North Korea crisis: six-party talks the only way to avert nuclear war

Anti-proliferation mechanisms that once kept nuclear ambitions in check are failing as the old global order crumbles
The North Korean nuclear impasse is part of this trend, and cannot be resolved without multilateral talks that take into account divergent interests

Andrei Kortunov

Published: 5:30am, 13 Oct 2023

Why you can trust SCMP

One dangerous consequence of the disintegration of the global security system is the growing threat of nuclear proliferation.

To prevent proliferation, there should be a minimum level of mutual trust among the great powers. Such trust is absent today, which deters joint action even when it is in their common interests.

For instance, to deal with Iran’s nuclear programme, great powers need to reach a consensus on the stalled 2015 agreement to limit the programme. But the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is eroding in front of our eyes. Many in the West fear that, as time passes, Russia and China may become more open to Tehran obtaining nuclear weapons.

Similarly, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s recent visit to the Russian Far East, to meet President Vladimir Putin, has sparked intense speculation that Moscow may have dropped its opposition to Pyongyang obtaining nuclear weapons. Worse, it may even signal that Russia has agreed to assist North Korea in developing the latter’s nuclear and ballistic capabilities.

The threat of proliferation comes from other directions as well. Many experts believe that the purchase of nuclear-powered submarines by Australia from the US and UK will inevitably erode nuclear proliferation safeguards. And South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, for one, has floated the possibility of his country acquiring nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, the outcome of the conference last year to review the Non-Proliferation Treaty was a disappointment; four weeks of deliberations in August failed to result in a consensus among participants.

Non-nuclear states have every right to complain about the reluctance of nuclear powers to comply with Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, calling for good-faith negotiations on effective measures leading to the cessation of the nuclear arms race and to nuclear disarmament.

The New START treaty, the last bilateral US-Russian strategic arms control agreement, is now stalled. Any continuation of bilateral negotiations on strategic arms control looks very unlikely.

The future of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty – which was adopted by the UN General Assembly more than a quarter of a century ago but has yet to come into force because several specific countries, including the US, have not ratified it – is also dim. There are clear and growing risks that some nuclear powers might resume nuclear tests before too long.

It is no wonder that Kim feels no political or moral obligation to move towards the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and, on the contrary, intends to use all the above-mentioned trends to justify turning his country from a de facto into a de jure nuclear power.

So, is a nuclear arms race on the Korean peninsula inevitable? Is a nuclear war in Northeast Asia already looming on the horizon? The situation is serious, but it is in no way hopeless.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un waves as Russian President Vladimir Putin (seen in the reflection) sees him off from the Vostochny cosmodrome in the Amur region, in Russia’s Far East, on September 13. Photo: Korean Central News Agency / Korea News Service via AP

The so-called six party talks on North Korea’s nuclear programme were launched 20 years ago in Beijing. Despite its ups and downs, this multilateral format succeeded for a time in putting in place some restraint.

In the 14 years since the talks were discontinued, no workable alternative to the format has been found. Even the much-publicised face-to-face meetings between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in Singapore (June 2018) and Hanoi (February 2019), as well as in Panmunjom (June 2019), made little progress towards denuclearisation.

Similarly, it has become clear that the inter-Korean dialogue, which is not supported by the multilateral process, inevitably encounters obstacles.

Today, the starting conditions for any multilateral format on the problems of the Korean peninsula look much more complicated than they were back in 2003.

Increasing geopolitical confrontation between the great powers will inevitably cast its dark shadow over any attempt to resume multilateral diplomacy. Nevertheless, the revival of multilateral talks remains a precondition for stabilising this volatile region and prevent it from sliding further into rigid bipolarity.

The immediate task of such talks should not be the instantaneous nuclear disarmament of North Korea (such an enterprise would be stillborn), but rather a gradual creation of appropriate mechanisms for controlling nuclear and ballistic weapons, ideally not only North Korean.

02:15

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This should include confidence-building measures in the military field, as well as mechanisms for managing crises and strengthening stability. One could start with relatively simple technical measures such as military-to-military contact or information-sharing, and slowly move to something more far-reaching.

The issue of the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula should stay on the agenda, but it must be considered in the context of the geopolitics of the wider region.

Denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula is very important, but peace in Northeast Asia is even more important. It is only when all nations in the region feel reassured that the threat of a military conflict is gone that Northeast Asia can avoid a new arms race and gradually move towards a complete elimination of nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula. In other words, one should treat the causes of regional insecurity, not the symptoms of it.

To resume the six-party dialogue would be a challenging undertaking. It is further complicated by the diverging political trajectories of different countries in the region. Any security system in the region will have to be built taking into account the political pluralism present there.

The task to manage such diversity is not easy, but it is not unachievable if all parties have a political will to maintain peace. And if the international community is successful in herding cats in this region, it will have higher chances of doing the same in other dangerous corners of our disintegrating planet.

Andrei Kortunov is academic director of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC)