The Thailand Experience and Its Lesson
Written by a second-year student in the DIS
The recent interdiction of North Korean weapons exports in Thailand couldn’t come at a better time. It came when the United States was intensifying its efforts to create an environment for talks (the Thai seizure occurred only a few days after Bosworth’s visit to North) and when North Korea repeated its mistake of exporting arms. When it came to North Korea, diplomacy meant much less than usual because North Korea could not kick its bad habit of breaking promises it makes to the world. In the recent event only, North Korea has violated the UN resolution restricting its sale of arms and contradicted the international community’s long-held vision of a WMD-free world. Now, countries seeking to disarm North Korea have a stronger case in engaging North Korea.
Not only that, this event is the evidence that there is, in fact, a network of rogue forces that put guns before words. Provided that North Korea enjoys a limited range of consumers, it is logical to think that those weapons were being delivered to another rogue element.
Many would find it easy to think that mechanisms to limit North Korea’s proliferation capacity are existent but ineffective because international law lacks teeth. This is true. Although there are options such as levying sanctions, North Korea has hurdled them, enough to barely maintain its decrepit posture as a state and a threat to international security. The enterprise of dealing with North Korean proliferation matters cannot continue without the teeth to convert North Korea’s promises into actions. This is why the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) should be extended to more countries around the world.
One of the most meaningful impacts that PSI has on nonproliferation matters is that it depresses the black market for arms sales. The PSI plays a deterrent role against proliferation efforts. It raises the transaction costs of arms sales business because the risk of transaction failure grows as safe havens for weapons transport become increasingly scarce. Logistics and weapons are what economists refer to as ‘complementary goods,’ which means that the supply and demand of those two goods is proportionate to each other. In the arms sales market, that would equate with weapons prices shooting upwards as logistics prices go up due to higher risk involved in transporting illicit goods. The Thai seizure of North Korean exports is a perfect example of this. The supply is reduced because logistics price escalates to a new level. In fact, Daniel Pinkston, an International Crisis Group’s expert on North East Asia, says of the Thai seizure that "This will affect the revenue stream. It is a sign of the increasing risk of doing business for the buyers, who are also violating United Nations Security Council resolution 1874."1 Moreover, given the amount of attention given to the buyer who remains opaque, efforts like the PSI depresses the demand curve because rogue forces that North Korea usually serves as clients tend to work under secrecy.
Another important detail is that the PSI just may introduce a new paradigm to international law relevant to nonproliferation. The PSI has the potential of re-orienting international law to a more nonproliferation-friendly direction. So far, international maritime law has come in defense of “innocent passage,” a concept that confides a foreign ship with trust that it is not carrying illicit goods until proven otherwise. Simply put, the status quo is that ships are innocent until proven guilty. Although this general principle of law is legitimate, it had no facilitating role in nonproliferation efforts. On the other hand, the Interdiction Principle for the Proliferation Security Initiative – the constitution-like set of rules that defines the PSI – requests that participant states “take appropriate actions to stop and/or search in their internal waters, territorial seas, or contiguous zones vessels that are reasonably suspected of carrying such cargoes to or from states or non-state actors of proliferation concern and to seize such cargoes that are identified.” Although it may appear to be violating the “innocent-until-proven-guilty” principle, the PSI will entice non-participant states to join the nonproliferation initiative for an incentive: innocent passage. By attracting more participants, the PSI can distinguish ships of proliferation concerns from those that are not more easily than before, and by dividing rogues ships and legitimate ships the principle of assumed innocence can be applied to ships that are qualified to enjoy such right. Moreover, it will not only contain maritime routes but also air routes as stipulated in Principle 4F and exemplified by the Thai seizure.
Much more groundwork needs to be laid before executing the above but the potential of the PSI is hard to neglect. Its potential can only be unleashed and realized when the synergy of multiple countries propels the nonproliferation effort. That is because solidarity among the willing is a prerequisite in isolating and, thus, identifying who the proliferators are. The PSI, nevertheless, comes with many limitations. Some argue that it is neither accountable nor transparent. Some insist that it does not prescribe the solutions to the heart of proliferation problems. However, while proliferation is a reality, the world cannot afford to let nonproliferation be an ideal. The PSI is not perfect now but its potential is too great to neglect, and the Thailand experience attests to that.
1 Pinkston, Daniel (2009) “Net Closes on N Korea’s vital arms exports” Financial Times, December 14 2009, Article composed by Christian Oliver
