Sanctions have failed in every attempt to halt North Korea’s nuclear development. Is it finally time to acknowledge the country as a nuclear power?
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Apart from global politics, tensions between North and South Korea have risen in recent months. The North Korean regime bears the primary responsibility for this. It has launched over 40 missile tests this year, defying a long-standing United Nations prohibition. North Korea recently launched a long-range missile over Japan, breaking its self-imposed ban on long-range missile tests. North Korean military launched another missile toward a target in South Korea’s close proximity.
Experts are speculating on whether North Korea may perform its seventh nuclear test shortly. In any event, activity at the nuclear test site suggests this. Kim Jong-regime un’s brags about its capacity to employ tactical nuclear bombs and backs it up with suitable military operations. The government approved legislation in September classifying North Korea as a nuclear-weapon state and absolutely and permanently prohibiting disarmament discussions.
It is time to confront reality and admit that North Korea possesses operable nuclear weapons. Should the international community (or, at the very least, South Korea and the United States, Seoul’s close ally) acknowledge North Korea as a nuclear power? For more than three decades, the United Nations and the United States, as well as China, Russia, Japan, the European Union, and South Korea, have pursued a coordinated strategy to halting North Korea’s nuclear development. However, earlier attempts have all failed. While nuclear weapons were just a theoretical possibility three decades ago, they are now a reality. The country presently has between 40 and 50 nuclear weapons.
We now live in a different geopolitical and regional climate. The war in Ukraine demands a lot of attention; tensions on the Korean peninsula have been put to the sidelines from an American, but especially from a European perspective. Vladimir Putin’s constant allusions to the use of nuclear weapons demonstrate to the Kim regime how power politics may be conducted using nuclear weapons.
The relationship between the United States and China is currently strained: An attempt like the six-party weapons control discussions in North Korea in the 2000s, which included Russia and was mostly driven by China, is absolutely unachievable now. A veto by Russia and China in the UN Security Council in June 2022 against increasing sanctions in response to a North Korean ballistic missile launch demonstrates that there are even fewer items in common today than in prior years.
North and South Korea are arming themselves rhetorically and militarily in the area. Since South Korea’s new President Yoon Suk-yeol entered office in May 2022, he has made proposals to collaborate with the brother people in the north, but the Kim administration has dismissed them as not genuine. At the same time, Yoon is fully reliant on military deterrence and is pressing the US to participate militarily even more. Kim Jong-un is concerned about a pre-emptive military assault from the south, which might wipe out North Korea’s ruling class. As a result, the new Atomic Energy Act, which does not rule out a nuclear first strike, was just passed.
Is a fresh, completely different method now needed, as advocated by certain experts? The New York Times published an article in mid-October 2022 with Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, questioning the previous policy for controlling North Korea’s nuclear weapons: “If the last 30 years haven’t been convincing enough, show the current crisis that a new approach is urgently needed.” In addition, a research published in October by the Science and Politics Foundation shows that the international community is holding to a “illusory objective of convincing or compelling the country to renounce its nuclear weapons.”
In reality, all previous attempts at weapons control have failed. Neither incentives nor sanctions, threats nor isolation have persuaded North Korea to yield. North Korea has chosen isolation with a nuclear program over inclusion in the international community without nuclear weapons. And now that Russia is importing weapons from North Korea, even its isolation appears to be eroding. Internationally, little is being done beyond from continually underlining that North Korea must abandon its nuclear goals.
Regardless of how different they were, all concepts have failed to date. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration, working with the EU, Japan, and South Korea, used a “carrot-and-stick” policy of economic stimulation and sanctions to encourage North Korea to return to the international community. The Bush administration imposed even harder penalties and increased China’s involvement in weapons control talks. However, the accord reached at the time also failed, and North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Obama administration depended on a strategy of “strategic stability,” or the immobilization of power dynamics. As is generally known, Donald Trump’s high-profile summit with Kim Jong-un also ended in failure. And, in response to Joe Biden’s offers of discussions, North Korea has continued to expand its military capabilities.
Because Pyongyang’s dictatorship regards nuclear weapons as life insurance, the objective of eventual disarmament is impossible. But what is the ramification? In any event, ignoring the issue is not a viable political strategy. North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities will be expanded in the future. The United Nations has taken no action to punish India’s, Pakistan’s, or Israel’s nuclear weapons programs. It is widely assumed that these countries are not party to the NPT. Should this be considered in the case of North Korea?
As a result of the Ukraine war, nuclear weapons have once again been the focus of strategic considerations. As the relationship between the West and Russia demonstrates, concepts such as “change via commerce” are today entirely rejected. Economic incentives have never had the desired effect on ties with North Korea. And today, the West is doubting collaboration with China, stressing system competition instead.
More and more countries are reliant on military capabilities to defend themselves or deter other powers. In the case of North Korea, a realistic assessment of political reality requires admitting that the state possesses operable nuclear weapons. This does not justify North Korea’s violation of international law. However, the benefit of de facto recognition, as seen in India, Pakistan, and Israel, may be to negotiate verification procedures with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and perhaps re-involve China in the North Korean arms control process. Because China still has no desire for a nuclear-armed North Korean neighbor.
However, there are certain drawbacks to de facto acceptance. It would send a message to Iran, for example, that illegal behavior pays handsomely. It also means compromising the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty further. Finally, those in South Korea and Japan who have long favored nuclear weaponry would be emboldened. As Jeffrey Lewis points out, this is “far from ideal, but far preferable than Pyongyang continuing to accumulate weaponry.”
The author Prof. Dr. Herbert Wulf is the former head of the Bonn International Center for Conflict Studies (BICC). Now he is a Fellow at BICC and at the Institute for Development and Peace (INEF) at the University of Essen.