Taking the Long View

Pyongyang has made a particularly concerted effort this year to make sure they are constantly in headlines. The beginning of this play starts with Act I: the Obama welcome. Not long after coming into office, there were rumblings as early as February 24 of their intent to launch a "communication satellite"/rocket into space. They made good on that claim the very same day President Obama gives "the Prague speech" (April 5). Jump ahead just over a month and North Korea conducts its second nuclear test on May 25. This prompts a new level of outrage including what some hailed as a surprisingly strong condemnation manifested in UNSCR 1874. The North Korean encore was launching 7 missiles on the 4th of July in an attempt to spoil Uncle Sam's birthday. Beyond the varying degrees of displeasure and concern for North Korea's actions, particularly the test, an interesting argument continued to start popping up more and more throughout this period: we may be stuck with a nuclear North Korea whether we like it or not. On June 7, Henry Kissinger argued:

North Korea's leaders also seem to have recognized that no matter how conciliatory U.S. diplomacy, its goal of the abandonment of North Korea's nuclear weapons capability cannot be accepted. They apparently have concluded that no degree of political recognition could compensate them for abandoning the signal (and probably sole) achievement of their rule, for which they have obliged their population to accept unprecedented oppression. They may well calculate that weathering a period of international protest is their ticket to emerging as a de facto nuclear power. Hence the issue for diplomacy has become whether the goal should be to manage North Korea's nuclear arsenal or to eliminate it.

Similarly, Zhiqun Zhu stated on July 28:

Frankly, it is unrealistic for the US to ask North Korea to give up its nuclear technology. The reason is simple: The nuclear card is the only one North Korea has; it will not easily give it away. The ostrich policy of refusing to accept North Korea as a nuclear state has to be ditched. A solution to the North Korea conundrum must begin with recognizing the fact that North Korea has the ability to produce nuclear weapons and will remain nuclear-capable.

Fast forward to Act II: the so-called Charm Offensive. After a spring and early summer of provocative actions, North Korea is suddenly playing nice again. It started with Kim Jong Il conducting a photo-op with Bill Clinton and subsequently pardoning the two young women that had be detained for some time. Pyongyang also showed conciliatory measures towards its neighbor to the South by sending a delegation to leader Kim Dae Jung's death that relayed a positive message about inter-Korean relations and has since said it will restart joint measures including reuniting divided families. North Korea also met with Bill Richardson and indicated their willingness for dialogue, albeit stating it is "owed" bilateral talks according to CNN. There's a rumor Bosworth has been invited but State is saying they can't confirm or deny.

All of this begs the larger question: is this an economic pain tap out or the predictable move in another game of brinkmanship for concessions chess? Perhaps some of both. On the success of the new round of sanctions, Reuters quoted Jack Pritchard, president of KEI, as saying:

Pyongyang has "run into a buzzsaw" of an Obama administration that is more firm than it had expected, a Lee administration in Seoul that has shrugged off war threats and U.N. sanctions that are starting to hurt. "They've run into a problem they did not anticipate," he said of a North Korea that has historically been able to exploit gaps between Washington and Seoul. "They're not collapsing now, they're not going to fold now, but they've taken a look and said 'This path is not sustainable. We've got to fix it and how can we do this?'"

While Pritchard's analysis includes a number of factors successfully lining up on a row to help put pressure on North Korea that is a surprisingly favorable assessment of sanctions when compared with what people like Andrei Lankov were arguing after the sanctions initially passed:

This sounds all right, but what tools does the international community have at its disposal if it is serious about the denuclearization of North Korea? Right now, the most frequently heard answer to this question is ``sanctions and pressure." . . . Does it not seem as if North Korea, facing a united front, will soon rush to the negotiation table to surrender its nukes? Of course not. Unfortunately, the strongly worded resolution is nothing but a symbolic gesture. Diplomats and international bureaucrats had to make something when faced with such a blatant challenge to the non-proliferation regime. The resolution does look good on paper, but its practical efficiency is close to zero.

