Chronology of a Capitulation: Why Nothing Will Be Solved in 60 Days
Kyodo News has a very distressing report about just what the United States came to Beijing prepared to give up, and give up almost immediately:
North Korea’s abandonment of nuclear weapons was stated in a first draft of an agreement document for the six-party talks held earlier this month, but was dropped in a second draft drawn up by the United States after the North Korean side rejected it, negotiation sources said Sunday.
Given that North Korea giving up nuclear development with highly enriched uranium was also reportedly removed from the document, experts said the focus of the six-party talks has apparently shifted from denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula to nonproliferation of nuclear materials led by those based on plutonium.
Replacing language that is clear with language that is vague can only be read one way by the North Koreans: as a license. It’s difficult to imagine that our negotiating team dropped those terms without the specific authority to do so.
The first draft included North Korea’s abandonment of nuclear weapons and its production facilities as part of “initial” steps to be taken for Pyongyang to receive energy aid worth 300,000 tons of fuel oil. But North Korea rejected it, arguing the six parties need to discuss reduction of their nuclear weapons if they are to talk about its abandonment of nuclear weapons, the sources said. Against this backdrop, North Korea’s abandonment of nuclear weapons was conditionally dropped in a second draft drawn up with the lead of the United States.
Meanwhile, Japanese citizens are reading how the United States abandoned them by running away from a common position their governments had once closely coordinated.
The sources said Japan strongly insisted on keeping the weapons abandonment in the document but its voice “was limited” in influencing the talks because of its hard-line position over the issue of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea in the past.
Japan maintained it would not join energy aid unless progress is made in resolving the abduction issue.
With the exception of Japan, whose eminently reasonable demand to get its citizens back went unaddressed, everyone seems mainly to have negotiated for the ability to pop smoke, retreat, hide North Korea’s noncompliance in a cloud of working groups and opaque U.N. bureaucracy, and pretend for a few months that this agreement means what their constituent citizens want it to mean.
In the end, the final document referred to North Korea’s nuclear weapons just indirectly by stating the six parties “reiterated that they would earnestly fulfill their commitments in the joint statement” they adopted in September 2005. The joint statement commits Pyongyang to abandoning all its existing nuclear weapons and programs in exchange for economic and diplomatic benefits and security assurances.
Let’s look at the agreement (full text here) in some closer detail. Virtually everything in it is delegated to the “working groups” and the IAEA with a few listed exceptions that must be done within 60 days. On closer examination, not much is going to be resolved even then, except that this Administration will have stalled for two more months:
1. The DPRK will shut down and seal for the purpose of eventual abandonment the Yongbyon nuclear facility, including the reprocessing facility and invite back IAEA personnel to conduct all necessary monitoring and verifications as agreed between IAEA and the DPRK.
This is a freeze, not the dismantlement, of one of North Korea’s programs. North Korea is already insisting that there is no uranium program, and therefore nothing to inspect at any number of suspect sites. They will continue to stall inspectors. Life imitates “Team America.”
2. The DPRK will discuss with other parties a list of all its nuclear programs as described in the Joint Statement, including plutonium extracted from used fuel rods, that would be abandoned pursuant to the Joint Statement.
“Discuss” and “disclose” are two different things, so for the record, I don’t think the text of this agreement strictly requires the North Koreans to admit that they have a uranium program in 60 days, or else. I predict that 60 days from now, the North Koreans will be discussing uranium by denying it. Later in the agreement, it says that all of this compliance is to be “coordinated,” meaning that if the North Koreans are dissatisfied with the speed with which we fill our store shelves with slave-made products or pony up the fuel oil, they’ll lock the inspectors down in the Koryo Hotel or ship them to Beijing.
3. The DPRK and the US will start bilateral talks aimed at resolving pending bilateral issues and moving toward full diplomatic relations. The US will begin the process of removing the designation of the DPRK as a state-sponsor of terrorism and advance the process of terminating the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act with respect to the DPRK.
This Administration spent a year and a half paralyzed by infighting, five years proclaiming the superiority of multilateral talks, and it has now given up and agreed to discuss all of the difficult issues bilaterally. And here are the payoffs that North Korea can now demand directly from the United States, or else it will publicly renege on the deal and blame the United States.
4. The DPRK and Japan will start bilateral talks aimed at taking steps to normalize their relations in accordance with the Pyongyang Declaration, on the basis of the settlement of unfortunate past and the outstanding issues of concern.
