Iran and North Korea Call with Dr. Jim Walsh
On June 4, approximately 20 Council for a Livable World members participated in a conference call on the nuclear crises in North Korea and Iran with Council Board Member, Dr. Jim Walsh. Dr. Walsh is a renowned expert on international security who has been involved in private nuclear arms control talks with Iranian and North Korean officials. The discussion began with a background on the two countries, provided by Dr. Walsh, and then turned to a candid discussion of how the United States and international community should respond to increasingly difficult situations in North Korea and Iran.
A summary of the call follows.
Background: North Korea
- In the later half of the Bush administration, relations with North Korea followed a pattern of crisis, negotiations, progress, a drift back into unproductive relations, and then an ensuing crisis. Despite periodic crisis, the general trend in relations had been positive, as North Korea agreed to get rid of its nuclear weapons and had begun to act on that commitment.
- In fall 2005, North Korea agreed to rejoin the U.S., South Korea, China, Russia, and Japan in the six-party talks and signed an agreement of principles declaring their willingness to give up nuclear weapons. This progress was interrupted by the imposition of additional sanctions upon North Korea, which led them to walk away from the talks.
- This period of drift continued into summer 2006, when North Korea launched a flurry of missile tests, and into October, which held its first nuclear test. This test then brought about change in Administration policy, and a working group was created to address the financial sanctions within the six-party talks just two weeks before the 2006 U.S. midterm elections.
- Real progress continued into 2007 when North Korea agreed to dismantle all its nuclear weapons in phases. The DPRK began dismantling the nuclear reactor used in its weapons program, effectively capping its ability to produce nuclear material and weapons. They even allowed American and IAEA officials into their military installations to watch the reactor. It was a huge victory for arms control and diplomacy.
- This progress “put the lie to” neoconservative claims that we shouldn’t engage North Korea, that doing so only rewards bad behavior, and that they would never negotiate or agree to give up their nuclear weapons.
- Talks began breaking down over North Korean demands to be removed from the U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism List, but a negotiated resolution was supposed to get talks back on track.
- In August 2008, Kim Jong-il suffered a serious stroke, and soon after North Korea suspended is disablement of the nuclear reactor and complained that the U.S. was not fulfilling its end of the agreement.
- In 2009, the situation began to come to a head as North Korea notified the world of an imminent space launch, which the outside world interpreted to mean a missile test.
- After the April launch, the U.S. called for sanctions and failed, but did get a presidential statement through the UN Security Council that alluded to them.
- North Korea’s reaction was severe and disproportionate. It’s leaders soon withdrew from the February 13th agreement, ended disablement of the reactor, and announced they would resume plutonium reprocessing for use in nuclear weapons. A nuclear test followed on May 25th.
Background: Iran
- What will be the result of the Iranian elections,
- What impact will the elections have on the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khameini, and
- What will the U.S. objective be: zero enrichment or compromise?
Q&A
Do we need to coordinate our responses to Iran and North Korea? For example, can we impose harsher sanctions on Iran than we do for a North Korean weapons test?
In Dr. Walsh’s view, they are different countries, with different situations, aims and records of past behavior. North Korea has a nuclear weapon and says it will continue testing. It’s also in a very different geo-strategic situation from Iran; as it grows weaker by the day, its neighbors grow stronger. It is more isolated and has a different system of government. The concern with turning up pressure on North Korea is that, if it is undergoing a power transition, then it may respond disproportionately. As Dr. Walsh put it, it’s “generally a bad idea to squeeze a cracked egg.” It is best to wait and see how things develop in the near term.
Iran is an altogether different story. While Iran is not a democracy like Canada or Sweden, they do have elections and as the recent presidential debate showed, they can become quite spirited. In the first debate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi attacked President Ahmadinejad for his Holocaust denial and his antagonistic nuclear and foreign policies. The Iranian nuclear program is wrapped up in national pride and domestic politics. The more pressure we put on them, the more intractable they become on the issue. Obama seems to have realized this and changed the U.S.’ tone on Iran accordingly, as seen in his Cairo speech. Additional sanctions would be unlikely force the Iranians to capitulate. Instead, we should use existing sanctions as a bargaining chip, and emphasize negotiation to build trust.
