Leveraging Latency by Tristan A. Volpe

Author:Tristan A. Volpe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Endgame

The final stage of the crisis played out between the summer and fall of 1994. As Washington and Pyongyang teetered on the brink of war, North Korea appeared eager to find a way back to negotiation table before the situation escalated out of control. The unexpected visit of former US president Jimmy Carter with Kim Il Sung provided an offramp for Pyongyang to offer a promise of nuclear restraint (Sigal 1999: 131–33). The two sides returned to the bargaining table and reached a deal. North Korea agreed to freeze operations at Yongbyon, seal the reprocessing facility for eventual dismantlement, store and ship its spent fuel out of the country, halt construction of two large reactors, and remain party to the NPT. As Secretary of State William Christopher (1995: 6) summarized in congressional testimony, “North Korea’s capacity to separate plutonium was ended,” and it was “obligated to fully disclose its past nuclear activities.” Cooperation with the IAEA at each step provided a credible system of verification for the United States. In return, the United States agreed to the phased delivery of $50 million in heavy fuel oil each year, $4 billion in modern proliferation-resistance nuclear reactor technology, the relaxation of economic and political barriers, and a formal assurance against the threat or use of nuclear weapons against the DPRK. The final Agreed Framework signed by North Korea and the United States on October 21, 1994, formalized this bargain.

North Korea was able to strike a low-cost and high-reward deal because it could reassure the United States by freezing operations at Yongbyon. This was a modest price to pay. North Korea avoided military attack and reaped badly needed energy assistance. Washington believed that Pyongyang was unlikely to cease plutonium production if it wanted nuclear weapons in the near term. The United States also insisted upon several hand-tying mechanisms to increase the costs of reneging on the Agreed Framework while boosting the benefits of sustained cooperation. As Ambassador Gallucci (1994: 12) admitted in December 1994, “We entered into discussions . . . without any uncertainty or delusions about past North Korean behavior.” He argued that the Agreed Framework was “not based upon trust,” but rather a tit-for-tat structure “so that we can withhold cooperation at any point that we determine that North Korea is not meeting its obligations under the agreement” (1994: 12). The American negotiators decomposed the terms of the deal into a series of smaller steps, with the burden of up-front performance falling on the North Koreans. To receive the first shipment of heavy oil, for example, North Korea had to verifiably halt all its declared nuclear operations. Larger benefits would only come several years later when the United States “had an opportunity to judge [North Korea’s] performance and its intentions,” as Secretary Christopher (1995: 7) underscored. To receive the full package of energy assistance, Pyongyang had to uphold its complete promise to disable the Yongbyon complex. The deal bound the Kim regime to its nonnuclear promise for as long as North Korea valued the energy subsidies more than acquisition of nuclear weapons.

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