Northeast Asia Regional Security:
The Role of New Zealand and Australia
Terence O’Brien
New Zealand and Australia share a deep interest in a stable Northeast Asia because their own security and prosperity as countries at the southern rim of the great Pacific Ocean are conditioned by the security and prosperity of that key northern region. For Australasia, the consolidation of peace and security in Northeast Asia depends crucially upon a resolution of the nuclear issues on the Korean Peninsular. As two of the fifteen troop-contributing countries that defended the South in the Korean War, under the UN flag, both countries have, too, a stake in the final peace settlement that will ultimately replace the UN Armistice on the Korean Peninsular.
New Zealand’s interest in the nuclear issues on the Korean Peninsular is embellished by its non-nuclear policy. This signifies a solid commitment, nationally, to the principle and practice of non-proliferation at a point in history where the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is perceived to be the most acute threat to global stability and peace. Australia is committed to a different policy grounded in nuclear deterrence, counter-proliferation, and a close strategic alliance with the US. The status of New Zealand’s relationship with the US is one of friend but not ally. This is judged to be an acceptable position for the country, after formal suspension by Washington of US treaty obligations to New Zealand in 1985.[1]
This contrast of basic policy position conditions perceptions as well as scope for joint actions between New Zealand and Australia even while their shared overall strategic interest means that the two countries combine in support of such initiatives as the Korean Energy Development Organization. Since the restoration of diplomatic relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in 2000, Australian Ministers have communicated “closely and unambiguously” in Pyonyang Canberra’s strong concern over North Korean nuclear ambitions and urged productive engagement in the six (earlier four) party talks process.[2]
The threat of WMD proliferation must in Australia’s view be countered by direct action. The status quo of existing non-proliferation law and ‘talkfests’ of the Canberra Commission type are insufficient. Therefore, the government has aligned its position closely and enthusiastically with the US on
the Proliferation Security Initiative, where Australia is part of the core group of countries committed to the high-seas interdiction of suspected WMD cargoes including missiles;
the American system of Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) intended to provide a shield of anti-missile protection for the US and partners, which is controversial in Northeast Asia at least with China;
the further strengthening of global counter-proliferation actions and institutions.[3]
While New Zealand’s non-nuclear credentials might be seen to lend it a certain impartiality on the issue of non-proliferation and it possesses relevant experience from its original leadership role in the creation of the South Pacific Nuclear Weapon Free Zone, the New Zealand government displays no disposition to leverage those attributes, even were it ever asked to do so, into any sort of role in Korean Peninsular affairs. No New Zealand Minister has, as a result, visited the DPRK. Concerns about stability in its Pacific Island neighbourhood currently have first call on New Zealand’s attention, so do its finite resources. At the non-governmental level, New Zealand did act as intermediary in 1997-98 to facilitate the DPRK’s entry into the Asia-Pacific network of Track Two diplomacy. At the time, the DPRK readied itself to join the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum and unofficially sought non-governmental help[4] to enlist in the Track Two process.
Bilateral contacts on the margins of ASEAN Regional Forum meetings provide New Zealand with its chief opportunity to engage directly the DPRK. New Zealand’s deep concern over the DPRK decision to withdraw from the Non Proliferation Treaty and re-start its nuclear reactor without IAEA safeguards has been voiced in the UN and in particular as a member of the seven-nation New Agenda Coalition (NAC),[5] a like minded group of countries drawn from different international backgrounds, dedicated to re-energizing the agenda for treaty-based multilateral disarmament. New Zealand is the only NAC participant from the ASEAN Regional Forum.
UN Non Proliferation Treaty
Irreversible progress in nuclear arms reduction is, in the New Zealand view, a fundamental prerequisite for the achievement of effective non-proliferation. The targets of non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament carry equal weight. One does not trump the other. That is the very essence of the Non Proliferation Treaty. The indefinite possession of nuclear weapons by acknowledged nuclear weapon states is therefore fundamentally incompatible with effective and sustainable nonproliferation. This is a view common to all the NAC partners.[6] There is an insuperable double standard emerging according to which WMD are now tolerable in some new hands (Israel, Pakistan, India) but not in others. Non-proliferation will never be effective in a situation where, moreover, unremitting efforts by major powers are directed to the creation of new tactical nuclear weapons, stealth technology, missile defence, and weapons in space.
The next five-yearly review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty occurs in 2005. Since the last review the horrendous shock of September 11, 2001, and its aftermath has monopolised the international security agenda. Attempts to re-focus genuine international attention on the fundamentals of WMD disarmament may provoke accusation of ignoring the perceived and more immediate threat of WMD falling into the hands of terrorists. Terrorism is not, however, the single prism through which every dimension of international relations must be calculated. Moreover, for most countries it is not their number one concern. In international security, disarmament and non-proliferation are twin parts of a mutually reinforcing process. Nuclear weapons are not useful in deterring terrorists, anyway.[7] Indeed, their very existence in such enduring numbers incites thievery.
When countries arm themselves, it is a venerable tradition to explain their reasons always in terms of selfdefence. In the modern world, the need to protect commercial confidentiality is also given as an explanation by those who resist international verification of their military capabilities. The US rejection of the inspection provisions of the Biological Weapons Convention angered even its best allies in 2001;[8] likewise, the failure of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to enter into force and US non-ratification of the treaty compromise that verification regime; the very insistence upon a practice of “neither confirming nor denying” the presence of US nuclear weapons is self-evidently at variance with coercive insistence upon transparency for everyone else. BMD, despite the portrayal of its defensive purposes, actually increases US capacity for offence, particularly in the absence of any international missile control or disarmament law. Such factors nourish the unmistakable militarization of international relations in the present era.
Some New Zealand Perceptions on Northeast Asia Security
As this new century began, the first North-South leaders summit, held in Pyongyang in 2000, raised expectations that the acute differences that have divided the Korean Peninsular for half a century might be resolvable. The danger of a false dawn is nonetheless real given the longstanding perverse character of Peninsular relations when each Korea viewed the other as an aggressor, destabilizing and illegitimate. The new context does place the direction and pace of events more closely in Korean hands but other powers beyond must remain implicated. After all, the division of the Peninsular was the work of outsiders, not the two Koreas alone, and the North – prostrated economically by disastrous policies of self-reliance (juche) – has desperate need of outside support. The stereotype of the DPRK as erratic, intractable, and irrational needs nonetheless to be revised. The country’s grim tenacity, perverse opportunism, and dangerous brinkmanship must be understood (although not justified) as a product of an acute long-standing sense of vulnerability, including the loss of Cold War allies and exposure as a designated target of superpower strategic deterrence.[9]
Whether DPRK nuclear weapon ambitions are driven by grim determination to develop an effective deterrent or by an intention to create a bargaining chip (real or imaginary) so as to extract security assurances from the US that bolster regime survival, is immaterial. In the post September 11 world, the US is adamantly committed to confronting proliferation robustly, even – as Iraq demonstrated – the mere suspicion of WMD possession can be sufficient cause for war. DPRK nuclear weapon ambition possesses both a global and regional dimension for the US.
Nuclear Weapon Free Zones
Recent mortifying evidence of nuclear experimentation inside the Republic of Korea (ROK) reinforces the need for effective safeguards that include the entire Peninsular. The 1992 ROK-DPRK Declaration on the De-Nuclearisation of the Peninsular has, if DPRK claims are to be taken seriously, proved an ineffectual curb on nuclear ambition. It might, however, provide a base from which the construction might begin of a Northeast Asia Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (NEANWFZ).[10] This is not a new idea, but the timeframe, let alone substance, of its accomplishment would be problematic. Some believe it could only be pursued after the DPRK nuclear issue is resolved.[11]Others believe it must await first the reunification of the Peninsular itself.[12] Taiwan would have to be included in the coverage of any NEANWFZ, and this would create some key issues for China. None of the three nuclear weapon states involved in Northeast Asia have yet evinced any predisposition to accept the constraints involved for themselves under the terms of any NEANWFZ. However, experience elsewhere, in the case for example of the South Pacific Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (Rarotonga Treaty), confirms that agreement by and amongst the nuclear weapon states is not a precondition to negotiation, or indeed even conclusion of negotiation, of a treaty. However, the strategic equation of Northeast Asia is undeniably more complex.
