NAPSNet Daily Report Monday, October 16, 2006
- 1. Question About Success of DPRK Nuclear Test
2. US on DPRK Sanctions
3. Experts on US DPRK Policy Shift
4. PRC and DPRK Sanctions
5. PRC-DPRK Border
6. EU on DPRK Sanctions
7. Japan Naval Redeployment
8. Japan Nuclear Weapons
9. PRC Party Plenum
10. PRC Power Plants
11. PRC on Railway to Lhasa
12. PRC Shooting
13. PRC Family Planning
14. Taiwan Recall Attempt
II. CanKor
- 15. Report #263
I. NAPSNet
1. Question About Success of DPRK Nuclear Test
Joong Ang Ilbo (“ATOMIC TEST EVIDENCE SHOWS ‘PARTIAL SUCCESS'”, 2006-10-17) reported that RO Korean scientists are calling the explosion in the DPRK a partially successful test, following military confirmation that the United States had detected radioactivity in air samples near the suspected nuclear test site. Neither country has confirmed that the DPRK’s declared test was a nuclear explosion. Experts in the ROK said the nuclear test was an imperfect success. They said only a portion of the nuclear material used in the warhead appeared to explode, based on the scale of the tremor.
2. US on DPRK Sanctions
Reuters (“DIVISIONS ON N. KOREA SANCTIONS SPUR DIPLOMATIC PUSH”, 2006-10-15) reported that the United States insists that the PRC has an obligation to help enforce new U.N. sanctions on the DPRK. In a bid to “mollify” the PRC Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington wants to implement it in a way that avoids “open conflict” with the DPRK. Rice will visit Japan, the RO Korea and PRC this week for negotiations on how to implement the resolution.
3. Experts on US DPRK Policy Shift
San Francisco Chronicle (“BUSH SEEN AS SIGNALING POSSIBLE CHANGE IN POLICY TO STRATEGY OF CONTAINMENT, DETERRENCE”, 2006-10-15) reported that foreign policy analysts suggest the Bush administration is shifting away from unilateral force and back to the hallmarks of Cold War diplomacy: containment and deterrence. Marina Ottaway, a senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, cites what she calls a “telling quote” in President Bush’s news conference last Wednesday: “Stay the course means keep doing what you’re doing. My attitude is, don’t do what you’re doing if it’s not working; change.” Andrew Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University said, “The great dilemma that we face now is trying to determine if deterrence will work against North Korea and Iran, and the dilemma hinges on our ability to determine whether or not those two regimes are rational.” But the leaders of the Soviet Union and PRC seemed similarly erratic when they first sought nuclear weapons, said Dan Reiter, a political scientist at Emory University. That element, a number of analysts said, may be part of the most important area of overlap between the Cold War and the modern era: the need for diplomacy, for talking, not only to American allies, but to American enemies. “There was a lot more than just hoping it would not happen. There was a lot of diplomacy involved,” Ottaway said. What’s more, Ottaway noted, the Cold War often involved the United States making concessions to its rivals — from permitting cultural exchanges to negotiating reductions in arsenals — despite fears of rewarding bad behavior that were debated then and have returned today in discussions over whether directly engaging Tehran and Pyongyang endorses their intransigence and repeats Europe’s failed appeasement policies of the 1930s. “It’s an idea which at times has been invoked, that … you have to hold off talks until that group essentially has surrendered,” Ottaway said. “I think, in the end, we have always been forced to talk to those people.” While talking is anathema to advocates of “regime change,” Richard Haass, the former director of policy planning for the State Department during President Bush’s first term, notes that such a goal is not necessarily incompatible with the Cold War strategy of containment. “Preventative war is just not legal. You can’t just attack somebody because someday they might be a threat to you,” said James Jay Carafano, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. What’s more, reducing the hostility between the United States and its newly nuclear rivals can, paradoxically, put those regimes on the defensive, Carafano said. “In a sense, they need an enemy. That’s the problem here,” he said. “If North Korea has no enemies, how do they justify having a garrison state
(return to top) New York Times (“NUCLEAR TAG TEAM: THE LONE SUPERPOWER THAT COULDN’T”, 2006-10-16) reported, in an opinion piece by David Sanger, that in President Bush’s first term, taking the measure of American power seemed “deceptively simple: The post-9/11 mood of the nation fueled Mr. Bush’s impatience with weak-kneed allies who did not see threats the way he saw them, and he thought nothing of driving around them”. This is in wide contrast to last Wednesday, when Mr. Bush stepped into the Rose Garden to talk chiefly about the DPRK, and used the word “diplomacy” no fewer than 11 times. The president was repeatedly questioned about why he keeps drawing new lines in the sand – lines the DPRK and Iran ignore – and he was asked whether he regretted missing what some people saw as a last opportunity to take out the DPRK’s nuclear fuel supplies at the