North Korea Nuclear Test

North Korea derives satisfaction from international condemnation. Time for a more nuanced approach.

By Donald G. Gross

Let's be honest:  North Korea's nuclear test on Sunday does not, as U.S. President Barack Obama put it, "pose a grave threat to the peace and stability of the world" much beyond the threat that North Korea posed on Saturday -- the day before it conducted the test. And hyping the test, as Obama did in his White House statement, actually makes matters worse.

To understand why, think back to your schoolyard days. The bullies who tried to rule the playground became more powerful if their victims grew upset. This time, North Korea is the menace, and the strong U.S. rhetoric only brings satisfaction to that country's misguided leadership. Raising the stakes increases Pyongyang's diplomatic leverage and makes it even harder to eliminate North Korea's nuclear program. The United States is giving this bully exactly what it craves.

North Korea has had a proven nuclear weapons capability since October 2006, when it carried out its first nuclear test. Back then, U.S. intelligence estimated that Pyongyang possessed enough nuclear material to build six to eight nuclear bombs. North Korea has not added to its nuclear stockpile since its first test, thanks to the hard-nosed diplomacy pursued in the second Bush term through Amb. Christopher Hill, who persuaded Pyongyang to disable its reactor at Yongbyon.

It is understandable that some Obama advisors would like the young president to appear tough and resolute. But one of the lessons the Bush administration learned, after difficult years of dealing with North Korea, is to respond to Pyongyang's brinkmanship with calm and quiet determination. This is the one diplomatic approach most likely to give pause to Kim Jong Il and his generals -- and the Obama administration would do well to give it a try.

The greater the threat North Korea appears to pose, the more satisfaction it gives that country's leadership and the more diplomatic leverage it confers on the cabal in Pyongyang. They see nuclear weapons as a way to compensate for the country's severe economic failure, extreme poverty, and inability to feed its own citizens. The sad truth is that the people of North Korea are the foremost victims of their leaders' nuclear policies.

Let's imagine what might happen if, instead of showing patient disapproval, the Obama administration gets drawn into a game of chicken with Pyongyang. Signaling that a U.S. military response is "on the table" would merely further North Korea's strategy of brinkmanship. Threatening bombing or a naval blockade could well be a self-fulfilling prophecy -- if it becomes necessary to act to preserve U.S. "credibility."

But making good on military threats wouldn't work, in any case. After talking with his security advisors, President Obama will discover, if he hasn't already, that the United States does not have any good military options for eliminating North Korea's nuclear program. Quite the contrary:  U.S. military action could trigger war on the Korean peninsula, putting at serious risk the lives of hundreds of thousands of South Koreans, not to mention American troops.

What to do?

Energizing the Six Party nuclear talks and pursuing vigorous bilateral diplomacy to advance a creative negotiated settlement with North Korea is not just the best option, it is also the only real way to preserve stability in Northeast Asia -- the shared goal of the United States and its closest allies in the region, Japan and South Korea, as well as China and Russia.

Rallying the U.N. Security Council to condemn Pyongyang is a necessary step, but going down the road of simply isolating and imposing further sanctions on North Korea will not achieve the results the U.S. seeks. Pressure on North Korea needs to be coupled with other diplomatic measures that strengthen Pyongyang's sense of security (independent of nuclear weapons) and help reverse its economic decline.

To persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear capability, the United States and the international community must take away that country's best weapon: fear. Through careful calculation and skillful diplomacy, the world can overcome the menace by proving that Pyongyang's desire for security, respect and economic growth are best achieved through other, less hostile means.

Donald G. Gross is former counselor of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.  He currently serves as adjunct fellow of Pacific Forum CSIS, a research institute affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Photo: Joshua Roberts-Pool/Getty Images

North Korea's tests are not the scary part. It's the country's collaboration with Iran.

