Photo courtesy of www.kremlin.ru

This article was also reproduced in the Tribune magazine.

No one can be unaware of the ongoing standoff on the Korean Peninsula that threatens to become a global crisis with weapons of mass destruction available to both sides. There are neo-conservative voices in Washington who would see an Iraq-style solution with enforced regime change. Others close to Barack Obama’s administration have practiced a policy of what Pyongyang sees as malign neglect that has left North Korea isolated and off the global agenda. The result has been that the North Koreans have engaged in a series of provocative actions with missile launches, nuclear tests and armed clashes.

There was a third launch in April last year of Taepodong-2 with another attempt to put a Kwangmyonsong communications satellite into orbit. As with the first launch back in August 1998, the third stage did not ignite properly and the satellite failed to achieve orbit. The second launch in 2006 barely made it off the launch pad, failing 42 seconds after lift-off, possibly aborted by mission control, and falling into the East Sea.

Yet even in failure these demonstrate Pyongyang’s capacity to develop an inter-continental ballistic missile in the future capable of reaching Hawaii, Alaska and possibly the west coast of the United States. At the same time, the payload would need to be raised sharply if it were to be tipped with a Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapon. Currently, Taepodong would struggle to get the

70 volumes of the complete works of Kim Il Sung off the ground at its maximum range, and is incapable of carrying a nuclear warhead over any distance.

North Korea has twice tested plutonium-based nuclear weapons – first in October 2006 and then in April 2009. Both went off with more of a fizzle than a bang. The cores breaking up before the chain-reaction had fully gone to completion resulted in low yields, the first at one kiloton and the second a little bigger. While Pyongyang currently has only  enough weapons grade plutonium for six to eight weapons, Washington’s recent refusal to recognise North Korea as a nuclear state in the context of the Non-Proliferation Treaty talks – despite the view of Mohamed El Baradei, former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, that North Korea is “a fully-fledged nuclear power” – is inevitably driving the country to test for a third time. Whether this is actually the Pentagon’s objective is not clear.

Let’s put North Korea’s current capacity into context. If Taepodong-2 was to launch successfully for the first time, boosted to carry one of the current weapons and it was as powerful as the second nuclear test, without sophisticated gyroscopic guidance technology, which the North Koreans  lack, the chances are with such a random strike on the US the death toll would be less than 10. However, if it landed centre-field on Super Bowl Sunday, it would be 100,000.

The armed clashes involving North Korea have been naval engagements on the west coast of the Peninsula around the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the seaward extension of the Armistice Line agreed in 1953. While the Armistice Line is abundantly clear on the land side, the maritime boundary is much less obvious. Even the United States does not fully agree with Seoul’s partisan interpretation.

There were two deadly clashes in 1999 and 2002 that left a more than a dozen North Korean sailors dead in the first case when their ship caught fire. On the second occasion, 30 North Koreans and four South Koreans lost their lives. In March this year, the South Korean corvette Cheonan sank following an explosion when close to the NLL. Although no North Korean naval units were reported in the area, an investigation conducted by the United Nations Command has concluded that a North Korean submarine fired a torpedo that sank the Cheonan and killed 46 sailors. Attempts to internationalise the inquiry have been gently rebuffed by some countries such as Britain and Sweden, which are not fully convinced that science and politics can be kept apart.

So we have a ticking bomb. The Six-Party Talks, currently suspended, have not moved the world closer to a solution. Neither have bilateral sanctions, UN Security Council resolutions, nor threats to interdict North Korean vessels on the high seas. What might help is a bridge-building exercise by some group outside the usual participants. One candidate could be the European Union with its post-Lisbon Treaty enhanced foreign policy role and its new High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy.

In contrast to Washington, the EU has adopted a different stance towards North Korea over the past decade, which encompasses critical engagement while encouraging the regime to change. The EU has put its money where its mouth is, with almost €500 million of assistance over this period.

To a degree, Pyongyang has responded in kind. It supports further European integration and the Lisbon Treaty, while making the euro North Korea’s foreign currency of choice. Rodong Sinmun, the daily paper of the Central Committee of the Korean Workers Party, has published a series of editorials pointing out that the EU is the only hegemonic power capable of challenging the US. Thus the EU has opportunities for engagement that others do not, plus the experience.

What might the EU try to do? There are three areas that seem obvious, apart from continuing with humanitarian and development assistance. First, to help the Korean Peninsula learn the lessons – positive and negative – from the experience of German re-unification. Second, to try to resolve the troubled historical legacies across the east of Asia. The problem is not just North Korea versus Japan, but draws in China and South Korea. The European model of the Franco-German Textbook Commission might help a move towards a common history and reconciliation. Third, the experience of the European confidence and security measures could be valuable. These recognised the status quo either side of the European east-west divide and utilised semi-neutral parties to build bridges between the two sides that acknowledged areas of common interest and the need for mutual security while recognising the necessity of engaging with the US.

Glyn Ford is a member of the Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention. A former member of the European Parliament from Britain's Labour party, he is the author of North Korea on the Brink: Struggle for Survival.