Eberstadt: Six-Party Talks “A Charade Masquerading as Diplomacy”

The American Enterprise Institute’s Nicholas Eberstadt is unimpressed with the latest round of six-party talks with North Korea. After thirteen months of pining for this dead parrot, we returned to the talks to hear an intentionally obtuse new set of North Korean demands–including demands to abrogate our alliance with South Korea (something that we’d more likely do without North Korea getting mixed up in the matter), and to let North Korea keep its reactors for “peaceful” uses. In fact, Eberstadt believes we should have cut our losses and declared the talks a failure in June 2004, when North Korea rejected the U.S. minimum of (say it with me) complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantling.

That might be justifiable diplomatically, but Eberstadt isn’t putting June 2004 into the context of November 2004.

Eberstadt’s latest is neither as detailed nor as insightful as some of his past efforts, but it has clever moments. The first comes when Eberstadt notes that Pyongyang still won’t even admit to enriching the uranium it has already been selling:

Because [North Korea’s] proposed freeze covered only plutonium-based weapons (Pyongyang has never publicly acknowledged its secret uranium-enrichment program), North Korea’s proposal amounted to international payments for a temporary–and only partial–halt. The proposal wasn’t an ambitious opening bid in a denuclearization negotiation, or even an argument about “the shape of the table”–it was a boldfaced assertion that the table right in the middle of the room did not exist.

Under such circumstances, meaningful discussions were impossible. But not even the supposedly unilateralist Bush administration was willing to declare the talks finished.

Indeed, President Bush being unduly concerned about accusations of unilateralism is a bit like Bill Clinton foreswearing interns for the sake of his reputation for fidelity. The indulgence might have other costs, but the reputation–earned or not–isn’t likely to be one of them.

Eberstadt then goes on to describe how the North spent the last year enriching and reprocessing, and how the South spent the last year enriching . . . Kim Jong Il. He doesn’t believe that North Korea was sincere about the talks from the first day.

Once the fourth round got under way, it quickly became apparent that Pyongyang’s position had not changed. Denuclearization . . . was not going to be on the agenda. . . . North Korea says it will not sign a joint statement endorsing eventual denuclearization because it wishes to preserve the option of peaceful nuclear-power development. Instead, the North has tried to turn the talks into an international forum on U.S. military disengagement from South Korea. . . . And if that step were taken, clearing the way for a peace treaty between the U.S. and North Korea, would Kim abandon nuclear weapons? The North is promising nothing.

Here comes my favorite part.

The time has come for the U.S., which acts as a regional balancer in North Asia, to provide some balance. The first step: the U.S. should declare the bankruptcy of the six-party process. Then Washington should impose real-time penalties on Pyongyang, the world’s most aggressive and flagrant nuclear proliferator. The Bush administration recently finalized its North Korea dream team of diplomats with John Bolton’s appointment as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The roster is now in place for the administration’s hard-liners to move beyond the gab factory.

Just in case anyone missed the reference. . . .

After reading the entire article, you won’t know much more than I do about what “real-time penalties” Eberstadt has in mind, although I could go on all day about things that would administer severe economic and political shocks to the regime. Eberstadt does talk about “economic pressure” in the context of diplomacy, but his diplomacy depends on coordinating a common strategy with South Korea and China, something that looks unlikely, even after Pyongyang’s odd-man-out act on the Chinese-drafted joint statement of squishy principles.

Eberstadt may be right that last June would have been an opportune time to declare the talks a failure, but for the political context of the time. Today, however, North Korea is at least supposed to return for more talks on August 29th, just three weeks from now. I’ve already wagered lunch with a seasoned Asia correspondent that Pyongyang won’t show, but even if it does, a repeat of its last obnoxious performance would be a better opportunity to declare productive negotiations a fantasy.