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THE frenetic speculation about an imminent test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) had almost died down by July 5, when Pyongyang did indeed test-fire a stream of missiles.
For North Korea, July 5 was not really evocative of any historical or cultural memories. But, keeping an eye on the global time horizon, it carried out the test-flights, involving a series of seven missiles, to coincide with the July 4 Independence Day celebrations in the United States. And, thereby hangs the unresolved tale of animosities between the U.S. and the DPRK.
While the U.S. projects its strengths as an open society, the DPRK largely remains unknown to the rest of the world. It is a story, unfinished as yet, about a clash between two political systems, or, more simply, about a quirk from the Cold War era.
There is no immediate and authoritative scientific assessment about the July 5 tests. Western and Japanese monitors insist that the impoverished North Korea had, in fact, failed to prove the efficacy of its intercontinental ballistic missile, Taepodong-2. The missile was reckoned to have formed the nucleus of the stream of missiles that Pyongyang unleashed on that day.
The DPRK tested Taepodong-1, an intermediate-range ballistic missile, in 1998. The extent of its success remains in dispute but the DPRK had said the objective was to test its capabilities to put a satellite into the earth's orbit.
Taepodong-1 flew over Japanese airspace on that occasion, and Japan has since then perfected its techniques of monitoring the DPRK's ballistic missile ambitions. Indeed, the two neighbours have many unresolved bilateral issues to settle, some dating back to Tokyo's imperial past and some others traced to Pyongyang's abductions of Japanese nationals during the Cold War. In this perspective, Japan is a very proactive player on the international stage in relation to the DPRK's current political status and future economic prospects.
The Western-Japanese surveillance-assessment was that the July 5 exercise was, in its entirety, a damp squib but a dangerous one. Taepodong-2 was monitored until it crashed into the Sea of Japan (also known to its critics as the East Sea) a minute after it was blasted into an intended ballistic mode. The other six missiles, all estimated to be variants of the Soviet-style Scuds with shorter ranges, were also reckoned to have fallen into the Sea of Japan without causing any damage.
It was, unsurprisingly, the U.S. that first detected the July 5 exercise and raised an alarm about missile proliferation outside the glasshouse of big and emerging powers.
The DPRK, on its part, maintained silence for nearly a day and a half after the tests, according to South Korea, they began around 3.30 a.m. (local time) on July 5 and lasted until 8.30 a.m. Seoul's technical estimate was that Taepodong-2 perhaps stayed on course for about seven minutes before burning out. More important, South Korea, as the DPRK's ethnic neighbour, finds itself in a unique position in the ongoing international debate on the political future of Pyongyang.
Among all of the DPRK's East Asian neighbours, including Russia as a Eurasian power, China is widely seen to be Pyongyang's closest interlocutor, which could even "influence" the thinking of North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-Il. In a sense, the nature and scope of this influence and, more significantly, China's current evaluation of its long-term stakes in the stability of the Korean peninsula will help determine the international community's last word on the DPRK's July 5 tests.
What, then, was the DPRK's own version? When it broke its silence by the evening of July 6, North Korea maintained that the missile launches were a complete success. There was, of course, no mention of Taepodong-2 as the weapon of choice for the test-flights that were nonetheless described as a routine military drill.
Throughout the phase of U.S.-led international outcry, missile test-flights, Pyongyang asserted its sovereign right to beef up its defences in the manner it thought fit. For the U.S., the constant concern was that a successful testing of Taepodong-2 might bring Hawaii, Alaska, and perhaps even some other parts of the U.S west coast under North Korea's potential missile range in a war scenario. Not surprisingly, the U.S. even threatened to try and shoot down Taepodong-2 if it were seen to be heading towards American targets. The point was reaffirmed in the past tense when the U.S., with a sigh of relief, announced that Pyongyang's July 5 launches had come to naught.
Not to be outdone politically, the DPRK's state radio and television stations, as monitored at the traditional listening post of Seoul, quoted Kim as saying on July 9 that "even a small concession would not be made to the sworn enemy, the U.S. imperialistic aggressors". Kim also pledged to "answer the enemy's retaliation with retaliation and all-out war with an all-out war". Accusing the U.S. of plotting and "clamouring for the collapse" of the DPRK, the state agencies said in a commentary that Kim's assertions were "not empty words" and that he would not budge.
Pyongyang, not known to pull punches in political polemics, was responding, in part, to U.S. diplomatic efforts to isolate the DPRK and to court China conspicuously for this. Another and more important factor was the U.S. action of sending a warship, laden with anti-missile capabilities, to the shores of Japan in a more-than-symbolic gesture of solidarity with Tokyo. The official line was that the warship was, in any case, scheduled to anchor off Tokyo, regardless of the DPRK's missile message, but even pro-U.S. observers saw the episode as a timely coincidence.
