Thursday, December 04, 2003
WRONG AGAIN? The Marmot and IA have already linked to and commented on Bruce Cumings’ article, “Wrong Again.” I thought I’d throw in my two bits.
Bruce Cumings is, for me, a admirable but maddeningly frustrating scholar. His work on the Origins of the Korean War, particularly the first volume, is meticulous, uses sources no one else had looked at before (and for the most part, still haven’t looked at), and, in my estimation, establishes the definitive baseline against which all future examinations of the how the Korean War began should be judged—especially when it comes to the Korean side of the story that is so often neglected by Western military historians. He is erudite, witty, and widely read. His prose is often forceful and while often provocative is seldom boring or banal. He has written more, and to more critical acclaim, than I can probably ever hope for. He has helped train some of the best Korea scholars of the up and coming generation. And, having had the opportunity to meet him a few times, he is a genuinely pleasant person.
And yet, when he writes for publications that are not explicitly academic or scholarly, he morphs into a polemical partisan who has seemingly cast any pretense of scholarly objectivity aside in an effort to educate (and denounce) the rest of us unenlightened cretins. He names names of those who he deems to be slaves to money flowing from Washington or Seoul. He engages in ad hominem attacks on those he doesn’t like with gleeful abandon. For example, in his book War and Television he refers to Fouad Ajami as an “Uncle Tom” (123) and Charles Kuralt as a “fatuous toady” (118). And while many of his individual critiques and criticisms have a certain logic to them, they often seem to combine to create a less than persuasive or harmonious whole.
One of the main points of the article in question appears to be that while North Korea really hasn’t had a nuclear weapons program—everything up to this point is a result of faulty intelligence manipulated by warmongering Bushies—it is now likely to get one because of Bush’s hard-line stance and unwillingness to negotiate. Yet, later on in the piece, he notes that the best estimates are that the DPRK’s uranium enrichment program, began “in 1997 or 1998, and the Clinton Administration had fully briefed Bush and Co on the matter.” So why, when everything was going swimmingly with the Agreed Framework and Clinton in the White House, did the DPRK pursue nuclear weapons? Cumings offers several possibilities:
In other words, the uranium enrichment program was not designed to create nuclear-weapons grade fuel at all but rather to provide a domestic source of fuel for the LWR; what else should we expect from the home of Juche? The only problems I have with this interpretation are
1) If the DRPK was only thinking of energy self-sufficiency, there would be little need to keep the program secret. The 1994 Agreed Framework applied only to the plutonium plant in Yôngbyôn, so enriching uranium would not violate the letter of the agreement. The U.S. would surely insist on IAEA inspections of the uranium enrichment facilities as well but if there were genuinely for peaceful energy-generating purposes, the DPRK would have nothing to hide.
2) I have never read of the DPRK ever making this claim.
3) Experts on North Korea’s energy and economic conditions note that the LWRs, were they ever to be actually constructed, were next to useless given the obsolete, crumbling, and dilapidated nature of the North Korean electrical grid. Spending large amounts of money on home-grown uranium without upgrading the power grid makes no economic sense. Note: there are some who argue that perhaps the North Koreans aren’t fully aware of the technical challenges of hooking their grid up to nuclear power facilities. If this is actually the case, then reason #3 no longer holds.
Cumings notes further
So if the DPRK really did intend to use enriched uranium to make nukes, it is still all America’s fault, because of the slow pace of “Washington” (e.g. Republican-controlled Congress). I am actually somewhat sympathetic to this view. Too often in the U.S. the perception is that the U.S. kept its end of the bargain and the DPRK didn’t. In actuality, both sides prevaricated, hedged and dodged. The American team figured the DPRK didn’t have long to last (Kim Il Sung had just died, remember) and so to promise LWRs was acceptable because they would end up being finished and run by a ROK-dominated unified Korea. And Republican lawmakers did slow up fuel shipments and continually complain about the Agreed Framework. But, when confronted with American intransigence, it seems to me that the DPRK had two choices: it could play nice and try to convince the U.S. of its genuinely good intentions, or it could embark on a course that, if discovered, even the most engagement-friendly of the Clinton Administration couldn’t sanction. The DPRK, apparently, chose the latter course.