You have to love diplomatic euphemism. Calling the kidnapping of innocent people off the streets of their home towns an “issue of concern” is right up there with Kim Jong Chol’s “hormonal imbalance.” Japan, too, will be held up, and I certainly hope Japan, whose leaders were elected on the strength of the abduction issue, show more spine than we have. Both Koreas will villify Japan anyway, because it’s in their cynical political interest to villify them (and us). But if the Japanese are feeling that they’re all alone now, I can understand why. Not to personalize what is really based on a unity of interests, but as a matter of principle, I don’t believe in betraying allies that behave like allies.
5. Recalling Section 1 and 3 of the Joint Statement of 19 September 2005, the Parties agreed to cooperate in economic, energy and humanitarian assistance to the DPRK. In this regard, the Parties agreed to the provision of emergency energy assistance to the DPRK in the initial phase. The initial shipment of emergency energy assistance equivalent to 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil (HFO) will commence within next 60 days.
This, too, is just a beginning, but as with the North Koreans’ approach to every other set of obligations, they will demand what is theirs, and they will perpetually renegotiate what is ours. After that, all of the really hard issues will go to “working groups,” where they will be forgotten until Chris Hill is safely ensconsed at Brookings, where he can safely lament all of the reasons why this “good start” never went anywhere. You can already assume that most fingers won’t be pointed toward Pyongyang. And given how predictably mendacious North Korea is, some blame belongs right here. We walked in ready to give up everything that mattered. It was only the price of this highway robbery we continued to contest for a few more days.
Also worth noting is a survey of foreign diplomats and business leaders in South Korea — so-called “opinion leaders” — skepticism of this deal is running high. The science behind such surveys’ sampling is iffy, but I suspect that skepticism about this deal right now is simply overwhelming. That skepticism, if it forces the Administration’s hand enough, may be the only way we keep the pressure on this regime and continue pursuing a real resolution of all of the issues that were on the table, along with those that should have been.
I don’t think it’s accurate to say the U.S. gave up anything; explicit language was not used for the uranium program or denuclearization but implicit language was. It still points to the 19 September 2005 Joint Statement which references further documents and does call for complete denuclearization, period. As the Kyodo article notes; “The joint statement commits Pyongyang to abandoning all its existing nuclear weapons and programs. . .â€
Remember, the 13 February deal is two parts, the first being relatively minor. Anything given, except for the 50k tons of heavy fuel oil, can be taken back before Yongbyon gets fully fired up again.
I don’t think anyone on the U.S. side actually believes North Korea will fulfill its side of this deal – and if it didn’t have a chance to succeed, one must ask what would then be the purpose for such a deal – but it’s still important for the U.S. to make a good faith effort to fulfill its part of the bargain so as not to give North Korea the excuse for what it will do anyway.
It’s important because it will give the administration some badly needed political capital to refocus efforts on strangulation. After North Korea reneges there will still be a sizeable group of apologists and congressional useful idiots calling for engagement, but I think they will be a small enough minority so as not to impede a wider strategy of slow strangulation.
We’ll see in a few weeks.
I have to agree with Joshua.
It doesn’t seem to me it is going to give the US (Bush admin) much cover. It doesn’t seem that it locks China and South Korea into tough measures if it does fall apart. And it doesn’t seem that it really has steps in this initial period that are sufficiently high that it can’t break without the kind of condemnation that will lead to more pressure on the North.
Freezing the one plant and inviting back inspectors doesn’t do much for me. I don’t know why NK wouldn’t go through with it.
Critics of the administration have said frequently enough that avoiding direct talks with Pyongyang (and not building on the Clinton deal in the first place) has given NK all this time to reprocess the rods and build nukes — that at least under Clinton, the material was frozen.
Anybody want to make a bet whether they say freezing the material is good enough if none of these other talks lead to anything?
Regardless, it isn’t good enough for me. It never has been.
I have never bought the idea NK is going to churn out as many nukes as it can since the processing plant was unfronzen. It wanted a nuke deterent, not to become a nuke wholesaler.
It has a nuke deterent.
It can pack the plant up now and go into these future talks and they will bip and bop around for an undetermined amount of time, and they will fail, and when NK feels like it, it will unfreeze it again.
What I don’t understand is why the need to make this deal now?
We will be at the same place we are now this time next year. We were where we are now this time last year.
This deal has given China and South Korea more cover and cut the nuts off Japan.
Again, I don’t see this a deal that will actually solve anything on the Korean Peninsula, but one that will give the administration, and perhaps those following, more leverage to commit to strangulation. It’s all about appearance, not substance, but that’s sometimes necessary.
