko, Jennifer Lind,
Nuno P. Monteiro, and two anonymous referees for their insightful and constructive comments on earlier drafts of this
article. This article has also benefited greatly from a presentation at the Yale University IR Student Workshop and
ISA 2016. This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Key words: East Asia; North Korea; Nuclear Proliferation; U.S. Foreign Policy
On the morning of September 9th, 2016, North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test. The
subsequent events followed a familiar, even predictable routine. Then-U.S. Secretary of State John
Kerry (2016) called the test “a grave threat to… international peace and security… as destabilizing as
it is unlawful.” The Japanese government lodged a “serious protest” against North Korea, with
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (2016) calling the test “totally unacceptable.” The South Koreans held
emergency meetings, with the government calling on the North “to immediately abandon its nuclear
weapons and missile programs” (Cheong Wa Dae 2016). Commentators, for their part, argued for
the need to get China to “put pressure” on its unruly neighbour (Klingner 2016), while the Chinese
registered their usual, mild displeasure at the test (Hua 2016). But most importantly, the U.S.’s
fundamental position on the North Korean nuclear program—what is known as “CVID,” or the
demand for Complete Verifiable Irreversible Denuclearization—remained unchanged. As Then-U.S.
President Barack Obama (2016) put it, “the United States does not, and never will, accept North
Korea as a nuclear state.” But given the incentives facing North Korea and all other parties to the
conflict, is CVID a realistic policy option? Will the right combination of incentives and threats
encourage North Korea to abandon its nuclear program? To answer these narrower policy
questions, a broader question first needs addressing: what are the primary drivers of North Korea’s
continued interest in nuclear weapons?
The majority of the literature answers this broader question from one of two basic positions. On
one side are the “doves,” who argue that North Korea clings to its nuclear weapons because it is
threatened militarily, isolated politically, and ailing economically. In short, they see the problem as
one of policy, particularly U.S. or South Korean foreign policy. On the other side are the “hawks,”
who argue that the North’s nuclear program is driven by psychological proclivities, domestic
political incentives, extortionary motives, and revisionist intentions. They, in contrast, see the
problem as one of personality, that of the North Korean regime and its leaders. In this article, I put
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these two arguments to the test and find them both inadequate. In contrast, I will argue that the
problem is not fundamentally one of personality, nor is it one of policy—the primary problem is of
power and position. It is the well-known but often-overlooked fact that North Korea shares its
peninsula with the most powerful state in modern history—the United States—that explains its
nuclear behaviour. However, it is not the threatening nature of U.S. foreign policy, as the doves
might suggest, but the raw fact of the U.S.’s tremendous power and its proximity that motivates the
North’s nuclear intentions. In short, the problem is structural.1 Thus, so long as the U.S. is allied
with South Korea and forward-deployed on the peninsula, North Korea will be exceedingly unlikely
to abandon its nuclear program, regardless of any combination of threats and incentives that are
presented to it. And if this is true, then CVID is a policy that simply has little chance of meeting
with success.
This article contributes to the debate over North Korea’s nuclear motivations and the likelihood
of its disarmament in at least two ways. First, while the argument that “power matters” in North
Korea’s nuclear calculations is clearly not new, the way the debate has evolved has led the centrality
of U.S. power to periodically recede from view. Although most contenders in the debate
acknowledge—to a greater or lesser extent—the role of U.S. power, it is rarely front-and-centre in
their explanations. The arguments that follow are an attempt to “bring power back in” to debates
over North Korea’s nuclear program. Second, since many of the arguments surrounding North
Korea’s nuclear ambitions were made in the years leading up to, or only shortly after, its nuclear
acquisition, they have not yet had their observable implications drawn out and systematically tested
against the evidence. With the benefit of over a decade of hindsight, the pages that follow are a first
step in such an effort.
I will pursue this line of argumentation in the following six steps. First, I will broadly outline the
contours of the debate on the North Korean nuclear program. Second, I will examine some of the
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observable implications of each position, finding them both at odds with much of the evidence.
