A Deal With North Korea? Dream On
By Nicholas Eberstadt
Tuesday, August 26, 2003; Page A13
The notion that North Korea might agree to conclude its nuclear confrontation through peaceful international negotiations is being revisited once again. At "six-party talks" this week in Beijing, the United States and North Korea's neighbors (China, Russia, Japan and South Korea) will try once again to persuade Pyongyang's leadership to accept some diplomatic deal for dismantling of its nuclear weapons program.
Curiously enough, hopes seem to be running high for the talks. Even President Bush, no fan of the Kim Jong Il regime, has expressed "optimism" that the crisis can be resolved by diplomatic means, a sentiment that seems to be widely shared. Unfortunately, it amounts to little more than diplomatic wishful thinking.
North Korea is entirely unlikely to be talked out of its nuclear weapons program. This happens to be one of those sorry international disputes in which the most desirable outcome is also the least likely. Indeed, the practical obstacles to securing an irreversible and verifiable end to Pyongyang's nuclear program through diplomatic negotiations alone are not just formidable, they are overwhelming.
Consider first the nuclear objectives of the Pyongyang regime. Diplomatic sophisticates -- especially those favoring a possible "grand bargain" with North Korea involving nukes, aid and security -- have argued that the six-party talks will be an opportune venue in which to probe North Korea's "nuclear intentions." But the probing of these intentions is not exactly uncharted diplomatic terrain, as even the briefest review of the record should remind us.
A little over a decade ago, South Korea's president at the time, Roh Tae Woo, after two years of intensive diplomacy, managed to hammer out the 1992 North-South Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Soon afterward it became clear the North was cheating on the agreement. At that point the United States set about doing its own probe of North Korea's nuclear intentions through a diplomatic foray that was capped by the 1994 Washington-Pyongyang Agreed Framework. When that framework first began to wobble back in 1998 -- under suspicion of renewed North Korean nuclear cheating -- the Clinton administration resolved to look into North Korea's nuclear intentions once again, this time through a process designed by William J. Perry, the former secretary of defense. Then, for five straight years, from early 1998 to early 2003, South Korea's President Kim Dae Jung probed North Korea's nuclear intentions through his diplomacy-intensive "Sunshine Policy." During Nobel Peace laureate Kim's final months in office, Pyongyang was caught once again cheating on its nuclear deals. Instead of scrapping the offending program, North Korea admitted the violation, declared the Agreed Framework dead and pushed its nuclear weapons program into overdrive.
Are we to believe that a deep mystery about North Korea's true nuclear intentions lies buried within this story line, yet to be unearthed through further diplomatic exploration? The record suggests otherwise. Pyongyang has made it clear it will push its nuclear weapons project overtly when it can -- and covertly when it must. With the right enticements, Pyongyang can be persuaded to promise to give up its nuke program. It just can't be persuaded to actually keep the promise.
Even if one is willing to ignore the inconvenient issue of Pyongyang's nuclear intentions, a potential diplomatic deal for the regime's scrapping its nuclear weapons project would founder on a second bank of shoals: the global precedent such a bargain would establish. The United States may be the world's sole superpower, but North Korea is not the only would-be proliferator. In Tehran -- to mention just one capital -- the North Korean nuclear crisis is being carefully studied for lessons.
Thus far North Korea has violated international nonproliferation strictures more flagrantly and more provocatively than any contemporary government. Thus far, apart from a suspension of free U.S oil shipments, North Korea has suffered absolutely no penalties. And just 12 days ago, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun pledged massive economic help to North Korea once the nuclear crisis is resolved.
If Pyongyang should secure a negotiated settlement in which it avoids punishment for its past violations -- or earns new rewards for promising to redress them -- exactly how will we convince hostile mullahs or sheiks that they, too, should not be racing for the nuclear finish line?
There is a third and hardly incidental complication in "getting to yes" with North Korea: Just whom are we supposed to shake hands with? There are simply no credible bargaining partners in the current regime.
Last October in Pyongyang, one Kang Sok Ju of the Foreign Ministry informed U.S. officials that his country had been conducting a secret nuclear program despite the Agreed Framework with Washington. This was the very same Kang who had negotiated and signed the Agreed Framework for the North Korean side in the first place. Obviously his word cannot be trusted in any future nuclear negotiations -- but whom can we trust from the North Korean side in his stead? Perhaps his boss, Kim Jong Il, the "Dear Leader," who as chairman of his country's National Defense Commission runs its nuclear weapons program, and who must have approved and funded these recurring nuclear violations and deceptions?
Without a trustworthy negotiating partner from Pyongyang, a new nuclear deal with North Korea is worthless -- unless, of course, it can be ensured through reliable independent means of verification. But for North Korea as it exists today a foolproof independent verification regimen would be barely distinguishable from outside military occupation.
It's entirely possible that Western negotiators will return from Beijing next week talking about "signs of progress." Diplomatic atmospherics are among the many scarce goods that Pyongyang presumes to regulate and ration. But any genuine progress toward a diplomatic resolution of the nuclear impasse cannot be expected without fundamental -- even revolutionary -- changes in outlook and policy on the part of North Korea's leadership. None of the options Washington and its allies face in North Korea is pleasant -- but the time has come to face them squarely, without diplomatic illusion.
The writer holds the Henry Wendt chair in political economy at the American Enterprise Institute.
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