On the question of how promising the recent "thaw" in relations might be, there is a wide range of interpretation ranging from saying nothing is getting better:

North Korea had not even begun to address the nuclear proliferation dispute that has isolated it from the international community, said Abraham Kim of the Eurasia Group political risk consultancy. "Instead they are trying to focus on atmospherics, to give the sense that things are getting better, but in reality nothing is getting better," he said

to a warning about it being a tactic in Chosun Ibo's article:

But Suh Jae-jean, the president of the Korea Institute for National Unification, warned the visit was "a tactic to persuade the U.S. by creating a conciliatory inter-Korean atmosphere at a time when the international community is enforcing sanctions." Prof. Nam Joo-hong of Kyonggi University said the North may be attempting to create a sense of nostalgia in South Korea for Kim Dae-jung's "Sunshine Policy" of unconditional engagement with the North at a time when international sanctions are biting.

to the more optimistic tone struck in Bill Powell's conclusion in Time given the impending leadership transition:

The overarching question, for both the U.S. and South Korea, is whether Pyongyang will get rid of its nuclear program as it has twice agreed. But Cheong Seong-Chang, director of Inter-Korean Relations at the Sejong Institute, notes one important difference: Kim Jong Il has been sick, and has apparently taken steps to arrange a dynastic succession for his youngest son, Kim Jong Un. It's possible that Kim may want to do a deal once and for all.

and Han Park's piece in the LAT made the boldest statement I've seen about the importance of this new breakthrough:

So what then, beyond the journalists' release, did the visit accomplish? It broke the ice. Clinton's actions have opened the door to possible bilateral negotiations. Now both sides need to walk through the door . . . If Clinton's visit to North Korea and his successful efforts to secure the release of the American citizens contributed to opening up a constructive dialogue for peace in the region, the suffering of Laura Ling, Euna Lee and their families will not have been in vain. For this, we all owe them a great debt. Now we must ensure that their sacrifices will be remembered as breaking an impasse in U.S-North Korean relations -- as the wedge that finally created an opening to bring peace and stability in the region and beyond. [emphasis added]

As people rush to evaluate whether this series of olive branches might be enough, hopes for success should remain cautious for two primary reasons:

1. The path to "peace" (unclear how exactly that is defined in this context) will take a long time. The U.S. has been at this for over a decade now and doesn't have much to show for it. The tit-for-tat process of trying to make mutual concessions to forge broader agreements without backsliding will be a slow and painful one. The amount of difficulty the sides appear to be having in just figuring out whether it is bilateral then multilateral or vice versa just to get to the table after arguably historic conciliatory moves on the North's part speaks to how much ground there is to cover before major issues like completely resolving their nuclear program or problematic proliferation activities are dealt with. They know their nuclear weapons are their prize possession that makes them relevant and so they have every incentive to continue to try to comply just enough to ease up sanctions or get some economic benefits and backslide. Some have argued that the "Dear Leader's" imminent death makes a deal more likely but I'm not quite sold. Hardline factions in the country, which appear to have a good deal of clout, will seek to continue the brinkmanship for concessions strategy and don't seem any more likely to give up nuclear weapons. Kim may care about his legacy but it seems like the status quo of being a nuclear power and an autographed Bill Clinton photo puts him in an ideal spot. Striking a grand bargain to give up nuclear weapons could help the standard of living put probably makes North Korea a third rate country jealously looking at their neighbors as information control loosens and asking "why were we in the dark all that time?" His son has Western influence but I am unsure how much power he will actually have and that his past Western influence will be sufficient to convince him to abandon the program if he is allowed. The U.S. has maintained its strong negotiating stance that it seeks complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula (shameless PONI debate plug here on that question) but it still seems like there is a strong degree of doubt they will actually be able to make that happen.

2. As history shows, "solving" or "dealing with" North Korea is an extremely difficult endeavor. The primary reason North Korea is so high on the United States is the catastrophic damage that their nuclear weapons could cause, whether launched by them or someone they sent the technology to that built their own. The point is that the U.S. hope to just excise the nuclear program out of North Korea and have everything return to "normal" may not be so easy. The first major question looming is what kind of leverage does the U.S. have? Some argue sanctions are really starting to hurt but as the North continues to play nice international support will melt away rather quickly, particularly from China. There's no doubt North Korea has serious economic needs but how does the U.S. create a package deal that will prevent Secretary Gates from buying the horse a third time, as he recently quipped? There could be some room for security guarantees to help assure the regime but that can put the U.S. in a tough spot issuing guarantees to a regime that treats its people with such brutality and that is going to undergo a turbulent transition in the relatively near future that people know very little about. As PONI has argued in the past, herein lies the problem lies in relying on a strategy of economic pressure with a regime that does not care about the well being of its population. The ability to hit the sweet spot of getting North Korea to cede their nuclear weapons but exacerbate the suffering of the North Korean people is a difficult, maybe impossible, task.