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A Conversation with the Dean…. |
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Stephen W. Bosworth, Dean of The Fletcher School, met with members
of the community for an informal
discussion on the current situation in North Korea. Dean Bosworth, former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea (1997-2000), addressed the same topic last November and began the conversation by saying, “I must say I was not optimistic then and I’m less optimistic now that we’re going to deal with this in a coherent way.”  In
a lively discussion characterized by many questions from students
throughout his presentation, Bosworth laid out three options the
Bush Administration faces in dealing with North Korea.Outlining his first alternative, he said, “I think the preferred option of many people in both the Clinton Administration and the Bush Administrations in regard to North Korea has been to ignore them and wait for them to collapse. They think that an impoverished state cannot last for long. The problem is this has not happened. They are still poor, they are still repressive and they are still a threat. Secondly, this is not what our ally, South Korea, wants us to do or wants to happen.” Bosworth added that there has been a sea change in South Korean opinion regarding their view of the North in the last four to five years. “The overwhelming opinion is that they don’t want North Korea to collapse. The South Koreans do not want to have to deal with the economic and social costs of a North Korean collapse. Many South Korean’s view North Korea less as a threat than as an object of charity.” “The second option now is a military option. I am surprised that there are serious people from the Clinton Administration saying to keep the military option on the table to strengthen our position,” he said, listing Bill Perry and Ashton Carter as examples. “I think it’s everybody’s last resort, but for some it is something they are prepared to contemplate.” “To do that we would have to accept the moral burden of the great risk that the North Koreans wouldn’t absorb a blow quietly--that they would not launch missiles to Japan, start something along the DMZ, the very high risk that that kind of activity could quickly spiral into full-fledged action along the DMZ.” Bosworth added that when he was Ambassador, “Our military commanders had a number that they used a lot--fifty thousand. Fifty thousand rounds of artillery per hour into metropolitan Seoul and it would take us at least two weeks to knock that out. The first round would almost certainly be chemical.” “I think the third option is to do what we have refused to do. Talk. I think that is the only answer to find out if they have nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip or do they really want to be a nuclear state. Is there some price that they’re willing to accept to give up the nuclear weapon?” Bosworth asserted that it would be very complicated negotiation punctuated by severe mistrust on both sides, but eventually the way the Bush Administration will need to address the crisis. “If we leave them alone, we are virtually assuring that they’ll become a nuclear weapon state. I don’t accept that; I don’t know that they have nuclear devices. They could have built one to three nuclear devices, but they have never tested one. This is basically a hypotheses. But, if they are producing plutonium at a rate that they can produced three to six devices a year, they’ll be tempted to become a one-stop shop for selling fissile material. That is why I think we cannot ignore the program and leave them alone. They want our attention because they think they need things from us. They want a commitment that we’re not going to overthrow them and they want economic assistance from us, South Korea and Japan.” Responding to comments that talking with North Korea would be akin to rewarding a country that breaks its promises, Bosworth said, “Diplomacy is all about dealing with bad behavior. If we decided to shun people who behave badly, diplomats wouldn’t have much to do.” On whether or not China could be doing more, he stated, “I think we tend to grossly over-estimate China’s influence on North Korea. Secondly, China has conflicting goals; they don’t want a nuclear North Korea, but they don’t want to deal with a collapsed North Korea either.” Bosworth concluded his talk by outlining broadly current approaches to US foreign policy. He identified traditional pragmatists, post-Cold War nationalists and neo-conservatives as representative of major philosophical approaches to American foreign policy and said it is not yet clear which view will dominate. He invited students to consider this for his next conversation on American foreign policy. |
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2002 The Fletcher School, Tufts
University |
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