North Korea is abandoning its year-long boycott of nuclear disarmament talks – and its insistence that bilateral talks with the U.S. must come first – and has agreed to resume six-nation negotiations with the U.S., South Korea, Japan, China and Russia. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12095375.htm
Is there any chance this might lead to some fruitful resolution? The actual dismantling of NK’s nuclear arsenal, perhaps? Warming relations with SK that might eventually lead to reunification without war?
Now that Bolton is gone, anything is possible. Condi will have to reign in her cold-warrior non-proliferation schtick if she’s serious about real progress, but mayhap she will.
If the South’s second anouncement means that they’ll be helping North Korea finish it’s light water reactor project, we’ll be pretty much back to the pre-Bush approach.
We’ll have to wait for more details. This seems like a good sign, and it makes you wonder what triggered the North Koreans into this move? Has the U.S. simply waited them out, and the pressures of their failing economy are forcing them to the bargaining table? That seems like a real possibility. The original U.S. plan was to get China to lean on them, but China hasn’t really cooperated in that (publically, at least). So I wonder if the fallback position isn’t to simply wait them out and let North Korea’s crumbling economy apply its own pressure?
Then they come to the table, and get the carrots offered, so long as they’re willing to get serious about getting rid of their nukes.
On the other hand, this could also be a case of someone making too generous an offer and essentially bribing them. That would be bad, because it would reward their threatening posture, perhaps give them more nuclear technology, and help improve their economy, giving them more economic power. That would not be smart. That would just force the confrontation a few years down the road, when the economy in North Korea starts to collapse again. Then we get to play this same game, this time with North Korea with a few hundred nukes and an aging madman with the button.
Neither seem to involve the US waiting them out.
The US appears to have shifted from a progress, then carrots stance, to a carrots, then progress stance.
That does seem like a good sign.
My understanding is that Rice also clarified our position with respect to invading North Korea - we won’t. This is something that the DPRK has been seeking for quite some time and we have refused to give them til now.
With nuclear weapons, Kim is a wild card who commands attention, if not grudging respect, on the international stage. Without it, he is the hapless leader of a pissant basketcase and punchline to a very bad joke. Kim’s textbook narcissism and megalomania make him unlikely to negotiate away anything that doesn’t make him look all-powerful. Besides, I doubt the military hawks breathing down his neck would stand for his bargaining away the “glorious” nuclear weapons that put that nation on the map. Remember: this is a delusional, wildly paranoid leadership. Ultimately, Kim is no Gorbachev.
It’s irrelevant what North Korea says in verbal or written form. As long as it is ruled by a nutjob dictator the country does not exist beyond his whims. N Korea is a country of 1 and that individual is unstable.
I concur. Although there had been a lot of speculation and intelligence-gathering, until NK conducts an actual nuclear test, there is no way to know what their actual capabilities are. There may have been concessions made in exchange for a bluff. Even if it wasn’t a bluff, there is no reason to suspect we won’t be going through this again two years from now, when NK starts making noises, everybody freaks out, only to calm down when NK gets another food shipment that’ll let it limp and hobble along until the next Korean crisis, ad nauseum.
North Korea sure is a puzzle: Don’t give us aid, and we’ll build nukes. Give us aid, and we’ll fuck with you for a while, and then build nukes anyway. Meanwhile, we’re going to torture and starve our own people some more. Thanks for playing!
I really don’t know what to think of it all, because the NK leadership is constitutionally incapable of anything but a bizarre pattern of brinksmanship. Whenever I hear about some new development, I always wonder “what’s their game this time?”
You’re kidding, right? Why would Kim negotiate away his trump card? Without nukes, he is the leader of an international basketcase with footnote status. With them, he can bask in the spotlight and make the world’s major powers plead for a little face time.
Kim is jerking the international community around and will continue to do so, irrespective of the deepening plight of his countrymen. Moreover, it’s unlikely his paranoid senior leadership would allow him to surrender their precious nukes and submit to intrusive international inspection that would be fronted by Western intelligence.
They’re doing exactly the same thing others have done at times with the west, which is creating a kind of strategic uncertainty which works to their advantage. If they just stayed permanantly in “fuck you” mode, they would look like the bad guys and the US/UN/etc would plan accordingly. By occasionally seeming reasonable, they stall for time, which is all they really want.
What’s that Python sketch where the one guy alternates between normal conversation and vicious abuse? By interspersing courtesy with vitriol, he keeps the conversation going much longer than it would have otherwise.
So they wait a few months to set up the talks. Then they spend a few days talking about trivialities. Then they make some token concessions. Then they suggest a recess of a few months. Then they come back and talk some more. Then they get upset and break off the talks. And it gets played in the press like “the diplomats were so close to getting something done.” Maybe there’s a new demand, and we just give them whatever it is, they’ll come back.
If not, well by then it’s 2007 and Bush has one foot out the door. Nothing’s going to happen until there’s a new administration, and NOKO will wait to see what they’re like.
But, why is “time,” by itself, valuable to NK at present? For what would they stall? To delay any decisive military action by the U.S.? Ain’t gonna be none nohow. And if they need any foreign aid, they’re under some time pressure themselves and they can’t afford to stall on any prerequisite agreements.
