Archive for October, 2006

Finding the right mix of sanctions and incentives in North Korea

Posted on: October 28th, 2006 by Ernie Regehr

The main elements of a satisfactory end to the North Korean nuclear crisis have been in place for more than a decade.

North Korea receives economic assistance, especially energy assistance such as fuel oil or electricity. Nuclear supplier states promise to explore assisting it in building a light water nuclear power plant. North Korea’s sovereignty is clearly acknowledged and security assurances that take regime change off the table are provided.

In return, North Korea commits to a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, terminates all military nuclear programs, places all its nuclear programs and facilities under full international inspections to confirm that none support military objectives, and returns to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapon state.

That was essentially the arrangement under the 1994 “framework agreement” between Pyongyang and the Clinton Administration. [1] Its core elements held until 2002 when the Bush Administration imposed unilateral sanctions in response to North Korea’s currency abuses, included North Korea in the famous “axis of evil,” and used the Pentagon’s nuclear posture review to issue thinly veiled nuclear threats against North Korea, Iran, and other states in Washington’s bad books. TheUSalso accused North Korea of mounting a uranium enrichment effort with help from Pakistan’s famous nuclear smuggler A.Q. Khan, but the Koreans denied it and to date no public evidence of the program has been presented.[2]

Former President Jimmy Carter, who has served as an informal envoy to North Korea during the Clinton Administration and beyond, found North Korea’s precipitous response – expulsion of the inspectors, resumption of the production of nuclear bomb materials, and withdrawal from the NPT – fully predictable. [3] The North, he says, has always responded more favorably to positive inducements, especially those that are understood to take regime-change strategies off the table.

The same deal of positive inducements and commitment to a denuclearized Korean peninsula was again agreed to by North Korea in the September 2005 Joint Statement by the parties to the Six-Nation talks. [4] The 1994 and 2005 agreements stated the deal in terms of the positive commitments made by all the parties. The UN Security Council Resolution No. 1718, unanimously adopted October 14, 2006 following North Korea’s October 9 nuclear warhead test, repeats the deal but focuses on the negative consequences that are to be visited on North Korea until it meets the central demand to end all military programs and return to the NPT under safeguard inspections. Until that time, it will be denied economic cooperation and a broad range of punitive economic measures will be imposed. [5]

What could be simpler? It is really only a matter of managing the appropriate mix of threats and incentives. But that’s where it gets complicated. The North Korean regime regards itself as largely immune to military attack – not because of its elementary nuclear weapons capability, but because of its million-strong conventional army. That army would not save it in any war, but it would guarantee a level of such extraordinary devastation that its neighbors continue to conclude that any militarily forced end to the regime would be much worse than the status quo.

Kim Jong-il’s fierce resistance to threats is not evidence of his presumed invulnerability, but of his view that threats and punitive sanctions show that the US, and now also the Security Council, is reneging on those elements of the September agreement that call for security assurances and normalization of relations. In the Joint Statement the US affirmed that it “has no intention to attack or invade the DPRK with nuclear or conventional weapons,” and agreed that the two countries would “respect each other’s sovereignty, exist peacefully together, and take steps to normalize their relations subject to their respective bilateral policies.”

For Resolution 1718 to be implemented, the United States will once again have to provide North Korea clear security assurances and evidence of progress towards the normalization of relations, including a relaxation of unilateral sanctions which effectively block North Korea from all access to international financial institutions.

But nuclear weapon states will also have to make some changes – perhaps not to get the current deal outlined in Resolution 1718, but certainly if non-proliferation is to be honored in the long run.

You can’t persuasively preach temperance from a bar stool, but that is exactly what the UN Security Council is trying to do. All five permanent members of the Council (P5) are recognized as nuclear weapon states under the NPT and as such are obliged to dismantle their nuclear arsenals according to Article VI of the Treaty and as confirmed in the 1996 World Court opinion. [6] In 2000 they reaffirmed their rhetorical commitment to abolish nuclear weapons – through their “unequivocal undertaking,” at the NPT Review Conference, “to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament” [7] – but the P5 remain determined nuclear retentionists.