Third, I will present my power- and position-based alternative, showing how many of North Korea’s
behaviours are rendered sensible in light of this more structural logic. Fourth, I will discuss a
number of likely counterarguments to the claim that CVID is a lost cause, finding them ultimately
unpersuasive. And finally, I will conclude with some implications of these arguments for both U.S.
foreign policy and international relations (IR) theory.
The North Korean Nuclear Issue
The North Korean nuclear problem has long been framed in terms of “optimists” and “pessimists,”
or “doves” and “hawks.” (Kang 2011/12, 143-144; see also: Cha and Kang 2003). The doves’ basic
arguments are that North Korea pursues nuclear weapons because it is threatened militarily (Kang in
Cha and Kang 2004, 237-245; Sigal 2008; K. Park 2010), isolated politically (Barry 2007; Carlin and
Lewis 2007; Cumings 2010; Han 2009; Michishita 2006, 2009a), and ailing economically (Huntley
2007; Michishita 2009b). Therefore, these scholars suggest, if the international community can
ameliorate North Korea’s security concerns, engage it politically, and aid it in its economic
development, the rationale for the nuclear program would disappear and the North would likely
abandon it. To these scholars, the North’s program is best thought of as a “bombshell that is
actually an olive branch” (Sigal 2002).
The hawks disagree. Their basic position is that there are very few conditions under which the
current regime in Pyongyang would abandon its nuclear weapons program (Cha in Cha and Kang
2004, 245-254; Cha 2009; Habib and O’Neil 2009; Ramberg 2009). They argue that the North
Korean regime clings to its nuclear weapons due to the psychological proclivities of its leaders
(Hymans 2008), its desire and ability to “extort” aid from the international community (Eberstadt
2004; Lankov 2013, 146-149), its deep-seated revisionist intentions (Cha 2002a, 221-227), and its
domestic political constraints and incentives (Byman and Lind 2010, 63). In the view of many
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hawks, reducing military pressure on the North will likely only whet its appetite, economic aid will
only feed its nuclear program, and political engagement (while welcomed by some [Cha 2002b]) is
ultimately unlikely to be decisive in dealing with the North’s nuclear program. For the hawks, the
problem is not U.S. or South Korean foreign policy—“The problem is North Korea” (Cha in Cha
and Kang 2004, 249).
It may help clarify the distinction between these two camps—and between them both and my
own arguments—to understand them in terms of existing IR theory. For the doves, their arguments
are rooted in the literature on threat perceptions (Walt 1987), but more importantly, in liberal IR
theory (Doyle 1986; Moravcsik 1997), particularly the literature on the pacifying effects economic
exchange and political engagement (Russett and Oneal 2000, ch. 4-5). For the hawks, their
arguments can be found in the literature on leaders (Byman and Pollack 2001) and their psychology
(Jervis 1976), on organizational theory and bureaucratic politics (Allison and Zelikow 1999), and
perhaps most centrally, on the importance of status-quo versus revisionist intentions (Wolfers 1962,
ch. 6; Schweller 1994; Glaser 2010). While they clearly differ a great deal, what the dove and hawk
arguments share in common is a commitment to the unit level—focusing on the intentions, regime
types, internal characteristics, and short-run foreign policy behaviours of the states in question.2
However, what I am arguing here is that both sides of the debate have it partly right and partly
wrong. The doves are correct in pointing out that the North Korean nuclear program is largely
intended to ensure their external security. Yet what they get wrong is the claim that negative security
assurances from the United States are the answer to the North’s security concerns. What I will
suggest is that it is the simple fact of U.S. power and its position on the peninsula through the U.S.-
ROK alliance, rather than the purportedly threatening intentions of U.S. policy, that drive North
Korean nuclear decisions. The hawks, for their part, are correct that North Korea is unlikely to
abandon its nuclear weapons program. However, what they miss is that the primary incentives for
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the North to hang on to its program are external—consisting of the global hegemon being allied
with their rival and forward-deployed on their southern border—rather than internal—consisting of
the North’s inherently belligerent personality. In terms of existing IR theory, my own arguments are
more clearly rooted in structural realist thought, particularly the literature on the balance of power
(Waltz 2010) and the importance of geography (Levy and Thompson 2010; Mearsheimer 2014).