That is why, of course, the Clinton Administration never once publicly mentioned the clandestine uranium program (remember that they must have known about it because they “fully briefed Bush and Co on the matter.”). Not announcing the program may have avoided a conflict during Clinton’s time in office but it is foolish to think that the problem would simply have gone away in the jubilation of a missile deal and Clinton was unlikely to have gone ahead and normalized relations with North Korea knowing that the DPRK had a secret uranium program.
As for the contention that “no one really knows what Bush wants from his Korea policy,” I thought that Bolton made it clear: The End of North Korea. The determination of Bush to eliminate the Kim Jong Il regime and his unwillingness to treat Kim Jong Il as if he were simply another world leader is exactly what Cumings et al have pilloried Bush for. In this case, I think they’re right: refusing to acknowledge or deal with North Korea may make the U.S. feel morally consistent but it probably won’t make the regime go away any time soon and, therefore, will do little to relieve the plight of the North Korean people.
I had intended to write more, but it is late and I’m tired. Another installment later, perhaps?
Bruce Cumings is, for me, a admirable but maddeningly frustrating scholar. His work on the Origins of the Korean War, particularly the first volume, is meticulous, uses sources no one else had looked at before (and for the most part, still haven’t looked at), and, in my estimation, establishes the definitive baseline against which all future examinations of the how the Korean War began should be judged—especially when it comes to the Korean side of the story that is so often neglected by Western military historians. He is erudite, witty, and widely read. His prose is often forceful and while often provocative is seldom boring or banal. He has written more, and to more critical acclaim, than I can probably ever hope for. He has helped train some of the best Korea scholars of the up and coming generation. And, having had the opportunity to meet him a few times, he is a genuinely pleasant person.
And yet, when he writes for publications that are not explicitly academic or scholarly, he morphs into a polemical partisan who has seemingly cast any pretense of scholarly objectivity aside in an effort to educate (and denounce) the rest of us unenlightened cretins. He names names of those who he deems to be slaves to money flowing from Washington or Seoul. He engages in ad hominem attacks on those he doesn’t like with gleeful abandon. For example, in his book War and Television he refers to Fouad Ajami as an “Uncle Tom” (123) and Charles Kuralt as a “fatuous toady” (118). And while many of his individual critiques and criticisms have a certain logic to them, they often seem to combine to create a less than persuasive or harmonious whole.
One of the main points of the article in question appears to be that while North Korea really hasn’t had a nuclear weapons program—everything up to this point is a result of faulty intelligence manipulated by warmongering Bushies—it is now likely to get one because of Bush’s hard-line stance and unwillingness to negotiate. Yet, later on in the piece, he notes that the best estimates are that the DPRK’s uranium enrichment program, began “in 1997 or 1998, and the Clinton Administration had fully briefed Bush and Co on the matter.” So why, when everything was going swimmingly with the Agreed Framework and Clinton in the White House, did the DPRK pursue nuclear weapons? Cumings offers several possibilities:
Left unmentioned in any press articles I have come across is the usefulness of an enriched-uranium programme to the Light-Water Reactors (LWRs) that were being built to compensate the North for freezing their graphite reactors in 1994. The virtue of the LWRs from the American standpoint had been that their fuel would have to come from outside the DPRK, thus establishing a dependency that could easily be monitored; but this was precisely what the independent-minded North thought was wrong with the LWRs. As Pollack put it, 'it seems entirely plausible that Pyongyang envisioned the need for an indigenous enrichment capability' since 'the fuel requirements for a pair of thousand-megawatt [light water] reactors are substantial and open-ended.' Furthermore, to enrich uranium to a level where it is useful as LWR fuel is much easier than to refine it further, to create fissile fuel. But the Bush Administration smothered all discussion of this issue with its widely ballyhooed claims of a second nuclear bomb programme.
In other words, the uranium enrichment program was not designed to create nuclear-weapons grade fuel at all but rather to provide a domestic source of fuel for the LWR; what else should we expect from the home of Juche? The only problems I have with this interpretation are
1) If the DRPK was only thinking of energy self-sufficiency, there would be little need to keep the program secret. The 1994 Agreed Framework applied only to the plutonium plant in Yôngbyôn, so enriching uranium would not violate the letter of the agreement. The U.S. would surely insist on IAEA inspections of the uranium enrichment facilities as well but if there were genuinely for peaceful energy-generating purposes, the DPRK would have nothing to hide.
