Iran Review

Dr. Seyed Mohammad Kazem Sajjadpour 

The nuclear crisis in North Korea is the first major strategic challenge to the Obama Administration which tests its ability to manage international security matters. After testing long-range missile and nuclear bombs in the past two months, annulling the non-belligerence agreement of 1953 which ended bloody wars between the two Koreas, and preparing for new nuclear tests, North Korea has become a major security challenge in East Asia.

The North Korean crisis was predictable in view of escalation of that country’s nuclear activities and was made more complicated because North Korea’s reactions are hard to foresee. How the US foreign policy can be analyzed in the North Korea crisis? A difficult point is how to create a balance among various players and Washington’s relations with them. In the case of North Korea, the United States has to deal with South Korea, China, and Japan. South Korea is a US ally and for 50 years, the two countries have had close security and defense collaboration. In case of any nuclear or other conflict in the Korean Peninsula, South Korea will be hit worse. Therefore, Seoul is very concerned about this possibility and has tried to reduce tensions with Pyongyang. As Seoul is totally dependent on the United States for its security, its people wonder whether the United States will come through for them in case of a conflict.

Japan, another US ally, is sharply critical of North Korea. Relations between Tokyo and Pyongyang have been choppy because Tokyo considers itself the first possible target for a missile assault from North Korea. The Japanese also wonder to what extent the United Nations will be ready to stand on Japan's side. Therefore, both Japan and South Korea have been willing to beef up their defense capabilities and this has left its mark on the security atmosphere in East Asia. China is the most complicated variable in this equation because North Korea is heavily dependent on Beijing and any political disarray in Pyongyang would pose major security threats to China. China cannot be a US ally as South Korea and Japan do and Washington, on the other hand, cannot solve the North Korean crisis without China’s cooperation. Russia is also important, though not as important as China. The difficulty of forging a balance among those elements should be taken into account along with other factors such as the Obama Administration’s approach to international security issues like nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons, and nuclear disarmament. Obama’s speech in Prague in April 2009 is telltale of Washington’s tendencies.

North Korea’s nuclear tests and escalation of hostilities in the Korean peninsula combined with rumors about a possible nuclear confrontation in that region has worked as a great barrier to the realization of international security ideas of Obama. As put by Stephen Bosworth in his address to the US Congress on June 12, the US is following a quadrangle policy whose four sides include “regional consultations”, “UN sanctions against North Korea”, “bolstering defense arrangements with allies”, and “readiness to talk to North Korea”.

By getting the Security Council Resolution 1874 passed on June 12, Obama managed to intensify pressures on Pyongyang which had been already high following Resolution 825 in 1992, Resolution 1540 in 2004, and Resolutions 1695 and 1718 in 2006. The latest resolution is surely the toughest resolution adopted by the United Nations Security Council on North Korea. The United States is also following other strategic options. Negotiations with Pyongyang, however, were stalled in the concluding years of President Bush’s term, leaving a more aggressive North Korea. In other words, US strategy for nuclear disarmament of North Korea and freeing the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons is not only at a dead-end, but has led to a crisis which cannot be managed by the United States alone. Will Washington be able to manage that international crisis on its own?

Source: Etemaade Melli Newspaper
Translated By: Iran Review