By Siegfried S. Hecker

International condemnation of North Korea's underground nuclear test Monday resonated the world over -- just in time for Pyongyang to defiantly test two short-range missiles. After the U.N. Security Council condemned Pyongyang's long-range rocket launch on April 5, the country walked away from all previous nuclear agreements and threatened to restore normal operation of the Yongbyon nuclear plant, reprocess spent fuel rods to extract plutonium bomb fuel, pursue a light-water reactor, conduct nuclear tests, and launch intercontinental ballistic missiles. Kim Jong Il and company seem intent on pushing the limits of international patience, and raising the stakes with each provocation. But how worried should the world be? That is, what is North Korea actually capable of doing?

Concern over North Korea's tests is warranted. Pyongyang is on a well-planned trajectory to enhance its nuclear and missile capabilities -- something that officials made very clear when I visited the country in February. North Korea had slowed down the disablement of its nuclear facility, Yongbyon. It then launched a multistage rocket and walked away from the nuclear talks. Pyongyang is strengthening its "deterrent" threat by building more bombs, and possibly more-sophisticated ones at that.

But it is what North Korea did not threaten that should give us greatest concern: expanded nuclear and missile cooperation with Iran. The two countries' abilities and needs are highly complementary, and past collaboration tells us that the diplomatic channels may be as well.

North Korea shut down Yongbyon in July 2007, but began to restart the facility last month. The country has now restored the reprocessing facility and has begun extracting roughly 8 kilograms of plutonium from spent fuel. Although Yongbyon will not be able to complete reprocessing for four to six months, the anticipated increase in plutonium is what has allowed it to conduct this week's nuclear test. Without the additional plutonium, Pyongyang was limited to 26 to 50 kilograms, or roughly four to eight bombs' worth. Its small nuclear arsenal was likely also primitive; its first nuclear test in 2006 was only partially successful. Hours before the test, Pyongyang informed China that it would conduct a test at 4 kilotons, but it achieved less than 1 (by comparison, the bomb at Nagasaki yielded an explosion of 21 kilotons). It appears the North Koreans scaled back their original design to 4 kilotons to avoid a massive breach of the test tunnel.

The test this week, however, was more successful, producing a yield that I estimate at 2 to 4 kilotons based on currently available seismic measurements and estimates of the test site geology. This test will enhance Pyongyang's confidence in its arsenal and may be an important step toward miniaturizing warheads to fit on its missiles. Still, the size of North Korea's nuclear arsenal will remain restricted by its limited plutonium inventory. Fully capable nuclear-tipped missiles will require further tests, so the sequence of this week's provocative steps foreshadows more of the same.

For now, North Korea will remain somewhat trapped by its minimal plutonium supply. To make more, Pyongyang would have to restart its Yongbyon reactor. It will take approximately six months to prepare fuel for the reactor and to rebuild the cooling tower that the country destroyed last June as a symbolic gesture. Once fueled, the reactor will produce 6 kilograms of plutonium, roughly one bomb's worth, per year for the next decade or so. Pyongyang is not currently capable of ramping up plutonium production from there. The threat to develop its own light-water reactor is not a great concern for plutonium production, but it does likely signal that North Korea will now seriously explore uranium enrichment capabilities. But it would take many years for Pyongyang to develop the uranium route to the bomb.

Of course, there is a terrifying way that North Korea could overcome its limitation while simultaneously helping another nuclear aspirant: It could work with Iran. Pyongyang lacks uranium centrifuge materials, technology, and know-how; Tehran has mastered them. Pyongyang has practical uranium metallurgy capabilities; Tehran has little. Pyongyang has its own nuclear test data; Tehran does not. Pyongyang knows all facets of plutonium technology; Tehran has little more than a plutonium-producing reactor under construction. Pyongyang helped Tehran establish a missile capability; now, Tehran's crash missile-test program and Pyongyang's long-range rocket tests could prove mutually beneficial.

Preventing escalation of nuclear and missile cooperation is critical to avoid destabilizing Northeast Asia and the Middle East. The urgency of this threat is underscored by North Korea's recent covert construction of a nuclear reactor in Syria and its extensive ongoing cooperation in missile technology with Iran. At least in its nuclear reach, Pyongyang isn't quite as isolated as it seems.

Siegfried S. Hecker is codirector of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and director emeritus of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Photo: JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images