2) I have never read of the DPRK ever making this claim.
3) Experts on North Korea’s energy and economic conditions note that the LWRs, were they ever to be actually constructed, were next to useless given the obsolete, crumbling, and dilapidated nature of the North Korean electrical grid. Spending large amounts of money on home-grown uranium without upgrading the power grid makes no economic sense. Note: there are some who argue that perhaps the North Koreans aren’t fully aware of the technical challenges of hooking their grid up to nuclear power facilities. If this is actually the case, then reason #3 no longer holds.
Cumings notes further
Many experts, including former Clinton Administration officials, believe that North Korea clearly cheated by importing this technology. They do not accept the argument that the North had a clear interest in enriching uranium for the LWRs; they differ over whether it merely experimented with the imported technology, or was (and is) hell-bent on a 'nuclear enrichment programme' - in other words, if the North is trying to build a uranium bomb. If the imports from Pakistan did begin in 1997 or 1998 and were intended to be used in a bomb, the reason may have been that hardliners in Pyongyang disliked the slow pace at which Washington was implementing the commitments it had made in the 1994 Agreement (i.e. to normalise relations with the North and refrain from threatening it with nuclear weapons). Or Kim Jong Il may have chosen to play a double game, continuing to honour the Agreement while developing a clandestine weapons programme. Kim ascended to supreme power in September 1998, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the regime, and a new weapons programme would have shored up his support among the military.
So if the DPRK really did intend to use enriched uranium to make nukes, it is still all America’s fault, because of the slow pace of “Washington” (e.g. Republican-controlled Congress). I am actually somewhat sympathetic to this view. Too often in the U.S. the perception is that the U.S. kept its end of the bargain and the DPRK didn’t. In actuality, both sides prevaricated, hedged and dodged. The American team figured the DPRK didn’t have long to last (Kim Il Sung had just died, remember) and so to promise LWRs was acceptable because they would end up being finished and run by a ROK-dominated unified Korea. And Republican lawmakers did slow up fuel shipments and continually complain about the Agreed Framework. But, when confronted with American intransigence, it seems to me that the DPRK had two choices: it could play nice and try to convince the U.S. of its genuinely good intentions, or it could embark on a course that, if discovered, even the most engagement-friendly of the Clinton Administration couldn’t sanction. The DPRK, apparently, chose the latter course.
The Clinton Administration officials, however, believe that whatever the North planned to do, its enrichment technology could have been shut down if the missile deal had been completed and relations between the US and the DPRK normalised. That was essentially what they told the incoming Bush Administration. By dithering for 18 months, only to use the information in order to confront the North Koreans in October 2002, the Bush people turned a soluble problem into a major crisis, in which neither side had any room to back away. Now the North may have embarked on a nuclear weapons programme far beyond the CIA's 'one or two devices', which would be a catastrophic defeat for American diplomacy; and no one - in Washington, Pyongyang, Beijing or Moscow - really knows what Bush wants from his Korea policy.
That is why, of course, the Clinton Administration never once publicly mentioned the clandestine uranium program (remember that they must have known about it because they “fully briefed Bush and Co on the matter.”). Not announcing the program may have avoided a conflict during Clinton’s time in office but it is foolish to think that the problem would simply have gone away in the jubilation of a missile deal and Clinton was unlikely to have gone ahead and normalized relations with North Korea knowing that the DPRK had a secret uranium program.
As for the contention that “no one really knows what Bush wants from his Korea policy,” I thought that Bolton made it clear: The End of North Korea. The determination of Bush to eliminate the Kim Jong Il regime and his unwillingness to treat Kim Jong Il as if he were simply another world leader is exactly what Cumings et al have pilloried Bush for. In this case, I think they’re right: refusing to acknowledge or deal with North Korea may make the U.S. feel morally consistent but it probably won’t make the regime go away any time soon and, therefore, will do little to relieve the plight of the North Korean people.
I had intended to write more, but it is late and I’m tired. Another installment later, perhaps?