These arguments differ from those of the doves and hawks in a variety of ways, but the most
important distinction, for my purposes, is their focus on the systemic level—on the distribution of
capabilities and geographic characteristics—rather than the unit level. But before presenting my own
arguments, let us first examine the existing alternatives in greater depth.
Is it Policy or Personality?
The debate between doves and hawks on North Korea—or the question of whether it is U.S.
foreign policy or North Korean personality driving its nuclear decision-making—has largely stagnated
for two primary reasons. The first reason is that the majority of the arguments made by both sides
point in the same direction: the regime is militarily threatened, politically isolated, poor, paranoid,
domestically constrained, able to extort aid, or has deeply revisionist intentions. In short, they all
predict the pursuit and retention of nuclear weapons. This makes it difficult to separate one cause
from another. The second reason the dove-hawk debate has been so difficult to resolve is that there
has been little meaningful variation in the dependent variable of interest: North Korea’s nuclear
development. While the North initiated its program in the late 1960s, it seriously committed to the
pursuit of weaponization in the early 1980s and steadily progressed from then until its first nuclear
test in 2006. Since then, North Korea has progressed substantially in terms of the size and technical
sophistication of its program and its delivery means.
Some may argue that there has been important variation in North Korean nuclear behaviour, and
that particularly during the “Agreed Framework” years in the 1990s, progress slowed considerably,
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as its program was effectively frozen. However, it is important to remember that the North Korean
nuclear program consists of three primary components: a plutonium program, a highly-enriched
uranium program, and a ballistic missile program. When all three are considered together, it is clear
that North Korea has never stopped progressing toward and beyond nuclear acquisition.
North Korea’s plutonium program began in the late 1970s with the construction of its 5-
Megawatt (MW) reactor in Yongbyon, but was effectively frozen by the Agreed Framework in June
of 1994. The plutonium program remained frozen until the breakdown of the Agreed Framework in
late 2002, and, with the exception of a brief freeze between July 2007 and September 2008, remains
active to this day. While there is a lot of mystery surrounding the origins of the highly-enriched
uranium program, it is believed that North Korean officials started traveling to Pakistan in 1993 or
1994, initiating a missile-for-uranium enrichment technology transfer relationship that would last
until the A.Q. Khan network was broken up in the early 2000s (Albright and Brannan 2010, 6-10;
Squassoni 2006). The highly-enriched uranium program has never been monitored, controlled, or
frozen in any way since its initiation. Finally, North Korea’s ballistic missile program began in the
late-1970s when it obtained short-range Scud missiles from Egypt for the purpose of reverse-
engineering (Nuclear Threat Initiative 2015). While the North did put a moratorium on long-range
missile testing between September 1999 to January 2003, research, development, and exports have
continued unabated since the program began. Figure 1 displays a timeline of North Korea’s nuclear
program from 1980 to the present.3
With all arguments pointing to the same outcome, and with an outcome that shows little
important variation, it is incredibly difficult to separate out the distinct effects of different causes.
Thus, doves can always point to one “hawkish” U.S. or South Korean policy or another to explain
North Korea’s nuclear policies. Similarly, hawks can always claim that the North is a “bad faith
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Figure 1: Timeline of the North Korean Nuclear Program
Plutonium Program Active Uranium Program Active Missile Program Active

actor” and never had any intentions to abandon its nuclear pursuit anyhow. In this way, the debate
can go on-and-on, without anyone being proven definitively right or definitively wrong.
However, we are not entirely without hope. For one, many of the independent variables—the
alternative explanations for North Korean nuclear behaviour—do see variation. These purported
causes are not nearly as constant as has been the North’s nuclear program, which can help us
adjudicate between them to some extent. Furthermore, each of the arguments has multiple
observable implications, which are more fine-grained than the simple nuclear weapons development-
nondevelopment dichotomy allows. Outlining a number of these implications, and holding them up
against the evidence, will also help us evaluate these alternative arguments for North Korean nuclear
behaviour. It is to this task that we will now turn.
