Russian Policy and the Korean Crisis
Authored by Dr. Stephen J. Blank.
September 30, 1994
28 Pages
Brief Synopsis
North Korea's nuclear program is the greatest current threat to U.S. and Northeast Asian security. The outcome of negotiations over this program will have a tremendous impact on the future of the Korean peninsula and on the vital interests of the United States and neighboring states to North and South Korea: China, Japan, and Russia. Bearing this in mind, the Center for Strategic and International Studies convened a conference on June 28-29, 1994, to consider the crisis surrounding North Korea's nuclear program in its international context. Experts spoke about the program and its impact on the two Koreas and on the neighboring states. Professor Stephen Blank presented this paper on Russian policy with regard to Korea.
Dr. Blank relates Moscow's position on the issues of North Korean nuclearization to the broader domestic debate in Russia over security policy, in general, and Asian policy, in particular. He contends that Russia's policy is a function of that broader debate and must be understood in that context.
Summary
The crisis ignited by North Korea's nuclear program affects Russia's vital interests. To understand Russian policy in this crisis, we must refer to both those vital geopolitical interests and to the contemporary and bitter domestic debate over Russian policy abroad.
In strategic terms, Russia has fought three wars in or around Korea in this century and a peaceful Korea is an essential aspect of Russian Asian policy. Russia also is determined to remind the world that its vital interests in Asia must not be ignored. It fears the breakdown of the nonproliferation regime and also regards friendship with South Korea as an essential aspect of its Asian policy. Therefore its interests point to support for nonproliferation by the North.
However, Russian objectives go far beyond this. Russia is still stalemated in its relations with Japan and cooperation over Korea between the two states is unlikely given their very disparate interests. Thus, prospects for Russia's proposed 10 power conference (including both Koreas, the five members of the Security Council, Japan, the UN, and International Atomic Energy Agency) are doubtful since a breakdown between at least these two members is likely to occur quite soon. In addition, Russian foreign policy is now a "victim" of the bitter domestic struggle that characterizes Russian politics. The government does not speak with a single voice due to this struggle and it has had to make numerous concessions to the partisans of a rather militarized policy perspective toward Asia.
This line of thought is now ascendant in Russian policy. If one examines Russian policy in detail one finds an unwillingness to accept that North Korea has nuclear weapons or may have them soon, a military unconcern over that fact except for its impact on Japanese and South Korean defense planning, and a desire to regain leverage over North Korean policy to replace what was lost by Russia's unilateral renunciation of its 1961 treaty with North Korea. There is very clearly a right-wing bloc of support in the Parliament and in the military-industrial complex (MIC) for resuming ties with the North Koreans in the belief that Russia can then sell them arms and resume profitable economic exchanges. Thus the military press alleges that the whole crisis has been "cooked up" by Washington and Pyongyang for domestic purposes.
These groups also want Russia to come close to China's position which consistently has been more solicitous of North Korea's interests and perceptions than President Yeltsin's and Foreign Minister Kozyrev's have been. The MIC also seeks to usurp control of foreign policy from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and to push a line at the conference whose aim is the retreat of American military power from the North Pacific and South Korea. It is very unlikely that these objectives either comport with U.S. goals or those of South Korea. Certainly they do not harmonize with Japanese interests. The Russian conference proposal and its suggested agenda of neutralizing Korea and denuclearizing the surrounding North Pacific area evoke old objectives dating back to Brezhnev and reflect a primarily military orientation to the regional security agenda.
An equally important goal of the Russian proposal is that it lead the way to a general acceptance of the importance Russia has for the region, even though it can barely compete there now and has lost much of the goodwill Gorbachev won for it. Certainly there is a considerable disillusionment with Russia in South Korea, especially among business and economic institutions. This proposed conference is seen as a way to recoup Russia's diminished standing in Asia and prove it is still important there. This leads the Russian government to advance long-standing proposals whose relevance to the problem at hand is questionable and whose main purpose is to scale down American power and presence in Asia. For all these reasons the Russian proposal is not particularly helpful or useful to the United States. Indeed, Russian policy represents a significant backtracking from the 1991-93 period when Yeltsin pushed forward the rapprochement with the South and repudiated past arrangements with the North. The pressure to sell arms to both North and South or use arms to reduce the debt to the South indicates the degree to which Russia has failed to advance a nonmilitary agenda in Asia or contribute to Asian security.
Finally, Russia's policy position here reflects the difficulty involved in trying to build Asian security systems above diverse regional subsystems and establish a viable arms control regime at a time when individual states like Russia, China, and Japan, tend to go their own way on this and other issues. In this sense Russia's position on Korean nuclearization and ultimately on the destiny of the two states on the Korean peninsula reflects a deeper Asian tendency. Russian policy on Korea shows us how difficult it will be to construct a Russia that can contribute to Asian security and stability and an Asia that can welcome a reformed Russia into its midst.
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