The North Korea Paradox: Why There Are No Good Options on Nuclear Arms

A Unique Tolerance for Pain

Iran was persuaded to surrender most of its nuclear program by sanctions, which put the government under domestic pressure from citizens who hated their isolation and poverty and from elites who foresaw huge gains from sanctions relief.

But North Korea has proved itself capable of withstanding economic devastation far exceeding Iran’s.

In the 1990s, North Korea was plunged into a famine that killed up to 10 percent of the population. But it neither succumbed to internal unrest nor sought to end the crisis by opening up to the outside world.

The famine, Mr. Myers wrote, “may have strengthened support for the regime by renewing the sense of ethnic victimhood from which the official worldview derived its passion.”

“Many migrants remember a widespread yearning for war with America during the famine,” he added.

This is why some analysts doubt that even the most extreme sanctions, including perhaps those imposed by China, could change North Korea’s calculus. Since the famine, though North Korea’s economy has grown reliant on Chinese imports, the country has overhauled its food system. It has responded to past Chinese sanctions with provocations, as if daring Beijing to test the regime.

An Ability Beyond Removal

Some rogue weapons states, such as Iraq under Saddam Hussein, rely on imported technology or assistance. North Korea’s programs, however, appear largely indigenous.

This means that, while specific sites could be shut down or weapons removed by a potential agreement or set of strikes, the knowledge to reconstitute them may be there for good.

If North Korea remains bent on acquiring a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile, then no obvious action short of all-out war could completely derail this drive. Cyberattacks, for instance, can only slow its progress.

North Korea is believed to already have short- and medium-range missiles and rockets hidden around the country. Strikes to rapidly destroy these weapons, analysts believe, would be unlikely to succeed before the country could launch at least some.

Seoul, the South Korean capital and a city of 25 million, would be a likely target. Any strike plan, whether to disarm North Korea or punish it, would have to ask whether this was an acceptable risk.

The High Costs of a Deal

Any agreement that North Korea would be likely to consider minimally acceptable would come at huge cost to the United States and its allies. North Korea would be likely to require:

■ A tacit acknowledgment of the country’s right to retain its existing programs.
■ A declaration that the United States considered the North Korean government legitimate and would not seek to topple it.
■ The lifting of sanctions.
■ The withdrawal or reduction of the American military commitment to South Korea.

“They want to see the end of that alliance,” said Joshua H. Pollack, the editor of the Nonproliferation Review, suggesting that North Korea has drawn inspiration from the way that the United States broke with Taiwan in order to normalize relations with China in the 1970s.

Mr. Pollack emphasized that North Korea probably saw this as a long-term goal to be accomplished over many years, rather than something to demand up front and all at once.

Still, he said, North Korea may see this as the only way to reduce the existential threat that its weapons program is meant to curb.

Any partial or full American withdrawal would risk sending the American relationship with South Korea and Japan into crisis, empowering North Korea and weakening American influence in Asia.

Even if a president deemed these costs worthwhile, he or she might find the politics of such a deal insurmountable.

A Drift Toward Disaster

As time goes on, analysts say, the risks only grow.

“If the current action-reaction cycle continues,” Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, wrote in a recent policy brief, “it will not only diminish the prospect of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, but it will increase the risk of a devastating nuclear war.”

John R. Bolton, the Bush administration’s ambassador to the United Nations, told Fox News this week that the only “way to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is to end North Korea” by bringing about the government’s total collapse.

Mr. Pollack, asked if he agreed, at first dismissed Mr. Bolton as a “hard-liner,” saying a war would risk nuclear devastation, but then he acknowledged that the assessment of North Korea’s determination was probably correct.

“They’re not gonna give this stuff up,” Mr. Pollack said.