The “Policy” Argument
As noted above, a number of scholars—who I have termed “doves”—see North Korea’s nuclear
ambitions as being the result of U.S. or South Korean foreign policy. They argue that military
threats, political isolation, and economic underdevelopment explain its nuclear behaviour. When it
comes to the plausibility of CVID, these scholars are optimistic, seeing a reduced threats, political
engagement, and economic exchange as ameliorating the problems that led to the North’s nuclear
pursuit in the first place. To assess the validity of these claims, they need to be taken one-by-one and
evaluated alongside the available historical and quantitative evidence.
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First, if North Korea’s interest in nuclear weapons is due to the threatening military policies
emanating from South Korea and the U.S. (Kang in Cha and Kang 2003, 237-245; Sigal 2008; K.
Park 2010), we might expect expressions of goodwill or non-hostile intent to ameliorate its concerns
and lead it to slow or abandon its nuclear ambitions. To put this first dove argument in the form of
a hypothesis:
H1: Negative security assurances and expressions of non-threatening intent from the U.S. and
South Korea will lead North Korea to slow or abandon its nuclear program.
However, the historical record shows that such “negative security assurances” have been made, and
on a great number of occasions. When it comes to the U.S., Victor Cha (2012, 307-314) has
documented these, finding that between 1989 and 2011 U.S. Presidents offered such security
assurances at least 33 times—about two assurances every three years, and evidently without much
effect. Furthermore, major annual U.S.-ROK “Team Spirit” military exercises—often deemed
“highly provocative” by North Korea—were halted in the interest of better relations in 1992, and
then again in 1994 and thereafter. Yet the North continued to search for and eventually to obtain
uranium enrichment technology and to progress in its missile technology during these years.
Quantitative evidence has also cast doubt on how provocative these exercises are more broadly
(D’Orazio 2012). Finally, it is not clear that the occupants of the Blue House or the White House
make an important difference in North Korea’s nuclear progress. North Korea has pursued nuclear
weapons with “hawks” in the Blue House, such as Chun Doo-hwan (1980-1988), Roh Tae-woo
(1988-1993), Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013), and Park Geun-hye (2013-2017), and with “doves,” such
as Kim Young-sam (1993-1998), Kim Dae-jung (1998-2003), and Roh Moo-hyun (2003-2008).
Similarly, the North has continued its nuclear program with more containment-oriented U.S.
presidents, such as Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), George H.W. Bush (1989-1993), and George W.
Bush’s first term (2001-2005), and with more engagement-oriented U.S. presidents, such as Bill
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Clinton (1993-2001), Bush’s second term (2005-2009), and Barack Obama (2009-2017).4 In sum,
there is very little evidence that reducing military threats or expressing goodwill or non-hostile
intentions have an important effect on the North’s nuclear policy.
Second, if North Korea develops its nuclear program due to its political isolation by the U.S.,
South Korea, and other members of the international community (Barry 2007; Carlin and Lewis
2007; Cumings 2010; Han 2009; Michishita 2006, 2009a; Sigal 2002), we might expect sustained
political engagement to dampen or halt North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. This second dove
argument can also be expressed in the form of the following hypothesis:
H2: Increased political engagement from South Korea and the United States will lead North
Korea to slow or abandon its nuclear program.
However, the evidence does not point to this sort of relationship. As Figure 2 (below) indicates,
there has been a great deal of variation in the amount of inter-Korean dialogue,5 but far less in the
North’s nuclear policy. Overall, the average number of inter-Korean talks is roughly 15 per year,
whereas when its plutonium program was frozen—between 1994 and 2002—the average was 11.5
talks per year, indicating, if anything, a negative relationship. Similarly, engagement efforts such as
the Agreed Framework under Clinton between 1994 and 2001, and the Six-Party talks under Bush
between 2003 and 2009 may have had some effect in potentially slowing the plutonium program,
Figure 2: Inter-Korean Talks, 1980-2016
100
90
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70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

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