The Reason North Korea Developed Nuclear Weapons: Survival

Andrei Lankov

Security, Asia

They openly say that Saddam Hussein would still be alive if he had actually possessed weapons of mass destruction. So what does the U.S. do about it? 

North Korea has done it again. On October 9 they conducted yet another nuclear test, so far the most powerful and arguably the most successful. To make matters worse, there are good reasons to expect that another test is in the making.

North Korea’s strategy is not difficult to predict. Decades ago, North Korean leaders decided to go nuclear and subsequent global events have increased their resolve — they openly say that Saddam Hussein would still be alive if he had actually possessed weapons of mass destruction.

North Korea is not interested in promises of favorable economic cooperation or security and lessons from recent history confirm their reluctance to take such promises seriously. Muammar Gaddafi of Libya agreed in 2004 to surrender his nuclear program in exchange for economic reaches but he then ended up being killed by rebels who were supported by Western powers. In 1994, Ukraine agreed to remove the nuclear weapons it had acquired after the collapse of the Soviet Union in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom, but Crimea was subsequently annexed by Russia. North Korean leaders see these examples as justification of their belief that nuclear weapons are vital for their regime’s survival.

What can the outside world do in this situation? If the goal is North Korea’s denuclearization then the honest answer — while discouraging — is ‘nothing, short of a military operation’.

Negotiations have failed many times. North Korean decision-makers, understandably, have little enthusiasm for negotiating what they sincerely (and perhaps, correctly) see as their own death warrant.

It might be possible to negotiate a freeze of North Korea’s nuclear program and to buy Pyongyang’s willingness to stop nuclear development for a period of time. But such an agreement would entail allowing weapons and fissile material to remain in North Korea. This imperfect and controversial compromise is not possible now since neither North Korea nor the United States are particularly interested in such negotiations.