Nuclear deal with North Korea would require unprecedented access
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump wants North Korea to do something unprecedented in the history of arms control – to reveal all the secrets of a nuclear weapons complex it has spent decades concealing and billions to build.
No one expects that kind of breakthrough when Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un June 12 in Singapore. Even Trump has acknowledged that the summit will start “a process.”
But if Kim subsequently agrees to disarm in stages over the next decade or longer, the most likely outcome if a nuclear deal is made, the effort would require hundreds of international nuclear inspectors to help dismantle warheads, close facilities, interview North Korean scientists, unravel procurement systems, tag and monitor bomb-making equipment, and much more.
At this point, there might not be enough nuclear experts to visit the hundreds of buildings, track down voluminous records and conduct the comprehensive inspections required to verify compliance with an agreement. Nothing approaching such a deal with a closed police state like North Korea has ever been attempted.
“This situation is without precedent,” said Daryl Kimball, a nonproliferation expert with the Arms Control Association., a Washington policy organization. “No country that has openly conducted test explosions and amassed a nuclear arsenal as North Korea has done has ever willingly eliminated its stockpile.”
U.S. intelligence agencies believe that Pyongyang has assembled as A submarine-launched ballistic missile is displayed during a military parade in central Pyongyang on April 15, 2017.
many as 60 nuclear weapons and built a widely dispersed network of development and production facilities, some deep underground in the country’s rugged northern mountains, to create fissile material and testing components, and to assemble and store the warheads.
As part of any deal, U.S. officials also are likely to seek restrictions on North Korea’s ballistic missiles, especially those capable of reaching the U.S. Additional outside experts thus would be needed to inspect missile factories and test sites.
No matter how intrusive the inspections, there would be almost no way to guarantee that North Korea wasn’t concealing components or a fully assembled warhead in case Kim or his successors faced a future threat to their survival, former officials and inspectors said.
“Say they declare 30 nukes. Can you verify 30? Yes,” said Robert Gallucci, who led 1994 talks with North Korea for the Clinton administration and is a professor at Georgetown University. “Can we ever, ever be certain they don’t have five other nukes somewhere? Absolutely not.”
Under a deal with North
Korea, Pyongyang probably first would be required to submit a full accounting of its nuclear program to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency based in Vienna. That would be followed by comprehensive IAEA inspections to confirm or disprove details in the documents.
Given the scale of Pyongyang’s program, the IAEA would need to hire and train a major new workforce and build or buy sophisticated monitoring equipment, from sensors to cameras, to ensure North Korea doesn’t cheat. The agency also would need the U.N. Security Council to approve the operation and fund it with a budget increase.
The IAEA said last year that it had about 300 inspectors, including 80 who are working to monitor Iran’s 27 mostly dormant nuclear facilities as part of the 2015 nuclear deal that Trump abandoned last month. Iran and the other signatories are still honoring the agreement.
North Korea, in contrast, is believed to have up to 100 clandestine sites, according to a report by Rand Corp., a research group based in Santa Monica.