Conclusions
Three features illuminate the regional reaction to the DPRK announcement to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and develop a nuclear deterrent force.
First, all three of the DPRK’s immediate neighbours plus Russia have adamantly insisted from the outset that negotiation and persuasion must be the chosen path to resolve the crisis. This unanimity contrasts with the disarray inside the Atlantic community over how to respond to Saddam Hussein. The US, consumed by Iraq and Afghanistan, has had little real option other than to accept this regional consensus. It has proven resistant, however, to any idea that it should engage directly and substantively with the DPRK in conjunction with the six party talks.[13]
Second, the nuclear crisis on the Peninsular has, paradoxically, produced widening differences between the ROK and the US about defence ties as well as some re-evaluation inside Japan of the longer-term ramifications for the US-Japan alliance.[1] The explanation lies in the evident anxiety amongst allies about US unilateralism and a possible preventive strike against the DPRK from bases in Northeast Asia to produce regime change.[15] Certain Asian analysts now profess that the stabilizing role of the US forward military presence in East Asia is exaggerated. The norms and institutions evolved by the region itself plus rising economic interdependence provide for them a more congenial basis for regional order.[16]
Third, the emergence of China to a leadership role for the six-party Korean Peninsular talks is a notable evolution for Chinese regional diplomacy. How far this means that the People’s Republic of China is now the pacesetter, or is acknowledged as such by the US, is still conjectural; so is the question of whether the six party talks are themselves actually the forerunner for a permanent Northeast Asia security framework . The present talks can readily be derailed either, for example, because of DPRK obduracy or because of unheedful interdiction on the high seas of DPRK cargoes.
Chinese analysts stress that the six party process will evolve only gradually, step-by-step. Some participants, after all, do not even maintain formal diplomatic relations with one another (USDPRK; Japan-DPRK). Moreover, to what extend it might develop as a permanent fixture depends directly upon its accomplishments with the present crisis.[17] China’s preference will likely be for a forum that embraces a comprehensive approach, not a narrowly traditional military attitude to Northeast Asia security. On the other side, whilst some Americans are profoundly impressed by China’s quiet efforts to resolve the Korean Peninsular standoff,[18] it is too early to judge whether a major corner in the relations between the US and China has been turned or whether what we are witnessing is simply a pause in emerging Sino-US rivalry.
Such rivalry is not preordained. The geography of the vast region allows the prospect of coexistence between China as the pre-eminent influence on continental East Asia and of the US as predominant in maritime Asia[19] with both implicated in regional institutions, fashioned principally according to Asian preferences that moderate behaviour and defuse tension. No Asian or Australasian country wants ever to be placed in a situation of having to choose between the People’s Republic and the US. There are signs too of moves by North and South East Asia towards more exclusive forms of economic regionalism. Progress is unlikely to be swift. But within Northeast Asia the particular issue of energy provides a driving force for cooperation between Russia as a major oil exporter and the ROK, China, and Japan as major importers,[20] particularly if the Middle East continues to be mired in controversy and conflict. The US has traditionally resisted any form of East Asian regionalism that would exclude a formal place for America. But ongoing judicious accommodations by the rest of East Asia to the unthreatening rise of China will, providing always that the rise remains unthreatening, change the context.
This paper was written for the conference "The
Challenge of Hiroshima. Alternatives to Nuclear
Weapons, Missiles, Missile Defenses, and
Space Weaponization in a Northeast Asian Context"
organized by INESAP and the Nuclear
Age Peace Foundation on October 8-11, 2004,
in Hiroshima, Japan.
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