The 7 Party Talks

There is a new prospective player in the quest to solve the North Korea problem: Mongolia, according to the Washington Times.  Mongolian Foreign Minister Sukhbaatar Batbold indicated they could host a meeting between North Korea and the United States.  Apparently Secretary of State Clinton was “quite interested” but

State Department officials declined to comment on a mediating role for Mongolia with North Korea, but said Mrs. Clinton expressed appreciation for Mongolia’s troop contributions to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The fact this offer is in its infancy and could very well never come to fruition aside, the real question for the U.S. moving forward is how it calibrates pressure on the Kim Jong Il regime and family.  Gates has said he doesn’t want to buy the same horse twice and Obama has echoed similar statements but where does the U.S. go from there?  The likely-to-pass pending Security Council resolution is the toughest yet but Russia and China still balked at making it mandatory.  The main questions are how much support can the U.S. get for pressure and how high should it ratchet up the tools is has?  It remain unclear how far the U.S. can get China to go but as is oft-stated in North Korea debates their importance cannot be understated. On the degree of U.S. pressure, Bob Joseph had a good read in the WSJ last week strongly in favor of turning up the heat in lieu of likely ineffective diplomacy.  Figuring out how to make the North Korean porridge not too hot but not too cold will be a difficult strategy that should including thinking about how to make life difficult, financially speaking, for the Kim family in particular to keep control of their mafia (an interesting phrase used on the North Korea panel at the CNAS conference yesterday).  Work on the defense side needs to further investigate how the U.S. can assure East Asian allies through conventional and nuclear deterrence and dialogue with China needs to emphasize the massive strategic benefits they have in denuclearizing the Peninsula while calming their fears about a refugee free-for-all or a unified Korea.