Analyst Asks Why Negotiate With A Nation That Cheats
The good news is that North Korea is moving to disable its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, and it is open about its plutonium processing work, a nuclear expert declared after visiting the reactor and speaking with North Korean experts.
The bad news is that the isolated communist dictatorship still has at least a few nuclear bombs and fuel to make six to eight more weapons; there is no deal on surrendering or stopping its missile development program; and the disabling steps taken at Yongbyon can be reversed if North Korea so chooses. "Disablement makes it more difficult, but not impossible, to restart facilities," an expert said. And North Korea already "has a primitive nuclear arsenal," even if it were to be unable to produce more fissile material.
Partly because of concerns about the rising North Korean capabilities in nuclear weapons production and long-range missile development, the United States is assembling a multi- layered ballistic missile defense system.
Separately, another expert wondered why the United States wishes to negotiate on the nuclear issue with leaders in North Korea, since they have broken their word repeatedly.
At a forum of The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, along with the U.S.-Korea Institute, the audience heard the impressions of Siegfried Hecker, of Stanford University, co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation and director emeritus of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
"I don’t think they have made the decision to give up the bombs," Hecker said.
He visited Yongbyon, and during a visit his North Korean hosts handed him what looked like two marmalade jars filled with a metallic substance: plutonium. He made five visits to North Korea, including three to Yongbyon.
"We now think they have a few bombs, and fuel for six to eight more," he said.
While his hosts showed him that the reactor had been disabled, that is not the same as being dismantled, which would take far longer, he said.
"They knew everything about plutonium," he continued. "They said, ‘You want to see our product?’" They referred to plutonium. That’s when they handed him the jars.
After his contacts with the North Koreans, Hecker said he is sue that, "Yes, they have the bomb. They have weapons grade plutonium."
Whether they can mount such a bomb on a missile, however, is not clear. At this point, he said, the North Koreans "are unlikely to have confidence to mount them on missiles."
Another concern, however, is that North Koreans still deny, repeatedly, that they are engaged in uranium enrichment, even as they admit to producing plutonium. But, Hecker said, any nation developing nuclear weapons likely would take both paths to producing them.
Hecker also feels that North Korea helped construct a reactor in Syria that Israel bombed. "It clearly was a type that North Korea has some expertise in," he said.
While possible nuclear proliferation from North Korea to Syria is a concern, Hecker said that "Iran is a much bigger concern."
While North Korea has agreed to curb its nuclear program, there is nothing set forth on paper as to precisely how that would be done, and the devil is in the details, Hecker indicated.
Hecker has written some of these findings in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that can be viewed at http://www.thebulletin.org/ on the Web.
Separately, a panel of several experts convened at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to discuss the North Korean problem.
"How do you have a successful negotiation" with a nation that goes back on its word and violates earlier negotiated conditions? asked Carolyn Leddy, an expert on North Korea who focused on that nation when she was director for counterproliferation strategy on the National Security Council staff from July 2006 to November 2007.
She said if the United States had used air strikes to destroy the Yongbyon reactor and other facilities prior to 2006, "I don’t think it would have stopped the North Koreans from pursuing a nuclear development program."
Nicholas Eberstadt, an AEI scholar who has written on North Korea, said a strike might have led to a devastating war.
While considering what North Korea might do with the nuclear weapons it possesses and the long-range missiles it’s developing can be unnerving, there are even more unsettling possibilities to consider.
For example, David Asher, a former State Department official focusing on North Korea, asked this: "If Iran were to get a nuclear weapon [from North Korea], would they allow Hezbollah to use it? Their doctrine suggests" the answer would be in the affirmative.
Hezbollah fired hundreds of missiles into Israel two years ago in an unprovoked barrage.