What both North Korea and Iran share with the U.S. is a long history of mutual suspicion and mistrust. The U.S. has legitimate grievances about both countries’ behavior and good cause for suspicion, and vice versa. In Iran’s case, our support of Saddam Hussein, even after he used chemical weapons against them during the Iran-Iraq War, is a sticking point. Aggressive rhetoric only reinforces the mistrust that already exists. Obama offers the U.S. an opportunity to redefine how it engages with the Middle East, press “reset” on US-Iranian ties, and negotiate a mutually agreed-upon solution.
You’ve mentioned the upcoming Iranian elections. If the quasi-reform candidate wins, what impact will that have on U.S.-Iranian relations?
The upcoming presidential election is a potential turning point for U.S.-Iranian relations, but there are limits to how much an election can change. Even if the presidency changes hands, the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khameini still decides any major policy changes. However, the presidency still matters. Ahmadinejad’s remarks on the Holocaust and Israel dramatically shaped Iranian foreign policy and outside perceptions. He also took a weak office and strengthened it by campaigning actively for his policies, and created power for himself by appointing allies to key government positions.
The presidential election also serves as a gauge of public opinion for the Ayatollah, whose core aspiration is maintaining the Islamic revolution. If the results reveal public discontent, he might compromise to preserve popular support. If Ahmadinejad is rebuked strongly at the polls, then the Ayatollah will be unable to ignore the results.
Despite state censorship and a system where candidates can get knocked off of the ballot, vigorous democratic debate still exists in Iran. Often, electoral surprises are a good litmus test of a country’s democratic status. “In Russia, there are no surprise election results,” Walsh observed, but noted that the last two presidential transitions in Iran were completely unexpected. If the presidency changes hands, it will be much easier for Obama to engage the Iranian government.
Given Obama’s sweeping speech on forging a new alliance with the Muslim world, how do his statements affect relations with Iran going forward?
Obama’s statements, widely reported in Iranian, will have an impact. Part of what drives Iran, he says, is pride. When George Bush lectured and threatened Iran, unsurprisingly, the country didn’t take it very well. The two countries often seem to speak past each other with Iranian notions of ‘justice and respect’ often at odds with American talk of ‘violations of the law.’ While simply changing the tone won’t make U.S.-Iranian disputes disappear, it is a necessary first step if there is any hope of progress and negotiations. If Iranian leaders feel they are not being taken seriously, they won’t respond, and those in Iran who try to promote dialogue will be attacked. When Obama treats the Iranians with respect and recognizes the Iranian government, he takes the wind out of the sails of hardliners opposed to the U.S. This creates political leeway and makes it much easier for factions that want to negotiate to do so.
To what extent do you feel that North Korea’s recent actions are being driven by Kim Jong-il’s attempts to designate his son as his successor? How much influence does he have in doing so, and how much influence do the generals have in deciding his successor?
No one knows. North Korea is a mystery to the outside world, and analysts tend to project their own ideology onto their predictions. “Engagers want to engage, and neo-cons want to pressure,” as Walsh put it. It may be that this has more to do with Korean internal politics than external relations and bargaining, and we have to wait it out until the North is able to complete a political transition and feels confident enough to engage the outside world.
Also unknown, is the relative power of Kim Jong-il and the military. One possibility is that Kim Jong-il was weakened by his stroke, and others are stepping into the vacuum left by his inability to exercise absolute power. This theory might explain the change in nuclear policy, since the military might would be less interested in Kim’s strategy of negotiating on the nuclear issue for normalized relations.
