Six Party Talks: Off Again?

A North Korean diplomatic source told the Interfax news agency Wednesday that six-way talks on North Korea’s nuclear program cannot restart this year or in the foreseeable future due to ”unacceptable” conditions the United States had set.  The demands the United States put forward at talks among the heads of delegations to the six-way talks in Beijing on Nov. 28 and 29, are ”unacceptable for North Korea,” the source reportedly said[link]

We have now been trying to  lure North Korea back to the talks for 14 months, and  we have tried to negotiate North Korea’s nuclear disarmament for 14 years.  While it’s fair to say that George W. Bush hasn’t disarmed North Korea,  we again see the nonsense of  the usual  criticism that he hasn’t done enough talking to them (although they won’t show up).  More fundamentally,  that argument  loses the end amid the tangled means.  Yes, Bush’s North Korea policy — and to an even  greater degree, Clinton’s —  failed to cause Kim Jong Il’s disarmament, but disarming Kim Jong Il  is not the same as  motivating him  to talk to us,  take our money, yell at us, or send people to stamp their feet and stall us in Beijing.  Kim Jong Il has done all of the latter.  Not one of those things moved us closer to our goal, because Kim Jong Il won’t give up his nukes  for any price we’d conceiveably  pay.  If Bush — and to an even greater degree, his critics — can be faulted, it’s for  failing to recognize this.

North Korea’s latest excuses for not talking  are U.S. financial sanctions and our  demands  for (at last!) some real progress  at those talks.  Which  “unacceptable” U.S. conditions would  the critics  exchange for the privilege of more nonproductive conversation?  Would  they overlook North Korea’s enrichment and sale of  uranium?  His nuclear tests?  His missiles?  His dope dealing, or his counterfeiting of  U.S. currency?  Would they counsel silence as he starves the next two million people? 

Our negotiations have failed, and  they will continue to fail as long as we lack the means to motivate Kim Jong Il favorably, and as long as Kim Jong Il  thinks he can afford  the cost of  impasse.  He may even conclude that our next election will reward his recalcitrance.  Absent a credible military or security threat,  the only costs we can  impose are financial.  Unfortunately,  two of our “partners” in the six-party talks, by extending unconditional financial support to Kim Jong Il, guarantee that he can afford  an indefinite  impasse.  This  means  that negotiations  are guaranteed to  fail to disarm him unless we can raise the cost of the impasse and shift more of  it  from ourselves to North Korea,  China, and South Korea. 

Do we have that ability?   Yes.  Just they have threatened our nation’s security, we must be ready to create risks for theirs.  A non-exclusive list of options should begin by recalling that the last time North Korea’s food situation was as bad as it is now, two of its Army Corps nearly mutinied.  The first plot, in the VII Corps, was uncovered and foiled in 1993.  The second, within the VI Corps, was foiled two years later (the VI Corps was then abolished).   Both units were located along  North Korea’s northeast coast, an area accessible to supply by air or sea.  That  suggests the opportunity to make a  credible threat to destabilize North Korea by offering food, fuel, arms, and supplies to  any force that rebels against Kim Jong Il’s authority.  Could  the effects of that  instability spread to South Korea,  China, and Russia?  Yes,  and that  is precisely what it would take to refocus minds there.