Robert Gates on North Korea’s launch: Signs of a more realistic foreign policy
March 31, 2009 at 6:23 am by Ben LuongoBy Ben Luongo
PoHo contributor
Ben Luongo is a USF political science graduate student. He will be graduating this spring.
Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, appeared on ‘Fox News Sunday’ with Chris Wallace this past weekend to discuss U.S. foreign policy. The major topic of discussion was North Korea’s probable launch in the next week. Concerning the launch, Wallace asked “and there’s nothing that we can do about it?”
“No,” Gates replied, “I would say that we’re not prepared to do anything about it.” Watch Robert Gates reply to Chris Wallace below:
It seemed that Wallace wasn’t happy with that answer, as if he was expecting a response from Gates that would imply America’s determination to shoot down North Korea’s launch in self-defense. I have heard a lot from people who would expect the U.S. to take a more aggressive approach to North Korea’s launch, either because they see it as a threat to security, or because it violates the 2006 Security Council resolution that prohibits Pyongyang from any ballistic activity.
However, let’s look at the reality of things.
The foreign policy over the past eight years has been aggressive with threats and likely to justify its actions through self-defense. This hasn’t always been a good thing though. Eight years of the Bush Doctrine has eroded much of our soft power, which in today’s globalizing era is more effective than our might. It doesn’t go unnoticed, then, when a new foreign policy takes a more pragmatic outlook.
Gates makes a smart move by saying that we’re not prepared to shoot down any launch and here is why. The only way to ensure security between the U.S. and North Korea, or North Korea and the rest of the world for that matter, is to encourage North Korea into the modern international system where we govern our actions by law. If the U.S. were to shoot down a North Korean launch then it would be taking the law into its own hands, which is essentially the same offense (non-compliance with law) that North Korea is guilty of. Rather what the U.S. and Japan should do is let the international legal system work as it should. Nothing is more counterproductive, more hypocritical, than acting outside the system that we work so hard to bring North Korea into.
Gates also made a wise observation when he said that economic sanctions would work better than diplomacy. Anybody can see that the six party talks haven’t worked but there is a reason for this; North Korea benefits from resisting rules and norms of the international system. It learned in 1994 how lucrative blackmail could be when the U.S. gave North Korea two light water nuclear reactors given that North Korea would terminate its nuclear ambitions. North Korea restarted its program in 1999 – so much for that. Modifying North Korea’s behavior, then, requires them to understand penalties for inappropriate behavior. However, as I stated before, these penalties should reinforce the legitimacy of rules of the international system, and economic sanctions would do this. Unilaterally shooting down a launch would not.
Ultimately, shooting down North Korea’s launch would only provoke them. It shows distrust of their intentions, and how can we rope them into the modern international system when they feel that they are not trusted by others in that system.
Some people think that this is all fruitless, that Kim Jong-Il is wild-eyed and suicidal. On the contrary, all of his actions have demonstrated an ability to think rationally, as well as a tendency to maximize his own power. The history of North Korea blackmailing the U.S. in the 1990s and then withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation treaty in 2003 when the U.S. and Japan stopped sending oil, shows that Kim Jong-Il has the ability to test the system in a way that benefits his own power. He thinks rationally to maximize his power, which means that he is not crazy or suicidal, but it does mean that he has tested the international system rather than that system testing him.
Hopefully, a new foreign policy under President Obama would work towards encouraging North Korea into the international system, where Kim Jong-Il would learn that testing the system is less productive than working with it.
March 31st, 2009 at 10:07 am
“Ultimately, shooting down North Korea’s launch would only provoke them. It shows distrust of their intentions, and how can we rope them into the modern international system when they feel that they are not trusted by others in that system.”
So North Korea launching in the first place is not a provocation in itself? Jesus….
April 1st, 2009 at 3:33 pm
There seems to be atleast some point here of capability.
The fact that there is a launch platform and stable foundation of something that would turn concreet into dust with fractures should have more than an unthinkable response, and suppose for instance that is cover for more than 100 launches from portable divices. And what if there were 100 more after that.
On the last day of the war both sides were dug in and sluggingig out when somebody turned the lights on and that was about 50 years ago. Today Kim perades something like SS’s and there is allways more than 100 what is about to happen?
Spying is just not what it used to be either; I can get more conversations and pictures from my blackberry than a cammera in a plane at 60 thousand feet so go figure. I think the problem is really global warming and what Kim Il intends to do about it.
Sincerely; me
April 1st, 2009 at 4:29 pm
I’m reassured to know that if an “aberrant” North Korean missile was plunging toward Hawaii that we would “probably” shoot it down. Of course, first there would have to be some polling on the issue and perhaps a couple of focus groups.
April 6th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
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