Influential U.S. experts on North Korea, however, disagree strongly with what they see as a confrontational approach, preferring to harken back to the days of intermittent talks in which negotiators held out the illusion of actually bringing North Korea to terms.
In that spirit, the influential Council on Foreign Relations has come out with a lengthy report that reveals the inability of the U.S. to do much if anything about North Korea. The report is full of unrealistic suggestions for talks to persuade the North to stop developing nuclear weapons and missiles, to stop trying to market them overseas and generally to listen to reason.
Incredibly, the authors of this report, the creation of a "task force" of well-known figures with long records on North Korea, do not seem willing or able to recognize one major problem: none of this stuff worked in the past, and it's not likely to work now.
Perhaps the most unrealistic aspect of the report is the blind faith placed on China as a potentially faithful partner in restraining North Korea. The task force "calls for a U.S. strategic dialogue with China to discuss the future of the peninsula", in order to, "clear misunderstanding, build trust".
China does not want anything to happen that might create instability on the Korean Peninsula, and the record shows that the Chinese are not going to cooperate with the U.S. on getting tough on North Korea.
Considering some of the well-known figures involved in this report, one has trouble understanding why they settled on such tired cliches. The problem may be that the task force members represented different strands of thinking on North Korea, and they had to synthesize their viewpoints. The task force leaders were John Tilelli, a retired four-star general who once commanded all U.S. troops in South Korea, and Jack Pritchard, who gained a reputation as a wishful thinker in his days as U.S. negotiator on North Korea and then became a strong critic of U.S. policy during the presidency of George W. Bush.
The task force approaches the need for a strong response to North Korean intransigence in tones that fall far short of a real call for action. Incredibly, the report says that "the six-party process remains the preferred framework" as if the six-party talks on the North's nuclear program had the remotest chance of getting somewhere. North Korea has not agreed to return to the table for one and a half years, and even if talks were to resume, the chances of the North actually living up to any deal for giving up its nukes are virtually nil.
The report does cite the need for "non-diplomatic tools such as sanctions or even military measures" if North Korea explodes another nuclear warhead or fires off a long-range missile or sells nuclear components and know-how overseas, but that threat comes through as the usual empty rhetoric. A recurring theme is regional pressure, with China as the critical partner, all of which would lead to a return to six-party talks and "a path of denuclearization" as "the necessary course of action".
The authors of the report, well versed though they are in the pitfalls, appear to have lost their way. If you asked any of them, they would say, yes indeed, we're totally aware of the sinking of the Cheonan and the increased threat level in the Yellow Sea and across the peninsula, but somehow they seem unable to get away from the failed diplomacy of the past.
They don't want to bluntly admit that North Korea has not lived up to a single agreement that it's ever made with the South, whether for giving up its nukes or simply staging family visits and opening mail service. They seem to have decided that North Korea's renunciation of the 1991 agreement for a denuclearized peninsula is not important, and they don't take seriously the North's more or less repudiating the armistice that ended the Korean War in July 1953.
After all these failures, the task force wants to open yet another set of negotiations with North Korea by suggesting separate talks on its missiles. In a pompous tone that characterizes the entire report, the task force "recommends that the Obama administration test North Korean willingness to open bilateral negotiations on a permanent missile testing moratorium" in a separate set of talks. These talks would deliberately avoid China "as an intermediary" in order not to compromise the non-existent six-party talks.
It's actually easier to fantasize North Korea giving up its nukes than it is to imagine the North doing anything to compromise its missile program. Then again, it's not easy to imagine any solution to anything as analyzed in this report.
None of the members of this task force want to acknowledge that negotiations, if they are ever held again, offer nothing more than a temporary reprieve.
Bottom line: North Korea has no reason to back down as long as it's sure of Chinese economic and diplomatic support.
ShareThis