start of 2003, after the country threw out United Nations inspectors and announced it was driving headlong for the bomb. He smiled, and cast his questioners as reach-for-the-gun unilateralists lacking faith in the art of peaceful persuasion. “However,” writes Sanger, “even though the United States still boasts the world’s largest military, most dynamic economy and a culture that the world snaps up, there is rising evidence that many countries – Russia and the PRC among them – sniff a distinct change in the strategic atmosphere. While North Korea knows it would not last a day in a full-scale war with the United States, it skillfully exploits an American soft point when it stirs fears about its potential to sow havoc among America’s Northeast Asian allies and crucial trading partners – Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China.” “It’s a double whammy,” said James Steinberg, the dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, who dealt with North Korea as deputy national security adviser under President Clinton. The fact that America was willing to invade Iraq, he said, led North Korea and Iran to conclude that they needed nuclear weapons to deter America from putting them in its gunsights next. “And now, by failing to subdue Iraq and move on, we’ve encouraged them to conclude that there is little risk to them if they just speed forward into nuclear breakout.” “It is hard to remember a moment when the world’s sole superpower seemed less positioned to manage a fractured world,” continues Sanger. “It’s not only that American hard power is tied up in Baghdad and Kabul; Mr. Bush has acknowledged that soft power – the ability to lead because you are admired – is suffering, too. Abu Ghraib ‘kind of eased us off the moral high ground,’ he volunteered at the news conference the other day. In short, being a sole superpower isn’t what it was cracked up to be 17 years ago. Back then, you could measure a nation’s power in throw-weights. Now, it’s the amount of weight you can throw around.” (return to top)
4. PRC and DPRK Sanctions
New York Times (“CHINA SAID TO START ENFORCING NORTH KOREA SANCTIONS”, 2006-10-16) reported that R. Nicholas Burns, undersecretary for political affairs, said in an interview on CNN that there were “some indications” that the PRC has begun inspecting trucks crossing its border with the DPRK. In a dispatch from Dandong, the main crossing point between the PRC and the DPRK. The Associated Press reported that PRC customs inspectors examined cargo trucks bound for the North more closely today than they did last week. Trading companies in Dandong and another border city, Tumen, said that the inspections were not interfering with their shipments, the A.P. said. Reporters who visited the border post last week did not see inspectors open any trucks.
5. PRC-DPRK Border
Yomiuri Shimbun (“CHINA ERECTS NORTH KOREA BORDER FENCE”, 2006-10-16) reported that ahead of the adoption of a U.N. Security Council resolution against Pyongyang, the PRC increased security along its border with the DPRK by building fences in and near Dandong, Liaoning Province. Residents on both sides of the border seemed unable to quell anxiety about the situation, as some DPRK merchants began stockpiling goods. A DPR Korean merchant in his 40s in a hotel in Dandong seemed unconcerned about the U.N. resolution. According to sources, about 10,000 residents in Dandong are employed in the trading of goods between the two countries. A growing number of DPRK government officials also engage in trade.
6. EU on DPRK Sanctions
Deutsche Welle (“EU SUPPORTIVE OF NORTH KOREA SANCTIONS”, 2006-10-16) reported that European Union leaders say they fully back economic sanctions against the DPRK for its self-declared atomic test, adding that they will set a good precedent for dealing with Iran. The UN Security Council passed sanctions Saturday. But signs of the intense diplomatic haggling over the scale and nature of the sanctions were evident even after the text was approved in New York, with the PRC voicing reservations about provisions for inspecting cargo entering and leaving the DPRK. In contrast, Japan, which had pushed for even tougher measures, said it was considering further action of its own to ratchet up the pressure on Pyongyang.
7. Japan Naval Redeployment
Agence France-Presse (“JAPAN MAY SHIFT WARSHIPS FROM INDIAN OCEAN TO NKOREA”, 2006-10-16) reported that Japan’s defense chief has suggested that the country could pull warships from the Indian Ocean, where they assist US operations in Afghanistan, to waters near the DPRK. Defense Agency chief Fumio Kyuma said Japan could amend the mission drafted under special legislation to allow the deployment to the Indian Ocean.
8. Japan Nuclear Weapons
Reuters (“JAPAN SHOULD REEXAMINE ITS NUCLEAR WEAPONS BAN, RULING PARTY OFFICIAL SAYS”, 2006-10-16) reported that Japan needs to discuss whether it should possess nuclear weapons in response to the DPRK’s claimed nuclear test, the ruling party’s policy chief said. Shoichi Nakagawa, chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party’s policy research council, said he believed Japan would adhere to its policy of not arming itself with nuclear weapons but added that debate over whether to go nuclear was necessary.
