Crisis on the Korean Peninsula : How to Deal With a Nuclear North Korea

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Summary: Not a Bad Idea, But What If....
Review: In the book, Crisis on the Korean Peninsula: How to Deal with a Nuclear Armed Korea, authors Michael O'Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki offer a grand strategy for securing American interests in Northeast Asia and for integrating North Korea into the international arena. It is a thoughtful plan and O'Hanlon and Mochizuki cannot be faulted for their lack of strategic vision. However, it is a plan that hinges on some problematic assumptions, and that is therefore riskier than the authors suggest.

O'Hanlon and Mochizuki argue for a strategy that they say is a middle ground between the accommodating diplomacy of the Clinton Administration and the more confrontational Bush Administration. In their view, Bush's approach to North Korea risks backing Pyongyang into a confrontation on a peninsula where any conflict would bring on devastation far beyond what South Korea and the United States would be prepared to accept. By contrast, while they see the Clinton Administration's 1994 Framework agreement as somewhat successful in temporarily capping North Korea's nuclear program, they readily admit that it established a precedent for encouraging Pyongyang to pursue nuclear blackmail and that it was not effective in blocking the North from cheating.

Consequently, the authors push for what they call a Grand Bargain, in which the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea would offer North Korea extensive economic aid and security guarantees, including a peace treaty and non-aggression pact, in return for significant reductions in both conventional and WMD under a rigorous verification regimen. O'Hanlon and Mochizuki argue, convincingly, that North Korea could not win a military conflict, and that given the qualitative disparities between Pyongyang and the allies, significant reductions could be undertaken without endangering South Korean or American security. In the long run, the authors argue that Pyongyang may gradually be drawn into peaceful reunification.

There is no doubt that this strategy has much merit, and that its analysis of the current military balance of power on the peninsula is as described. However, the success of the author's approach depends on two untested assumptions: 1) That North Korea truly wants to modernize its economy and would be willing to trade away its military forces for a settlement, and 2) that the West would be able to respond quickly to any North Korean failure to abide by a deal.

As regards the first point, the authors provide some evidence that North Korea would like to modernize its economy, but the evidence is not conclusive. Kim Jong Il has indeed demonstrated some willingness to reform the catastrophic North Korean economy, but for the most part this has been to insure the military might of the regime, not to modernize it. Indeed, the benefits of such reforms as their have been thus far have gone almost entirely to the military. What is more, in the way the authors structure their arms reduction proposal, further benefits would accrue to a North Korean military that would have shed itself of useless and obsolescent equipment, thereby making it more dangerous.

In and of itself this would not be an unacceptable risk, but it does not take into account the domestic political implications for Western, specifically South Korean but also potentially American, interests in such a Korean settlement. If North Korea were to cheat on a settlement, its public would have little to say in the matter. However, the same is not true for South Korea, where public opinion would limit the ability of the Seoul government to respond to North Korean treaty violations.

The situation is roughly analogous to what the United States faced in trying to hold the Soviet Union accountable for violations of the ABM treaty during the Cold War. Washington's accusations of Soviet cheating at the Krasnoyarsk phased array radar installation were proven to be correct, although they were dismissed by Moscow, but American public opinion was so wedded to the ABM Treaty that it left Washington unable to meaningfully respond. In the context of the Korean peninsula, such a situation could have potentially fatal consequences since the margin for error on the DMZ is even smaller than it was in the world of superpower brinksmanship. Yet South Koreans are far more wedded to their "sunshine policy" toward the North than America ever was to détente. This makes any agreement with the North a far more politically complicated proposition for the allies than would at first appear to be the case.

Beyond this, the book envisions a continued American presence in Northeast Asia, notwithstanding that any settlement on the peninsula would immediately undermine the South Korean public's support for that presence. Indeed, even under the current circumstances, South Korean public opinion has grown increasingly restive about America's military posture.

Furthermore, there is little to suggest that a settlement that allows North Korea to prosper would not work against U.S. strategic interests. From an American perspective, any deal that does not envision an American withdrawal from the peninsula at some point in time- from a place that Washington initially became involved with in part by accident - cannot be deemed useful over the long run. What the United States most requires from any Korean settlement is an arrangement whereby it can redeploy its military forces off the Asian mainland and back to positions consistent with a maritime strategy. Such a re-deployment would restore strategic flexibility to the United States, allowing it to escape from the static defense it must now maintain on the peninsula.

None of which is to suggest that what O'Hanlon and Mochizuki have proposed is without merit. To the contrary, this is a singularly insightful and useful book. However, where it falls short is in its optimistic assumption that Kim Jong Il is as reasonable and as dedicated to a balanced settlement as are the authors. That assumption is unproven, and it will not be without risk to test it.

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Summary: How to avoid nuclear war - read this book!
Review: Michael O'Hanlon is one of the most brilliant and perceptive writers on strategic issues around today, as many of his many readers in the Los Angeles Times know well. Now pairing up with the other Mike at the Brookings, he does not disappoint his many fans with this superbly written new book. With North Korea there is no doubt about whether or not this rogue state possesses many weapons of lethal danger, nuclear being among them. But that means that to negotiate with a regime as dangerous as the North Korean takes endless tact and wisdom - failure could result in the deaths of millions of people. It is precisely such wisdom that the two Mikes of the Brookings provide us - so start praying now that their wisdom prevails, that the threat is dealt with peacefully and that war will not come to Asia, as many understandably fear. Christopher Catherwood, author of CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS AND ISLAMIC RAGE (Zondervan, 2003) and THE BALKANS IN WORLD WAR 2 (Palgrave, 2003)

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Summary: A grand bargain for the hermit kingdom
Review: There are few places in the world more dangerous than the Korean peninsula; yet after a decade of engagement with North Korea, the world is no closer to resolving this potentially disastrous stalemate. After the 1994 framework de facto broke down in 2002, all bets about how to deal with North Korea were off. The world had to start over.

America was not only focused on Iraq (thus putting on hold dealing with North Korea), but it also lacked any comprehensive plan for diffusing the crisis. The purpose of the "Crisis in the Korean Peninsula," by Michael O'Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki, is to fill this gap and offer a broad strategy about what to do with North Korea.

The plan is both comprehensive and ambitious. In fact, ambition is its chief attraction; Mr. O'Hanlon and Mr. Mochizuki do not want to diffuse the crisis, they want to resolve it. That means offering North Korea an alternative future with more security and more prosperity. This "grand bargain" entails abandoning nuclear weapons, reducing conventional forces, obtaining security guarantees from America, reforming economically (modeled after China or Viet Nam), launching a dialogue on human rights, and returning Japanese kidnapped victims.

The big question, of course, is whether such a plan is realistic. The authors do their best to show that it is. America, China, Russia, South Korea and Japan can all benefit from stability and prosperity in the peninsula. What about North Korea? This is an enigma, but the authors' argument that Pyongyang might go for it is both persuasive and interesting.

When everything else has failed, there is little harm in changing course. But Mr. O'Hanlon and Mr. Mochizuki have produced a great vision from this dead end; this book is an incisive look into the history of the conflict with North Korea and a road map to solving it. At least, if this plan fails, the authors argue, the world will know for sure that there is no reform for North Korea--no carrots, just sticks. But their plan surely deserves a chance to work first.

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Summary: Interesting insightful proposal, but drawn out too long
Review: While this argument offers an insightful proposal on dealing with N. Korea (backed up by a great deal of stats) it should have been an article not a book. The book begins to get very repetitive fast, and offers information for the purpose of backing the argument (Grand bargain offered to N. Korea). This is not a book to tell one about life in N. Korea, its past history, or details about its Leader and his "pleasure squad" and Japanese kidnappings. This is a policy proposal, a very well formulated one, to deal with N. Korea right now. The argument is stretched out to fit into book form, and gets redundant after some reading. An interesting perspective, but leaves one wanting for another book.