Kim announced last week at the Eighth Congress of the Workers’ Party – a meeting for North Korea’s ruling elite – that his country plans to reinforce Pyongyang’s already dangerous nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs with new and sophisticated weapons, such as nuclear weapons. tactics designed for use on the battlefield and on warheads designed to escape American-made missile defense systems.
Kim’s message was crystal clear: right now, North Korea needs its nuclear weapons to stop the United States “no matter who is in power,” he said – and no matter what the cost.
The young leader’s ambitious plans to modernize his nuclear arsenal will be expensive, at a time when money is already tight. North Korea voluntarily broke the last of its few ties to the outside world in 2020 to avoid an influx of Covid-19. This included cutting off almost all trade with Beijing, an economic lifeline that the impoverished country needs to keep its people from starving.
North Korea’s economy is now in the gutter and its food supply is in danger.
To prevent the pandemic, Kim effectively did to his country what many in Washington hoped economic sanctions would do: bring the North Korean economy to the brink of collapse. The fact that he did it of his own accord led many to question whether the sanctions would be strong enough to change Kim’s thinking.
Some analysts disagree with this line of thinking. They see opportunities.
With North Korea’s economy already on the ropes, they believe that now is the time to deliver the final blow – a blow of paralyzing coercive measures that, once and for all, convinces Kim that his continued search for nuclear weapons does not guarantee the security of his regime, that threatens him.
Either way, Kim’s plans will be a major challenge for President-elect Joe Biden.
Trump, like Obama and President George W. Bush, will make his successor a more dangerous and well-armed opponent than the one he inherited.
Maximum pressure
Before Trump agreed to sit face to face with Kim in 2018, his government put in place a strategy properly called “maximum pressure”.
The aim was to use sanctions, diplomacy and other coercive measures, except armed conflict, to convince Kim to agree to the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of his nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.
While North Korea was testing missiles and nuclear bombs at an unprecedented rate in 2017, the Trump administration raised the temperature. The United States’ mission to the United Nations successfully lobbied the UN Security Council to put into practice resolutions that would pursue North Korea’s ability to make money from the sale of regular products such as coal and seafood. The Treasury Department used its tremendous power and influence over the global financial system to enact its own unilateral sanctions. And diplomats have successfully lobbied U.S. partners to close Pyongyang’s embassies abroad, which the regime has been accused of using as fronts for money-making opportunities.
At the end of 2017, North Korea was banned from almost all international trade. Even China, North Korea’s longtime ally, agreed to sign incredibly punitive UN sanctions that year, and Beijing seemed to be applying them at first.
Many experts believe that Washington gave up maximum pressure too soon.
Some, including former US Deputy Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, Evans Revere, argue that Biden’s team should seriously consider a new model of maximum pressure, increasing sanctions “in order to impose even more pain. and isolation to North Korea “.
“The intensification of sanctions, in addition to other diplomatic, economic and banking and military pressures that you could apply to North Korea, could certainly shake the foundations of the regime, especially now that we see that the regime is suffering a serious economic crisis like the one we know “not seen in a while,” said Revere.
Revere and other sanction advocates argue that there are still tools in the U.S. arsenal to put pressure on North Korea and that they should be pursued. The Biden government could, for example, do more to close North Korean trading companies together with U.S. allies and target Chinese banks that help North Korea access foreign currency.
“There is much, much more to be done that could squeeze, isolate and undermine North Korea in ways that would undermine its confidence in its long-standing assumption that nuclear weapons are its lifeline and would also lead to an issue that nuclear weapons are not your salvation, they are the ones that have the potential to undermine the stability of your regime, “said Revere.
Risky business
Revere said he recognizes that such an approach is risky.
This could force North Koreans to choose between feeding their people and financing their nuclear weapons, and history shows that Kim would probably choose the second option.
Things are not so bad in North Korea at the moment, but analysts believe the economic situation is more dire than ever since the famine. Devastating storms, punitive sanctions and the pandemic hit North Korea’s economy in 2020. There seems to be enough food for everyone, but the supply is under more pressure than at any time since starvation, according to Chad O’Carroll, CEO of Korea Risk Group, which produces North Korea publications NK Pro and NK News.
“We can safely say that there is a shortage across the country of various types of food, food items,” he said.
Although expensive, Kim’s decision to close North Korea’s borders appear to have worked from a public health perspective. North Korea’s claim that it did not contract a single case of Covid-19 is probably false, but the country apparently has not experienced a serious wave of infections.
A large number of cases are likely to overwhelm North Korea’s dilapidated health infrastructure, so Kim will hardly lift border restrictions until the pandemic subsides. This means that Pyongyang will continue, to achieve its goals, to inflict a level of economic suffering on itself.
John Delury, a professor at the Graduate School of International Relations at Yonsei University, said this should be “a serious reminder to the Biden government that (economic) pressure does not work in North Korea.”
“North Korea has been subjected to an even more extreme form of economic suffering (than sanctions) to keep Covid at bay. And yet, they are not moving on the nuclear issue,” said Delury.
Putting everyone on the same page
Biden now faces the same foreign policy problem that plagued his five previous predecessors: how to make North Korea give up its search for nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
He may be forced to do this sooner than he would like. Although the new weapons that Kim mentioned are in various stages of development, most would need to be tested to be considered operational. If North Korea conducted such a test, it would likely set the stage for a diplomatic confrontation between Washington and Pyongyang in the early days of Biden’s presidency.
Whichever path Biden chooses, there are still major obstacles.
The strategy would also require the participation of three restless players: China, Russia and South Korea.
“China and Russia will not fully comply with existing sanctions,” said Duyeon Kim, senior associate researcher at the Center for New American Security. “Geopolitically, it would be difficult to designate new sanctions without a very convincing justification for Beijing, Moscow and even the lunar government in South Korea.”
China and Russia seem satisfied with the status quo. South Korean President Moon Jae-in may not be on board with a pressure strategy because he favors economic engagement and cooperation as a means of lowering the temperature. Moon said that dialogue and mutually beneficial cooperation are the key to the Korean peace process in a speech earlier this month.
If dialogue is the way to go, the Biden government must recognize its limits, said Delury.
“We must moderate our expectations of what engagement can do,” he said. “We saw what three domes can do and that leaves a lot to be desired.”
“How do you deal with this challenge from North Korea … and deal with all these other things at the same time?” Revere said. “This is difficult, but these people are extremely capable.”