9. PRC Party Plenum
Reuters (“HU CAUTIOUS OVER POLITICAL REFORM”, 2006-10-16) reported that alarmed by stubborn corruption and public unrest, the PRC’s President Hu Jintao is steering the ruling Communist Party to reforms that will make officials more answerable. But he has resisted calls for deeper democratic change, and critics inside the party question whether his wary changes are enough to cure the country’s ills.
10. PRC Power Plants
BBC News (“RUSSIA’S ‘$10BN CHINA POWER DEAL'”, 2006-10-16) reported that PRC and Russian firms are planning to spend $10bn on building power plants in north east PRC, Beijing media says. The plants, to be built on the border between the two countries in the PRC’s northeast, will help provide energy needed for China’s economic boom.
11. PRC on Railway to Lhasa
The Los Angeles Times (“TRAIN TO TIBET IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK, CHINA INSISTS”, 2006-10-16) reported that stung by criticism since the opening of its new Himalayan rail line, the PRC went on a charm offensive last week in a bid to convince the world it is doing everything possible to preserve and develop Tibetan culture. “The Chinese government has always shown much concern and attached great importance to the preservation and development of Tibetan culture,” Lhagpa Phuntshogs, director-general of the government-funded Chinese Center for Tibetan Studies, told reporters.
12. PRC Shooting
Reuters (“VIDEO SHOWS APPARENT SHOOTING ON TIBETANS BY CHINA “, 2006-10-16) reported that video footage shot by a Romanian television station appears to show PRC soldiers firing at a group of Tibetans as they attempt to cross a mountain pass into Nepal, days after the PRC defended the soldiers’ action. The PRC’s state media defended the shooting, saying the group was trying to cross the border illegally and attacked the soldiers when they tried to persuade the group to return home.
13. PRC Family Planning
Agence France-Presse (“CHINA TO PAY FARMERS MORE FOR HAVING FEWER CHILDREN “, 2006-10-16) reported that the PRC will next year introduce new financial incentives to encourage its 750 million rural residents to have fewer children. Parents in the countryside aged over 60 will each year receive 600 yuan (76 dollars) if they have only one child, or two girls, the China Daily reported, quoting the National Population and Family Planning Commission.
14. Taiwan Recall Attempt
BBC News (“SECOND RECALL BID FAILS IN TAIWAN”, 2006-10-16) reported that a second attempt to pass a recall motion against Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian has failed. Taiwan’s opposition was hoping to get enough votes to force a referendum on the future of the embattled leader. But they failed to get the two-thirds majority they needed for the motion to pass.
II. CanKor
15. Report #263
CanKor (“FOCUS: The Nuclear Gauntlet”, 2006-10-14) The DPRK announces a successful underground nuclear test on 9 October 2006. Although international experts dispute the success of this test, the fact that the DPRK defied warnings from even its ally China represents a deliberate “red line” crossing that directly challenges the international community. In this full-edition FOCUS, “The Nuclear Gauntlet,” CanKor offers a selection of the wide range of reactions by politicians, experts and commentators. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper sharply condemns the nuclear test, calling it “irresponsible and dangerous.” Expatriate Canadian Gwynne Dyer, a political commentator resident in London, England, argues that sanctions against the DPRK have proven counterproductive and that it is time to bargain with Kim Jong Il. Another Canadian expatriate, David Frum, former Bush speechwriter credited with the “axis of evil” phrase and currently resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, suggests that China is complicit in the DPRK nuclear test and should be punished by encouraging Japan to create its own nuclear deterrent. Vancouver artist Irwin Oostindie, creator of the photography exhibit “Axis to Grind”, argues that because it has blindly followed the Bush administration’s failed North Korea policy, Canada must recognize its own complicity in the nuclear test. Marcus Noland of the Washington-based Institute for International Economics suggests that based on historical experience and given the position of China and the ROK, the world may have to adjust to a nuclear-armed North Korea. The danger of regional nuclear proliferation or the actual use of a nuclear weapon is less likely than the prospect of North Korean sales of fissile material or actual weapons to non-state actors, Noland concludes. Peter Hayes and Tim Savage of the Nautilus Institute warn that the worst option is to act precipitously with military action in response to the test. Confrontational measures such as naval blockades would only invite the DPRK to “turn up the volume” with additional tests. Four leading experts of the Pacific Forum CSIS, a Honolulu-based non-profit foreign policy research institute affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, suggest answers to the most pressing questions arising from the DPRK nuclear test.