result, we now have, with one of our baseline forecasts (and the forecast that ultimately came out of the computer-simulated game), a prediction, made in 2004, that is very close to the actual deal struck between the United States and North Korea in 2007.
Let’s think now about the game theory side to see the logic that produces a successful result and to get at some of the nuances of that result. For starters, we should notice that although North Korea is often portrayed in the media as a closed society, a mysterious place about which we know very little, the truth is that there are plenty of excellent experts in universities and elsewhere who know a lot about North Korea’s government and its leaders. I interviewed three experts, two together and one separately, and they came up with quite reliable information even though they disagreed about what they thought would happen in the so-called six-nation talks. As I intimated earlier, getting the data is not that hard. The more difficult question is how to frame the issue so that we answer the right question.
A good approach to solving problems such as presented by North Korea’s nuclear program begins by asking why that country’s leaders would want to develop nuclear weapons in the first place. We can think of that as asking, “What are they really demanding in the international arena?” The superficial answer might be to say that they want to threaten the Republic of Korea or American interests in the Korean peninsula. That may have merit but is unlikely to provide the whole answer, or even the main answer. I believe a good place to examine any provocative policy is to ask how that policy affects the prospects of political survival for the incumbent leadership that is engaging in provocation. Remember, this is human nature we’re talking about.
Kim Jong Il knows what it takes to retain the loyalty of his military leaders and to keep rivals at bay for years on end. He knows whom to antagonize and whom to placate. He certainly understands that he couldn’t defeat a concerted effort by the United States or South Korean governments to overrun North Korea and overthrow his government. But he also understands that he could raise the price of an invasion sufficiently that such an effort would be too costly to consider. In that case, by building a nuclear weapons capability he diminishes or even eliminates the most significant foreign threat to his political survival, freeing himself to concentrate on managing relations with his military leaders, party elites, family members, and senior civil servants. They, of course, could form various coalitions that might threaten his hold on power. Keeping them happy
If personal political survival is Kim’s main concern—and I believe that this is every leader’s top priority—then it’s likely that there never was an intractable contradiction between his interest in sustaining himself in power and the United States’ interest in eliminating any nuclear threat from North Korea. That means all that we had to do was find a self-enforcing approach that provides real commitments on both sides and advances both the elimination of North Korea’s nuclear threat and external threats to Kim Jong Il’s political survival. That was the strategic problem as I saw it in 2004. My investigations painted a picture of Kim Jong Il as an astute politician whose primary interest in nuclear weapons was as a lifeline to staying in power. Looking at several simulations of his strategic interplay with other powerful North Koreans also made evident to me that he is less monolithic a leader than is sometimes thought in the United States and that he was, and remains, more open to compromise than is generally assumed. What, in 2004, did I contend such a compromise might look like?
I concluded that his demand really was “Assure my security against a foreign invasion.” Therefore, the counterdemand had to relate to assuring us that his nuclear threat became moot in exchange for our ensuring his political survival. This meant turning attention away from just threatening Kim to finding a way to make his interests and the international community’s interests compatible. Thinking through his interests as well as the interests of others, it becomes clear that any successful compromise requires that the international community be assured that as long as it does nothing to jeopardize Kim’s political survival, he will do nothing to jeopardize peace on the Korean peninsula or beyond.
In practical terms this meant that the United States directly, or through third parties, needed to guarantee, and I mean really guarantee, not to invade North Korea. The United States also needed to guarantee a sufficient flow of money—we will call it foreign aid—so that Kim Jong Il’s key domestic backers would be assured of receiving substantial personal, private rewards from him. These rewards include money that could go to their secret bank accounts in return for their political loyalty to him. In return for his assured security and for a steady flow of money, the North Korean regime needed to provide a verifiable means of ensuring that its nuclear weapons program stopped. Assurances of his security would most likely come in two forms: formal, explicit Chinese guarantees to defend North Korea, and public American promises not to attack it. Making these guarantees public is critical, because secret assurances are just cheap talk. They are easily violated without imposing political costs on the guarantor who reneges. As for the assurance of a steady flow of money, we are probably talking about as much as $1 billion per year for as long as Kim Jong Il’s regime survives. That may sound like a lot, but think about how much was spent every day in Iraq for years on end, and at what additional price in American, allied, and Iraqi lives, and you’ll see that $1 billion a year is small potatoes.
There is plenty about such a deal that is distasteful. Bankrolling such a horrible human being is no happy task. It would be ever so much more satisfying if we could just persuade him to do the right thing, but then Kim Jong Il wouldn’t be Kim Jong Il if that were feasible. Exactly because he is so horrible, it is important to figure out how to keep him from unleashing a nuclear war in a fit of pique or fear or resignation that he is through anyway and so has nothing to lose. Remember, my task was to find what would work. The desirability of making it work is what we elect leaders to decide.
I want to emphasize here that I have said “a verifiable means of ensuring that its nuclear weapons program stopped.” I have not suggested that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and enrichment facilities be eliminated (positions 80 and above on the issue scale in figure 4.1) or dismantled. This is of fundamental strategic importance in making an agreement credible from both sides—so let me explain what I had in mind.
In the event that the United States or the other participants in negotiations with North Korea insisted on dismantling that country’s nuclear capabilities, I believe agreement would have been impossible or would prove short-lived, leading to inevitable cheating. Dismemberment of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities as an approach overlooks the essence of Kim Jong Il’s interests. It fails to put ourselves, as any good strategic thinker must do, in his shoes, looking at the world from his (perhaps elevated) perspective.
If he dismantled his nuclear capabilities, he would no longer have a credible threat of restarting his weapons program quickly in the event the international community—especially the United States—reneged on its promises. In such an environment we can be confident that the international community would renege, and, anticipating that, he would never allow his weapons program to be dismantled. After all, once his nuclear threat was completely dismantled, hardly anyone would have any remaining reason to follow through on payments to him, payments that help him keep domestic as well as foreign rivals under control. The international community would have even weaker reasons to leave him in power. They would rather replace him with someone more amenable to their wishes once his threat to use nuclear weapons to defend his regime was no longer meaningful. Remember, game theory takes a dim view of human nature, and that includes our nature as well as his. However high-minded we think we are, we would have scant incentive to continue to pay Kim Jong Il to behave well once his ability to behave really badly was eliminated.
Thus, as long as his nuclear program is stopped, disabled, placed in mothballs, with inspectors on site at all times, and not dismantled, he has the ability to restart it if the United States or others renege on payments or security guarantees. Conversely, as long as the United States and others do not renege on payments and security guarantees, he has no incentive to throw out the inspectors and restart his nuclear program. It will have achieved its purpose of giving him a life preserver. His likelihood of extracting a higher price in the future by throwing out the