As a political spin-off, which the DPRK may not have bargained for except as a logical thought, is that of Japan raising not only its political profile but also its military posture.
As a country wedded to post-imperial pacifism, Japan has until now found itself constrained by its anti-war Constitution in times of military crises. Right now Tokyo tends to believe that the DPRK's ongoing nuclear-weapons programme and ballistic missiles agenda would "threaten" Japan's security. Japan continues to relax under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Yet, from Tokyo's standpoint, the DPRK's perceived military moves, while being aimed at proving a point to the U.S., pose urgent challenges to Japan.
Unsurprisingly in this context, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said in Tokyo on July 10 that his country should now explore avenues of missile deterrence. While Japan will obviously count on the U.S. as the technological guru and partner for any such venture, and while Tokyo's planned moves must be harmonised with the Japanese Constitution through suitable amendments or otherwise, Koizumi's July 10 pledge is, indeed, an altogether new dynamic on the East Asian security theatre.
Maintaining that Japan "must have deterrence capability", Koizumi said experts would need to be consulted on how to fashion it in a "form" that could help meet "various situations". As speculation gained currency to the effect that Tokyo might now consider developing capabilities to launch pre-emptive strikes at the missile-launch sites in North Korea, Koizumi sought to soften the implications of his move.
"There is no harm discussing how to respond when a missile has been launched" by the DPRK to put Japan at risk. But, he cautioned, "it is a different thing when it comes to saying Japan should conduct a pre-emptive strike before being actually attacked". These were nuances of political phraseology that were designed to keep Koizumi on the right side of constitutional pacifism. But he has left no room for doubts about Japan's determination to become what regional diplomats refer to as "a normal military power" in the new situation of North Korea's missile-related activism.
Japan's matching diplomatic aggressiveness came into full view as it sought to pilot with the blessings of the U.S. an anti-DPRK resolution in the United Nations Security Council. As of July 10, the day Japan and the U.S. originally intended to put this resolution to vote, the two stepped back a bit to allow China more time to try and "influence" North Korea. The resolution, aimed at imposing sanctions on the DPRK, was drafted by Japan.
As a non-permanent member of the Security Council, Japan saw in North Korea's July 5 missile tests a chance to try and embarrass China, which was perceived to have blocked Japan's aspirations to become a veto-empowered permanent member.
Informed Chinese sources told Frontline on July 10 that Beijing could not be expected to fall into a diplomatic trap being set by Japan. The reasoning could be paraphrased as follows: Japan had, in the wake of the DPRK's July 5 missile tests, suspended a ferry service that was operating between the two countries and threatened to impound some of Pyongyang's currency holdings that came under Tokyo's purview. These were relatively minor sanctions.
However, under the Japan-U.S. draft resolution, as it stood on July 10, all U.N. members, including China, would be expected to impose sanctions on the DPRK. If that were to happen, DPRK citizens would face a severe hardships and China could well have to accommodate an exodus of refugees from North Korea. This humanitarian aspect should not be lost sight of in the dazzle of political calculations.
Viewed against this Chinese view, what was Japan's game plan when it drafted the sanctions resolution? Japan and its allies knew that China, as a member of the Big Five at the U.N., was committed to the new game of "constructive engagement", under globalisation, on concerns such as the proliferation of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems such as missiles.
So, when Japan and the U.S. decided on July 10 to defer a vote on the sanctions-resolution, their calculation was that Russia, which was then poised to host a summit of the Group of Eight major powers, could perhaps be won over through the arguments about globalisation's new game of "constructive engagement". And, China would then find it difficult to stand apart, for whatever reasons, and veto the resolution.
Such initial calculations by Japan and the U.S. gained political resonance in the context of some Russian perceptions too. Evgeniy P. Bazhanov, a former Soviet diplomat who had served in China and the U.S., had some time ago drawn attention to a significant "unofficial" sentiment among the Chinese people and experts.
The sentiment, as ascertained by Bazhanov and others of a Russian delegation that visited China, was that Beijing might only "ruin [its] reforms and future" by allowing itself to be dragged into a "conflict" over North Korea at this time. If Japan and the U.S. did also bank on such "unofficial" sentiments in China, the chief Chinese delegate to the U.N. said pointedly on July 10 that Beijing was "not the problem" holding up a resolution of the North Korean crisis. The last words and deeds over this issue are far from done.
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