A CNP Conversation with Jack Pritchard and Jon Wolfsthal
Earlier this year, the Bush Administration struck an agreement with the North Korean government on nuclear weapons. At a lunchtime forum on May 3, CNP invited two leading experts on the subject to examine just what kind of deal we have and its prospects for the future.
Ambassador Jack Pritchard, former U.S. envoy to the talks with North Korea, started off the event and made three major points. First, he said, we need to realize that the North Koreans have the leverage in the current round of negotiations. By virtue of their existing nuclear weapons, their on-going nuclear programs and the regime’s tight control over the North Korean population—America’s position is relatively difficult.
But not impossible. The current hang-up is over the release of a North Korean bank account in Macao. The United States committed to freeing those funds but has not, as of this event. Once this milestone is reached, the ball will be back in the North Korean court.
Once the North Koreans fulfill their side of Phase I--which involves the North Koreans providing and discussing a list of the elements of their nuclear program--Amb. Pritchard says Phase II will take longer than anyone wants. That’s in part because the February deal is the start of a process to get to a deal, and is far from a commitment from the North Koreans to get rid of their nuclear program.
Success, however, will not happen within the next two years. That means it is crucial that the current administration continue to press forward with the February agreement and execute a tightly-managed handover with the next.
Jon Wolfsthal, a former Department of Energy inspector who monitored the North Korean program, concurred. He feels we do have an opportunity here but we have to plan how we move from a vision to a practical reality. Wolfsthal’s presentation, therefore, focused on what, from the technical side, needs to happen.
Wolfsthal focused on three elements of the North Korean program: equipment, people, and fissile material. First off Wolfsthal made it clear that the Yongbyon nuclear reactor can be shut down within a matter of minutes. That particular reactor is based on old designs but there is, to simplify matters, a switch. That makes shut down a political decision, not a technical one.
The more difficult negotiation is not about whether to shut down but how much to disable the North Korean nuclear infrastructure. The United States would like to shut it down and fill it with concrete. North Korea, Wolfsthal said, would rather ‘disconnect a gasket.’ Something in between will be represent the deal.
As the AQ Khan network demonstrated, people with the know-how can be just as large a proliferation threat as anything else. Once the North Korean program is shut down, the world will have to find something to do with the thousands of scientists, engineers and other personnel that work on it.
Third, there is the fissile material. If it turns out that our negotiations do not make progress on decommissioning North Korean facilities, the alternative is to restrict Pyongyang’s access to nuclear fuel.
Wolfsthal argues that these and other issues need to be addressed by all the member states of the negotiating team, using the Cooperative Threat Reduction process as a model. Simply put, that means bringing everyone in the talks to solve the pieces of the problem. Japan can handle North Korea’s high-level nuclear waste. South Korea can handle to chemical wastes. China could take the excess nuclear fuel.
As the negotiation evolves, however, America won’t get everything. Wolfsthal believes that at some point we may be faced with a choice between getting rid of North Korea’s existing nuclear weapons and getting rid of its weapons production capability. Given our relative success so far in deterring the North Korean regime from using or exporting their nuclear weapons, Wolfsthal argues we should aim to curtail their ability to make more.
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