Making Sense of North Korean Situation: Is de-escalation possible?

Northeast Asia has been witnessing an escalating situation in recent times. In the case of Korean peninsula, only North Korea is alleged and widely reported to have acquired nuclear weapon capability. In Northeast Asia also, both South Korea and Japan enjoy the security protection under the nuclear umbrella provided by the United States. China, a country, with close links to North Korea, is a recognised nuclear player in Northeast Asia with its overarching influence felt all around the region. With this backdrop, the following two questions are pertinent:

• Is North Korea a risk taker or risk averse state and with what consequence?
• Second, is it possible to draw parallels between South Asian CBMs with those in the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia?

Is North Korea a Risk Taker? Attitude to risk- a taste for it or an aversion to it- is a useful way to explain decision-making mechanism since it links the strategic and the psychological conceptions of choice. It portrays leaders as calculating goal-seekers while allowing them to have different personal decision-making styles. One can call Khruschev risk-acceptant or risk-seeking and Brezhnev risk-averse without implying that either was more rational than the other. In the same vein, one can argue that Kim Jong-un of North Korea is a risk taker perhaps to the point of brinkmanship. According to Utility Theory scholars, the risk averse person will prefer not to gamble too hard and accept the best outcome at face value while risk taker will try to push the envelope too far to the point of brinkmanship in order to derive maximum advantage or leverage.  Risk acceptance was widely attributed to Britain and France in their intervention in Suez and to Eisenhower in his deception about the U-2 over-flight; while a cautious decision was the United States staying out of the Suez crisis. This association of risk acceptance with riskier choice is the key. The idea is that a risk-averse state is one that chooses policies that reduce others' incentives to attack it. Robert Jervis, a known international relations scholar presents a prospect theory interpretation of crisis instability and suggests that because decisions are being made among losses in territory, reputation or domestic support, a leader intends to order a pre-emptive strike in cases in which the standard expected utility model would predict the actor to cut his losses. It is possible to argue that under extreme provocation and in the absence of credible CBMs, Kim Jong-un, under the current situation may adopt a policy of preemption as he may determine that he has nothing more to lose by not going in for the first use of nuclear weapons.

Perhaps, what is needed is for Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington is to come up with a plausible proposal, a "grand diplomatic bargain"—or at least a broad, long-term road map—that would require Pyongyang to:

• Verifiably terminate all of its nuclear programs, allowing on-site inspections of its uranium enrichment facilities as well as inspections of suspicious sites, and resealing the unprocessed plutonium under the close supervision of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
• Reaffirm its firm commitment to allow its spent fuel rods to be taken out of the country, and to eliminate whatever nuclear weapons it now has. Ideally, North Korea might agree to speed up these measures, though it may not be realistic to think it will implement them immediately
• In spite of the seemingly difficult terrain in generating and implementing confidence-building measures in Northeast Asia, all are not doom and gloom. It is thus plausible to make the following conclusions based on existing regional and sub-regional institutional arrangements in Northeast Asia.
• In the case of North Korea, although US administration under President Barack Obama prefers a multilateral arrangement, yet it is not completely averse to a bilateral dialogue by providing North Korea some kind of security guarantee in exchange for real tangible movement on the nuclear issue to be undertaken by North Korea.
• In South Asia, both India and Pakistan have initiated a series of meaningful Track-II dialogues and discussions at the people to people basis outside of the regular governmental to governmental channels. Idea of having a nuclear risk reduction center in both the countries have received favorable reactions both inside and outside of South Asia including the skeptics who felt such a proposal to be too ambitious and hence unrealistic and unworkable. In the case of Korean peninsula, CSCAP (Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific) has evolved into a classic example of active cooperation at the Track-II level between the two Koreas in conjunction with other countries of Northeast Asia, South East Asia as well as member nations from Asia Pacific and North America.
• In Northeast Asia, KEDO (Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization) has been hailed as a model case for international cooperation that deals with North Korea head on by addressing issues such as food aid and agricultural technical assistance so vital to it (North Korea).
• In Northeast Asia, in spite of North Korea's official objection to South Korean military exercise with the United States, North Korea as a sign of keeping open the channel of communication might accept humanitarian assistance from South Korea, Japan and other countries as was evidenced in the aftermath of a major train accident in North Korea in April 2004.
• In the case of Northeast Asia, although the hard liners in the Obama administration seem to suggest for a regime change in Pyongyang replicating the previous Bush administration’s stated goal, others in the administration voice a more cautious approach by trying to involve other countries in the region such as by resuming the Six-Nation talks at regular intervals.

Branding Kim Jong-un of North Korea as a paranoid dictator who is likely to be a risk taker will only push that nation into further dangerous isolation thus resulting into an escalation of crisis. Confidence-building measures such as the establishment of secured Hot Lines between US and Soviet Union during the Cold War years and in South Asia, between New Delhi and Islamabad provide a mechanism for the reduction of tension and in diffusing any imminent security issue that may snowball in to a potential grave crisis. Similar initiatives could be undertaken between and among North Korea, South Korea, Japan, China, United States and Russia.

Dr. Mohammed Badrul Alam is a Professor of Political Science, Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi. Views expressed are personal