China and the United States refuse to ratify the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, even though they obviously want North Korea and all other states to abide by it. They refuse to negotiate an agreement to cut-off the production of fissile materials from weapons purposes, even though they obviously want North Korea and all others states to end all production of such fissile materials. All five continue to modernize their arsenals, elaborate nuclear use doctrines, and pursue selective non-proliferation (e.g. accepting nuclear testing in some cases, such as India and Pakistan, while opposing even the development of civilian nuclear fuel technologies in others).

Mohamed ElBaradei, Nobel Peace Laureate and Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, agrees that a roll back of North Korea’s bomb is both essential and eminently achievable. He emphasizes dialogue and security assurances and is wary of punitive sanctions: “Once you start applying penalties, it brings hardliners into the driver’s seat.” [8]

We can also add that it wouldn’t hurt if the advocates of nuclear temperance in North Korea would begin to address their own addictions.


[1] Agreed Framework between the United States of America and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. 1994. October 21.http://www.kedo.org/pdfs/AgreedFramework.pdf.

[2] “Little is known about North Korea’s alleged uranium enrichment program–where it might be located, its state of development, or how many centrifuges might be operational. The United States has not provided any public information that substantiates its existence. Following the U.S. manipulation and distortion of intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, some countries and analysts are now skeptical of any U.S. allegations regarding other nations’ nuclear programs. [8] A March 20 Washington Post report that the White House misrepresented intelligence on the supposed transfer of nuclear material from North Korea to Libya may have further undermined the Bush administration’s credibility, even though the White House denied the report.”

“North Korea’s nuclear program, 2005,By Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen
May/June 2005 pp. 64-67 (vol. 61, no. 03) © 2005 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

( http://www.thebulletin.org/article_nn.php?art_ofn=mj05norris)

[3] Carter, Jimmy. 2006. Solving the Korean stalemate, one step at a time, The New York Times, October 11.http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/opinion/11carter.html?_r=1&oref=slogin.

[4] Joint Statement of the Fourth Round of the Six-Party Talks, Beijing, September 19, 2005. 2005.http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2005/53490.htm.

[5] United Nations Security Council. 2006. Resolution 1718. October 14. http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N06/572/07/PDF/N0657207.pdf?OpenE….

[6] International Court of Justice. 1996. Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons. Advisory Opinion. Found at The Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy.http://www.lcnp.org/wcourt/opinion.htm.

[7] NPT. 2000. 2000 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Final Document.http://disarmament.un.org/wmd/npt/2000FD.pdf.

[8] “ElBaradei warns on sanctions on N. Korea, Iran,” Reuters, October 23, 2006.

Apply eight to ten drops http://downtownsault.org/halloween/ tadalafil cialis of Mast Mood oil using a credit or debit card. The buy cialis australia drug helps solving the condition of male dysfunction. When they spin it and it stops at a certain emotion, they are then encouraged soft tab viagra to share what makes them feel the emotion that came up. Normally, a team of therapists will be assigned to conduct and supervise the treatment process of discount viagra the medicine remains under surveillance of experts.

Is there a ‘third way’ in Afghanistan?

Posted on: October 17th, 2006 by Ernie Regehr

With Canada in a sustained ground war for the first time since Korea, it is not surprising that the debate over our role in Afghanistan has become thoroughly polarized.

The Prime Minister leads the charge for staying the course. Canada is at war, he says, and we don’t cut and run – we will stay in this war until the job is done. NDP Leader Jack Layton leads the call for withdrawal. It is the wrong mission for Canada; it is a war with unclear objectives and it can’t be won.

The Prime Minister sees Afghanistan as the kind of on-the-job experience that is making a better Canadian military. In fact, he implied in a CBC interview that the Canadian casualties are part of that process of shaping the military.[i] The whole experience, he said, is “certainly raising Canada’s leadership role.”

