Body
With the convening of the US-DPRK bilaterals in Geneva last week, the pundits are once again sniffing around the carcass of the Six Party Talks.
Our own line is simply stated. Resuming the talks is hard; figuring out how they will advance once convened is harder. It is fine to say “let’s go back to the Joint Statement of September 2005,” but we already negotiated pretty significant roadmaps on the basis of the Joint Statement in 2007 (my parsing of the first of these agreements with Susan Shirk for the Washington Post can be found here.) Since then we have HEU, Syria, missiles, not to mention the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong-do incidents. A recent interview by LMB in the Wall Street Journal shows that these incidents still cast a long shadow over South Korean policy, as several pundits also note.
But enough of us; earlier assessments of the prospects for talks in July and August can be found here and here. What some of our friends are saying:
- Let’s hope the hardliners in Pyongyang don’t read The Washington Post. The title of Victor Cha’s assessment is "How to Disarm a Nuclear North Korea." Cha sticks to his “soft hawk” approach. On the one hand is the “enough is enough…its time to get tougher” message (specifically, “financial sanctions, military augmentations of the U.S.-South Korea alliance and other actions that target the regime in Pyongyang”). On the other hand, an embrace of the Joint Statement and a novel sweetener: a promise to help North Korea address the nuclear safety issues surrounding Yongbyon.
- Jeffrey Lewis, Peter Hayes and Scott Bruce over at the Nautilus Institute always add interesting twists to the debate; their piece on "slow motion engagement" is no exception. They note that military risks always rise prior to engagement because of Pyongyang’s felt the need to look tough, perhaps for domestic military consumption. Lewis, Hayes, and Bruce put a lot of stock in the resumption of the military-military US-DPRK Missing-in-Action Joint Recovery teams that had American military teams on the ground in North Korea from 1996 until May 2005. They argue that Rumsfeld’s withdrawal from this project was a big mistake because it took away hostages that reduced North Korean perceptions of a risk of pre-emption. They also fret over the US carve-out from its nuclear “no first use” policy for those who are not in compliance with NPT obligations. Their most important warning on the talks: the North Koreans will again raise the issue of LWRs or some other form of energy “compensation.” In our humble opinion, we should have never gone down this route in the first place, as Jack Pritchard has also pointed out. Correct response: “you have a right to pursue a peaceful nuclear program; good luck in doing so, but don’t expect us to pay for it. Make the project attractive enough to induce private foreign financing and involvement.”
- Walter Clemens makes the case for a “grand bargain” for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. We are sympathetic, but the piece almost completely ignores the sequencing, credible commitment and reversibility problems. For example, Clemens argues that diplomatic relations should be established not only between the US and the North, but between North and South and that a peace treaty should be signed. Fine, but when? Before, during, after the negotiations have accomplished other things? These bargaining problems have always been at the heart of the stalemate and you have to address them head on.
- In an interview with the Korea Times, Jim Kelly makes the simple information point; you can’t figure out what the North Koreans are thinking unless you talk to them. This goes very much against the “talks as rewards” view of some of their critics; we side with Kelly on this point.
- Bruce Klingner at Heritage—who gave a convincing performance at recent House hearings--provides a very useful Washington-insider read out on Geneva. Bottom line: the North Koreans came to the talks completely unprepared to deal and Bosworth’s positive spin was just that. Klingner also makes the point that LMB is in no rush to change course, which the Wall Street Journal interview would support. For the record, we have been inclined to sense electoral nervousness within the GNP that could lead to some moderation (here and here).
- A few more quick notes from abroad. The China Digital Times doesn’t add much value, but spins the recent news in the hopeful way that Beijing has been doing for months now. But Jeremy Paltiel does add value over at Cankor, where he offers a quick tour of recent Chinese diplomacy. He claims that the Chinese have changed their language vis-à-vis the talks by promising to play a “coordinating” role. Although making mention of the September 2005 Joint Statement, however, they have not mentioned a return to the February or October 2007 agreements.
- Hankyoreh offers a predictable critique of LMB; The Chosun Ilbo, by contrast, runs a piece by defector Kang Chol-hwan on the Libyan precedent.
Like we always say, plus ça change…
