Bucks for the Bang: North Korea’s Nuclear Program and Northeast Asian Military Spending

Abstract

Delineating the impact of North Korea's program on overall military spending among the other principal states of Northeast Asia is challenging. This article presents a foundation to address that challenge. After summarizing key elements of North Korea's program, the article introduces frameworks to examine the security consequences of the program for the Northeast Asian region and assess North Korea's motivations to pursue capabilities. The reviews indicate how these frameworks can be used to deduce hypotheses of more specific linkages of North Korea's activities to other states' military spending decisions, some strategically motivated and others more influenced by symbolism and domestic politics. The article concludes with observations on contemporary developments derived from the analysis. Key words: North Korea, weapons, East Asian security, Northeast Asia, military spending Introduction This article addresses the impact of the North Korean program on military spending among the principal states of Northeast Asia.1 A single empirical relationship is difficult to discern with precision because of the multiplicity of factors involved. North Korea's ambitions have many potential sources and several categories of consequences, suggesting varying interpretations that would shape other states' reactions. Other states, in turn, evince military spending behavior shaped by a wide range of forces, among which North Korea's advances are only one factor. One state's leaders may see North Korea's developments as grave but, if already possessing countervailing capabilities, may show little change in military spending behavior. Conversely, another state may be relatively unalarmed, but undertake significant new military programs anyway, either to counter small but important possibilities or to use North Korean activities as a pretext to disguise other motivations. To work around these complexities, I will approach the issue partly as a deductive exercise. First, I will summarize key known parameters of North Korea's program, focusing on those elements most pertinent to the subsequent discussion. Second, I will assess the consequences of North Korea's capabilities for the Northeast Asian region, considering both security implications and broader impacts. This assessment provides a first cut set of expectations for other states' reactions. Third, I will apply this assessment through a general model of acquisition explanations to discern Pyongyang's probable motivations for its activities. This application provides a second cut set of factors influencing other states' reactions. The combination of material consequences and discerned motivations provides a deductive foundation for hypotheses on military spending reactions among other principal Northeast Asian states.2 The essay concludes with an evaluation of some developments in 2009 garnered from the preceding analysis. North Korea's Nuclear Program Evolution of the Nuclear Program Assessing whether North Korea's program has had an appreciable impact on military spending among its key Northeast Asian interlocutors requires more than simply stipulating that North Korea is a nuclear power or now possesses a nuclear deterrent. Rather, the security implications for key affected states are decisively influenced by some precise benchmarks concerning how much fissile material North Korea has acquired and how far its weaponization capabilities have proceeded.3 North Korea is believed to have been accumulating plutonium since 1986, principally using its 5-megawatt electric reactor at the Yongbyon site. The nearby plutonium reprocessing facility is thought to have separated up to ten kilograms of plutonium prior to 1992. In 1994 North Korea discharged the reactor's 8,000 irradiated fuel rods, containing an estimated 27- 29 kilograms of plutonium. …