Mr. Layton in turn makes the point that withdrawing from the war and giving priority to reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan will allow Canada to “focus on building a made-in-Canada foreign policy that moves us toward reclaiming Canada’s place in the world.”[ii]

Both arguments make the place of Canada in the world a central issue, but is that really the primary preoccupation of Canadians when it comes to Afghanistan? And should it be?

Two recent polls suggest that Canadian attitudes towards the war have less to do with its impact on Canada as a player on the world stage, and more to do with its impact on Afghanistan. A Decima poll found that 59 percent of Canadians agreed with the pollster’s statement that Canadian soldiers are dying for a cause that can’t be won.[iii]And in September EKOS Research found thatCanadian views are not driven so much by the level of sacrifice as by a sense that “the mission is unlikely to bring stability and democracy to Afghanistan.”[iv]

The evidence by now is well documented and mounting that the Canadian mission, indeed the entire International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) operation in southern Afghanistan, is not working. But neither of the two options in the polarized debate – stick with a failing enterprise no matter what; pull out because it is a failing enterprise – responds to a primary concern of Canadians, namely, how to build a safer Afghanistan.

In other words, we need a third option. Calls for new negotiations with the Afghan dissidents and for increased attention to reconstruction efforts point in that direction, and recently a “third way” proposal was put forward by Eugene Lang, a former chief of staff to two recent defence ministers and now chief policy advisor to Bob Rae.
The proposal is in fact close to the Layton/NDP option. The main difference is that the NDP calls for military withdrawal from Afghanistan, while the Lang option calls for redeployment from the south to the north. Both, however, counsel withdrawal from the counter-insurgency war and call for greater non-military assistance.[v]

So here are the main elements of an emerging third option: pull out of the south; redeploy to the north in support of training and provincial reconstruction teams; substantially increase non-military aid; review the strategy, objectives, and tactics used by the NATO-led ISAF; and re-open the political process in pursuit of a more inclusive and representative political order for the entire country.

Of the three options, the least convincing is the stay-the-course focus of the Prime Minister. Even the Defence Minister now acknowledges that the Afghanistan conflict will not finally be settled on the battlefield, but it is the military prosecution of the conflict that is getting all the attention. Canadians are telling pollsters it won’t work, and conflict analysts and Afghan specialists have long been pointing out that if the objective of the counter-insurgency war is to stabilize Afghanistan and advance the well-being of Afghans, it is not getting the job done.

That leaves the other two options, complete withdrawal or the withdrawal from the counter-insurgency war and redeployment to peace support operations in the north while pursuing negotiations towards a more inclusive political order.Which of these options one supports depends on one’s understanding of the conditions that obtain in Afghanistan.

If the Government of Afghanistan has been discredited throughout the country and has lost the confidence of Afghans generally, and if the trend is thus toward outright and widespread civil war, then it is clear that foreign troops are there to support an illegitimate government and will themselves be regarded as illegitimate. In that case, foreign troops are more likely to fuel conflict than resolve it – with a pullout the logical conclusion.

If, however, the civil war is essentially confined to the south, and if in the north the Government still has the substantial support of the people, then the north is a post-conflict environment that, while still unstable, is amenable to security assisted peacebuilding efforts. In that case the redeployment of forces to the north to help in training security forces and in protecting newly funded civilian reconstruction operations would serve the greater well-being of Afghans.

Current reporting from Afghanistan is mixed, but it generally still suggests the latter situation prevails – with the clear implication that it will slide to the former unless major changes are made. That points to the urgent need to pursue the third option. But the fact that it is both urgent and prudent doesn’t guarantee, especially in the context of a polarized debate, that it will be chosen.

[i] “Canada’s military back on world stage: PM,” CBC News, September 19, 2006 account of interview on The National (http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/09/19/harper-afghanistan.html).

[ii] ” Statement by NDP Leader Jack Layton on Canada’s mission in Afghanistan,” Aug 31, 2006 (http://www.ndp.ca/page/4119).

[iii] Keith Doucette, “MacKay slams Afghan poll,” The ChronicleHerald.ca, October 3, 2006 (http://www.herald.ns.ca/Canada/532054.html).

[iv] Bruce Campion-Smith, “Afghan mission impossible: Poll,” Toronto Star, Sept. 18/06 (available at http://25461.vws.magma.ca/admin/articles/TheStar18Sept2006.pdf).

[v] The Project Ploughshares materials have also called for an end to participation in a counter-insurgency war as counter-productive and a disservice to Afghans (e.g. “Towards counter-insurgency by other means,” http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/Briefings/brf061.pdf; “From good intentions to sustainable solutions,” http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/monitor/mons06f.pdf).

In the short viagra on line browse over here run, too much alcohol will really make things go south. Hence, it is cost viagra cialis best part to give and get. It strengthens weak tissues through ensuring higher production of testosterone. cialis 40 mg These side effects are considered harmless. fast generic cialis

Who’s Celebrating the North Korean Test?

Posted on: October 12th, 2006 by Ernie Regehr

At least one western constituency is celebrating Kim Jong-il’s nuclear test – the folks who toil in the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and the beltway publicists who promote their cause in the public square.

The morning after the test, David Frum, the former Bush speech writer and current fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, was in the New York Times[i]advocating a central role for accelerated deployment of ballistic missile defence (BMD) in the panoply of threats and punishments that he wants visited on North Korea and China. The next day Frank Gaffney Jr., another Washington neo-conservative and former official in Ronald Reagan’s Pentagon, was in the Globe and Mail[ii]urging the US to “greatly ramp up [its] effort to deploy the sort of effective anti-missile defences first sought by Mr. Reagan” (a much more far-reaching, and fantastical, plan than the current Pentagon program).

From its earliest days the MDA has depended heavily on cooperation from Kim Jong-il and his generals in preserving the North Korean threat – a primary rationale offered by BMD’s Congressional advocates. And of course, the North Koreans are nothing if not accommodating. The North Korean long-range missile test last June and the nuclear warhead test on October 9, despite the outright failure of the former and the ambiguous results of the latter, have injected new energy into a program that was languishing due to a lack of purpose and attention from a White House and Congress with other things on their minds.

The timing of Mr. Kim’s gift to the BMD lobby in Canada could also not have been better. Just days before the Korean nuclear test, the Senate Defence Committee recommended, in a report it entitled “Managing Turmoil,”[iii] that Canada “enter into discussions with the US Government with the aim of participating in the Ballistic Missile Defence program.” Interestingly, the Committee made no reference to North Korea in its supporting argument, arguing instead that participation would cost nothing and it might even work.

The Senate argued for BMD because “it is not offensive and not a threat to any other nation.” Frum argued for it because it is highly threatening – particularly to Chinese interests, and punishment of China was very high on his strategic to do list (he also advocated for Japan to go nuclear for the same reason).

Kim Jong-il and North American BMD advocates may find common cause for the moment, but in the end, it is likely that more prudent minds will prevail. Serious strategists recognize that any possible protection that BMD would offer from a North Korean missile would be immediately undercut by a manifold increase in the Chinese nuclear threat.

The politics of BMD will ultimately be fought out between Washington’s beltway mythmakers and the American taxpayers, and sooner or later, reality will raise its expensive head. As they say, the Americans usually end up doing the right thing, once all the other options have been exhausted. In this case, the other options involve great cost and no security payoff. And if the present Korean crisis were to be properly handled, the BMD publicists could end up losing a valued ally.

[i] David Frum, “Mutually Assured Disruption,” The New York Times, October 10, 2006.

[ii] Frank Gaffney Jr., “Dealing decisively with the enemy,” The Globe and Mail, October 11, 2006.

[iii] Available at: http://www.parl.gc.ca/39/1/parlbus/commbus/senate/com-e/defe-e/rep-e/Rep….

After consulting with the doctor you can identify it and start treatment for it. order cheap levitra And more than 50 percent of men with encountered this specific problem have a very history of particular diseases cialis online order which can be known for influencing men while making love. This medication buy viagra online in with the sildenafil citrate ingredient proffers an effective treatment of men’s erection problem. These problems are mainly caused due to catabolic proinflammatory cytokines as well as viagra in the usa eicosanoids.