1 / 10

The Role of North Korea in Northeast Asia Energy Relations

The Role of North Korea in Northeast Asia Energy Relations. David Dusseault Eurasia Energy Group Aleksanteri Institute 11th December 2006. N. Korea’s energy situation is dire; Causes include common regional constraints as well as domestic economic strategy; and

tobit
Download Presentation

The Role of North Korea in Northeast Asia Energy Relations

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. The Role of North Korea in Northeast Asia Energy Relations David Dusseault Eurasia Energy Group Aleksanteri Institute 11th December 2006

  2. N. Korea’s energy situation is dire; Causes include common regional constraints as well as domestic economic strategy; and NK is a crucial actor in regional energy relations due to location & potential knock on effects derived from regime’s survival strategy. Some Basic Ideas

  3. The Scope of the Issue

  4. Energy Imbalance

  5. Interdependency: Enabling and Constraining Conditions • Physical Constraints: uneven resource distribution, finiteness of natural resources, existence of energy sector infrastructure, geography, climate, accessibility of resources; • Informational Constraints: elites do not possess full information regarding their resources or how to fully maximise their benefits accrued from natural resource wealth; • Financial Constraints: finite financial resources for investment and resource exploitation, commodity prices, market size; • Actor-based Constraints: number of competing actors, how actors perceive their interests and how they determine to develop their interests; and • Institutional Constraints: ability of state institutions to flexibly determine the rules of the game over time without marginalising actors or seeking rent.

  6. Regional Assessment

  7. Conditions: North and South Korea

  8. The Nuclear Issue in the Present Energy Context • Nuclear stand-off on the peninsula is tied to regime survival; • NK’s regime survival strategy has been directly linked to external aid (food and energy (KEDO)); • Energy can still form the basis for a flexible long term strategy to incorporate NK back into the international community.

  9. Priorities & Strategies • US Priorities: Regime Change • Economic Sanctions (Uni - & Multi-lateral) • Military “Axis of Evil” (Sum zero) • NK Priorities: Regime Survival • Nuclear Threat (Sum zero) • FDI, financial credits, WB loans; (Bi & Multi-lateral) • KEDO energy package, UNDP development aid. (Bi-& Multi-lateral) ? • Regional Priorities: Catastrophic Regional Conflict Avoidance • FDI, financial credits, ROK Japan loans; (Bi & Multi-lateral) • Regional Development aid (Bi & Multi-lateral)

  10. Conclusions • Re-think of US sum zero regime change strategy; • Development of mutually beneficial, long term plan to incorporate NK into the international community; • In the short term: resumption of HFO shipments and incremental easing of economic sanctions in return for negotiations over nuke issue; • In the medium term: step by step programme for verifiable dissolution of nuclear programme in return for increased financial and technical assistance; • In the long term: inclusion in regional based development initiatives with further cuts to conventional forces on the peninsula.

More Related