Get Ready for the Next Six-Party Drama

More cognitive dissonance in the Korean papers today; this time the subject is the future of President Bush’s North Korea policy:

Korea Times: US Impatient Over Stalled Nuclear Talks

Joongang Ilbo: U.S. analyst: Bush will focus diplomacy on North

They’re not quite mutually exclusive, and the Joongang‘s headline reflects that it’s one person’s opinion, in this case, a think-tanker from the left-realist (formerly right-realist) Council on Foreign Relations, which probably isn’t especially ingratiated in the Bush Admin today. I’d advise smart observers to go with the first headline, since it actually actual players, in this case, Joseph DiTrani, who’s going to lead our delegation in Beijing, and the spokesmen for the White House and State Department. Here’s what they said in the Times piece:

‘I think that’s another sign of our determination to try to pursue this kind of diplomatic solution,’ [the State Department spokesman] said. The White House also called on the North to restart discussions on the dismantlement-for-rewards proposal put forward in June. ‘We hope that they are serious and that they will come back to the six-party talks soon, so that we can talk in a substantive way about how to move forward on the proposal,’ [the White House spokesman] said.

Any careful spokesman has to know that by saying he’s going to “try” diplomacy, he’s also loading his statement with the suggestion that there’s an alternative policy–without explaining what that policy might be. That for you, me, and Pyongyang to guess. Seoul, too, for that matter. More on that below.

Now consider the fact that North Korea will probably soon announce that it will show up for another round of talks, reread the quotation above, and ask yourself how much that would change the context. Not a lot, I’d say, based on the fact that we’ve had plenty of talks that have still gotten us nowhere. If you believe that the only alternatives are more talks or a full-scale ground invasion, that might be so, but if you see other alternatives, too, then you should suppose that President Bush will eventually pursue them, even if talks will go on for their considerable cosmetic value (if you’re earnestly hoping for an agreement, I have a shock for you: there won’t be one. The United States will demand openness for verification and North Korea will demand the preservation of its closed, secret society. That’s what’s known as “a show-stopper.”).

As for our CFR think-tanker, get a load of what he says:

[T]he “real red line” for the Bush administration is to prevent the North from transferring nuclear weapons or materials to other states or terrorists. He said, “The administration would want to signal to North Korea that any transfers would not be tolerated.”

We’ll know that they’ve crossed that red line when Seattle stops returning our calls. Or then again, maybe not, since nukes don’t leave much forensic evidence behind, and after all, we still haven’t caught the person who carried out the anthrax attacks in 2001. I’m forced to stop and breathe slowly at times like this. I simply can’t comprehend how an allegedly intelligent person, much less an alleged expert, believes that we can base a national security policy on the word of a mendacious mass murderer’s promise not to transfer materials that could fit in a pop bottle, even as we buy that promise with more avenues of commerce in and out of his kingdom–avenues over which Kim Jong Il will exercise the only real control. We came within three percentage points of putting these guys in charge of our foreign policy.

What’s equally striking about this is how uninformed and irrelevant South Korea has become to this entire discussion. If U.S.-South Korean relations were in a normal state, any journos wanting the position of the White House could be ask the Blue House, which would presumably be among the first to know. Instead, the Korean press strains its ears toward a succession of Washington think-tankers. One gets the impression that the Blue House learns the U.S. position by picking and choosing among the mixed signals printed in the Korean papers.