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MEETING
TODA
ODAY’S PROLIFERA
ROLIFERATION
CHALLENGES
fed or well trained or well equipped as they would like. But, in short, you have a large and dangerous country on
the verge of a significant nuclear weapon arsenal.
They do have a failed system. Their economy is in tatters. Their political system has no legitimacy, does not
satisfy or begin to satisfy the hopes or aspirations of their people. Their alliances are in tatters. The close relationship
that they had in past regimes with both China and Russia, which still persist in some way, are not at all the
kind of guarantor of their ultimate security as they once had.
What do the North Koreans want? We don’t know. It’s hard to say. It’s not clear how many North Koreans
know, or which of those that know count. What we do know— and what Bob always told us to do when we were
working this problem last time is we don’t know what they want but we do know what they have and what they
can do. And therefore, it seems that the proper policy perspective would be one that monitored their capabilities
rather than relied exclusively upon an interpretation of their intentions to guide our policy.
We do know that if they stick to their current glide path they’re going to either end up with more nuclear
weapons or more bargaining leverage, or both, because as time moves on, that’s what’s happening. They’re
getting more capable, and the more capable they become, the more they will seek to exact, by way of concessions,
to give up what they’ve got. That’s just logic.
The only way for us to truly find out what they are about is to force them to choose. We do know that they
cherish their regime. We do know that they want regime survival. If we really want to test the proposition whether
North Korea will or will not accept serious constraints upon its nuclear weapons capabilities, we need to force a
choice between security of their regime and security of their weapons program. This we have not done.
Our objectives—and when I say “our objectives” I think it’s fair to say those involved in the six-party talks
all around—are clear. We want to see an elimination of the North Korean nuclear weapons program. From a U.S.
perspective, there are certain parameters that have been levied on how that is achieved. One, there should be no
blackmail; two, the process must be multilateral; and three, it must be irreversible.
Now, at a very broad level, two of these parameters I think are quite unexceptionable. I don’t think we’d find
anyone in this audience or elsewhere who would advocate subjecting themselves to blackmail or arguing for a
unilateral solution, but I think we need to dig down at least one further level. I think in some measure the
parameters as described reflect a misreading of history, which would be corrected if they read our book (laughter)
but I think more importantly—and I will return to the question of prescription and get around the blackmail and
multilateral issues—but irreversibility I think is a different kettle of fish.
Irreversibility I think is a really a will-o’-the-wisp. On the one hand, it’s nice to have. On the other hand, by
the time you get it you probably don’t need it. When you are talking about proliferation, as Joe and I argued years
and years ago, you’re really playing for time. And the only way you truly get irreversibility is with profound
political change that affects what I would consider the demand side of the proliferation equation. So you have
irreversibility, I would submit to you, in Germany, in Japan, in South Africa, in Argentina. And I’ll take it. It’s the
best nonproliferation that you can get. But in these harder cases—North Korea, Iraq, Iran—it’s not available
really, and in any meaningful way, because any pledge that you get you’re going to have to monitor, and the
political change that you seek is far too long in coming to help you on your nonproliferation problem.
So if you take that as your status quo and where we are headed, we are left with a pretty clear and wellrehearsed
set of options on how to address the problem. One is regime change. This was not one that was
seriously considered in the way it’s now thought about a decade ago. The problem with a regime change is it’s the
flip side of the irreversibility issue. It’s great. It is the most effective nonproliferation policy you can get. But it’s too
slow and it’s too subject to elements outside of the control of diplomats. And in the case of North Korea, we have
had a history of people predicting its imminent demise for years and years and years, many of whom have
themselves passed from the world stage, even as the admittedly intolerant and totalitarian North Korean system
has survived.
Now, the only think I can think of that is worse than a North Korea with nuclear weapons is a collapsing
North Korea with nuclear weapons because under those circumstances you not only have all the dangers you
already have with proliferation but the further danger of a country that thinks it’s extremis and may be more
inclined either to use [nuclear weapons] or to sell them to third parties. So regime change is not a very attractive
option.
Secondly, the military option. This was seriously considered a decade ago when we knew where the 8,000
spent fuel rods were and when we believed that a red line against the separation of that plutonium was something
the president should clearly consider and that it should be an option available to the president to take
military actions in bombing or taking out the Yongbyon facility in order to eliminate the proliferation threat that
the plutonium posed. We don’t have to talk much about that today because I think the option is gone. It would
have been hard enough then to muster international support, beginning with our regional allies in Seoul and
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