(Page 2 of 32) - Has North Korea Achieved 'Security Juche'?: How Evolving Trends in Pyongyang's WMD Capabilities Will Constrain U.S. Foreign Policy and Military Options on the Korean Peninsula authored by Preston, Thomas.

Has North Korea Achieved ‘Security Juche’?:

How Evolving Trends in

Pyongyang’s WMD Capabilities Will Constrain U.S. Foreign Policy and

Military Options on the Korean Peninsula.

Thomas Preston

Associate Professor of International Relations

Department of Political Science, Washington State University

Introduction

With the public declaration that it possessed nuclear arms and its official withdrawal from the Six

Party Talks on February 10, 2005, North Korea signaled to the rest of the world that it had now reached a
turning point in its security relationships with others. Turning aside from its previous, more ambiguous
nuclear posture - that vaguely spoke of ‘deterrent forces’ in its rhetoric while following an ‘opaque’
nuclear procurement strategy - North Korea surprised many observers by openly declaring itself to be a
nuclear power. Obviously, one can debate the motives behind this move. Was this Kim Jong Il’s way of
placating his military generals and shoring up the support of more conservative factions within his
regime? Or was it merely the most recent example of the standard North Korean ‘brinkmanship’
negotiating style designed to force the Bush administration to change its hard-line negotiating posture and
actually make significant concessions in future talks? Was it a reflection of Kim Jong Il’s growing
unease and perception of increasing threat to his regime’s survival as a result of over four years of
intensely hostile U.S. foreign policy rhetoric and the clear willingness of the current Administration to
seek ‘regime change’ against what they see as ‘rogue’ states? Or was it merely a growing feeling in
Pyongyang that its existing nuclear capabilities (perhaps in the form of 6-9 finished warheads), coupled
with its powerful conventional military forces (tens of thousands of artillery pieces, rocket launchers, and
missiles protected deep within the mountainsides across the DMZ), have finally given it the ability to
defend against serious external attack or invasion through pure deterrence (by raising the potential costs
of aggression far higher than any opponent could accept)? That Kim Il Sung’s dreams of self-sufficiency
have arrived, at least in the strategic sense, in the form of a nuclear ‘security juche’. Or was it possibly a
combination of all of these factors which moved North Korea towards a declarative nuclear posture?

Given the opaque nature of the regime, definitive answers to these questions are unlikely to be

forthcoming except over the course of time. However, it is fair to say that in a practical sense,
Pyongyang’s pronouncement actually changed very few ‘facts on the ground’ for policy makers or
analysts. It was already widely accepted as fact by most of the Western intelligence community that
North Korea possessed at least the capability and fissile materials required to produce a small nuclear
arsenal. Indeed, the nuclear potential of North Korea has been a factor policy makers have been forced to
consider for many years now whenever offensive military or political options against Pyongyang are
weighed. Although North Korea has yet to fully demonstrate its capabilities by openly testing a weapon
(although some suspicion still lingers around the possibility that one of Pakistan’s own nuclear tests was
actually a joint one with Pyongyang), its claim to be a nuclear state is quite credible given its known
infrastructure, technical expertise, and access to fissile materials. Moreover, North Korea’s delivery
system capabilities, though not as advanced as Bush administration hawks like to pretend for the purposes
of justifying NMD, are still quite capable of providing Pyongyang with a robust regional strike capability.