Another possibility is that Kim is still in charge, and that he knows he must set up a line of succession. This week it was heard that his son, Kim Jong-un, was appointed as designated successor. Kim Jong-il appointed his brother-in-law to act as ‘regent.’ This makes sense, since his son is young and unprepared, and does not have the legitimacy to be able to lead the country. The brother-in-law would hold the fort down while the son comes of age. In this scenario Kim is still calling the shots, yet is desperately and furiously trying to set up a line of succession. This contrasts sharply with his own father’s succession plans. Kim Il-sung groomed his son to slowly rise through the ranks and take over. This plan succeeded despite Kim Il-sung’s unexpected death in 1994. For the North Koreans Kim Jong-il was at least a reasonable replacement and over time consolidated power.
The U.S. doesn’t realize how important face is to Koreans. Pressure won’t work - what they want respect. A Korean preacher familiar with the situation of the two American journalists being held in North Korea said that if a high level US official were to go and apologize, and it doesn’t matter for what, all matters could be resolved. Chris Hill realized this, but was thwarted.
It’s not all about face, and there is bargaining and interest involved. But, one of the systemic biases of American foreign policy is a failure to appreciate face, either in the case of Iran, North Korea, or our allies. After leaving Korea, Dr. Walsh was struck by how much face and pride meant to the Koreans. Only after treating the negotiator with respect and speaking of dialogue between sovereign states, could effective public negotiations take place. Dr. Walsh speculated that once the trials of the captured American journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, were over in North Korea, a negotiator like Bill Richardson might travel to the North and utilize such tactics to try to bring them home.
If stress, sanctions, negotiations, and ignoring North Korea have all failed, what do we do now?
Walsh politely disagreed with this assumption, stating that the U.S. didn’t negotiate in a meaningful sense for the first six years of the Bush administration, but chose instead to ignore North Korea. To him, the ultimate irony is that, after North Korea’s second nuclear test, neoconservatives such as John Bolton received credit for claiming that the North did not want to negotiate. This statement ignores the progress of negotiations, agreements, and implementation made in the years shortly before Kim’s stroke. Compounding the irony of the situation is that the neoconservative position against negotiating may have exacerbated the situation. Had the administration began productive talks early on instead of stalling and refusing to negotiate for six years, the state of DPRK-America relations and agreement implementation could have been in a much stronger position when Kim Jong-il had his stroke.
On the topic of sanctions, Dr. Walsh stressed the limits to what they can achieve. Sanctions provide some leverage, but we must not confuse their ability to help with an ability to solve a problem. Sanctions, when imposed quietly, can take a toll and be conducive to negotiations. However, by using them in a publicly threatening and antagonizing manner, they can cause the other side to dig in their heels. In short, loud sanctions fail, but quiet sanctions have the ability to facilitate negotiations and achieve goals.
Looking back at Chris Hill’s negotiations, we reached a stage where North Korea agreed to supply information on their program and turned over thousands of pages of documents, but then we insisted upon verification by use of somewhat intrusive interventions. Do you think that the shift from negotiating the cap to insisting on verification could have had an impact?
It could have indeed had an impact, although we don’t really know. One thing the North Koreans fear most, as they told him when he visited the country, is that the U.S. may “move the goal posts,” by requesting additional measures after an agreement had been reached. They fear that they would follow through on their commitments and the U.S. wouldn’t follow through on their end. The concern is legitimate considering past instances of the U.S. backtracking on agreements. This has backfired in the past, when North Korea thought the U.S. was dragging its feet in lifting financial sanctions, providing fuel oil, or removing them from the terrorism watch list. The North would raise tensions in the region until the U.S. followed through with the agreement on “word-for-word, action-for-action.”
Verification is a very sensitive issue, since the U.S. wants to prove that North Korea is abiding by its end of the agreement. Even if we were to have an arms control agreement with a close ally, there is no such thing as 100% verification. A closed regime like North Korea is going to be sensitive having inspectors running around their country. That the North allowed not just IAEA, but American officials to enter their military facilities to witness the shutting down of their reactor, was such a huge step. Verification was and always is a tough issue to negotiate. While both sides have handled such negotiations poorly in the past, it is necessary to view them as confidence building measures based on reciprocal action.
