The End of the Rainbow

Really, this piece by Michael O’Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki is well reasoned and said. Even if I disagree with much of it, I think they have a good grasp of which threats we ought to be worrying about. The debate about whether regime change would work is competely speculative until we actually try it in earnest, of course. At this point, they had me:

[T]he administration should build its North Korea policy around the notion that we need to present Pyongyang with a choice — improve its behavior, reform its country, and engage with the world, or retreat further into isolation and lose many of the benefits it enjoys now (especially from South Korea and China, to the tune of more than $2 billion a year in aid and trade). We should focus on substance, not process; on core values, not tactical judgments.

But then, we have this:

To make this policy workable, we need to make it appealing in Beijing and Seoul. That means offering enough positive inducements, should North Korea be willing to try the path of reform that Vietnam and China itself have taken in the last 30 years, to show that we are willing to work with the regime under the right circumstances. Only if a sincere effort at engagement fails will China and South Korea consider the sorts of economic coercion needed to make Kim Jong Il and his cronies in Pyongyang feel real pain from their actions.

(emphasis mine)

“A sincere effort at engagement?” If all of the things we have done or offered to do over the last decade-plus still don’t amount to a sufficiently “sincere effort at engagement” for Chinese and South Korean sensibilities, then this is an eternally vanishing goal. After all of South Korea’s “sincere efforts at engagement,” it still can’t reunite one of its kidnapped citizens with his octagenarian mother for more than a few hours of being watched like the Unabomber’s mom on her annual visit to Supermax. Here, if I’ve ever seen one, is a prerequisite that swallows what seems, at first, to be a very sensible policy.

At least my kids will have something to blog about.

No question, putting severe pressure on North Korea would be much easier with the help of Seoul and Beijing, but you have to play the cards you’re dealt, and in China’s case, there’s really only so much we can expect. We can hope that Seoul will move closer to the U.S. position after its general elections in 2007, and we still have plenty of influence in South Korea if we’re willing to use it. Beijing will continue to make as much mischief as its interests allow, but there are ways to raise the strategic and financial costs of supporting North Korea for China, too.