Republican opposition to the 1994 Agreed Framework gave the false impression that congress killed it, which North Korea loudly blamed with it violated that agreement. That has been a prime source for the useful idiots ever since.
The political capital gained by making and keeping the engagement/deal won’t be spent among the Harrison-Cumings-Ablright-Beal-Pheff types, but in Congress. The useful idiot input will have much less bearing, unless the administration does something to break the deal, in which case they’ll have the full I-told-ya-so headlines.
Any such leverage to be gained is dependent on; Bush makes the deal, Bush keeps his end, North Korea reneges, clear and simple. Anything more complicated gives the apologists the crack to drive the wedge in and exploit the La-La Land agenda.
On uranium; implicit reference is still a reference;
• The latest deal refers to the Joint Statement
• The Joint Statement speaks directly to, “the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula†and “abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs,†and references the 1992 Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula
• The 1992 Joint Declaration covers the non-use of all types of nuclear weapons, and specifically calls out uranium enrichment
When and if we get to the stage of negotiations where North Korea will need to give up info on the uranium program, I think it likely that the U.S. will declassify information to make its case, as it did in negotiations leading to the 1994 Agreed Framework. In that case North Korea declared if “fakery,†but everyone else was convinced beyond the shadow of any doubt.
As for what was taken out of the 13 February deal, I still think you’re assigning too much to this initial first step, when the heavy lifting is actually assigned to later stages. What we essentially have at this point is a deal to make a bigger deal, with a few carrots, but no more.
USinKorea,
I believe you’re also pinning too much on this initial deal; it’s not meant to do what you want, but calls for a second stage or phase to do that. It’s clearly not meant to be the Agreed Framework 2.0 – that’s to be negotiated after the 60 days, in the unlikely event North Korea doesn’t renege by then.
No deal, fully negotiated or not, will ever disarm the current DPRK regime; we’ll have to wait until KJI is gone.
Japan clearly isn’t playing, so isn’t losing anything. South Korea is paying for the initial 50k tons of oil – ROKs loss. Anything the U.S. does can be reversed virtually overnight.
Well, I think we can both agree that we’re simply speculating about something neither of us can really claim to know with any certainty — what this administration really intends. We are reading different signals and coming to different conclusions, but it’s all speculation and time will tell. If the uranium issue doesn’t deadlock us by Day 60, I think there’s very little chance that anything will.
A small wager may be called for. Shall we say, a basketball autographed by David Albright?
But that is part of what I don’t get, and I think Joshua hit on it earlier – why make a deal to make a deal later?
I guess it is so the administration can point to a refreeze and say, “See, it’s frozen again, just like you guys said was the good deal that came out of the Clinton administration…”
—shoulder shrug—-
I don’t think we are giving away the house here, and I have some faith Bush either won’t keep giving and giving or the republicans will revolt in mass over another type of deal where we continue heavy fuel oil shipments flowing without real progress rather than promises and a pony show.
But, I would wager just this little gift for Pyongyang to get them to freeze the stuff again (temporarily) will set us back.
I bet it sets us back in relations with Japan – but fixable. Where the f- else is Japan going to go? But, they might be a little more reluctant with the money and definately with the troops next time, but even there, the troops fits its own policy of the role it hopes to play in the world in the future…
I am pretty sure this has already set us back in relations with China and South Korea. I bet rather than getting them to apply more pressure when this deal is announced dead on the US side, it will continue to give them cover to pump in the kind of material aid they want.
That to me is a big loss.
It has taken us years —- YEARS —- to get in a position where Pyongyang was feeling obviously stressed and China was playing along more and South Korea was painted into an irrevelant corner.
Now, Japan is in that corner, and China and SK will work together more again.
Which makes me wonder —— I wonder if part of China making moves on the banking sanctions and a few other things that had us believing China was finally coming around significantly was not tied to an agreement that said the US would need to cut a deal if the new moves got NK back to the table?
Maybe that was a price China demanded???
Talk about speculation…..
How about a necklace made of the teeth of useful idiots?
Umm, no. Let’s wager for something we’d actually want.
What? Who wouldn’t want that?
I’m not going to sign an agreement for the bet, because I don’t want to get drawn into incessant bickering about who actually predicted what and when correctly or what the actual wording of the wager means and whether the prize is to be given front-loaded or end-loaded and whether it should be given as part of a joint award command structure or different pieces of it given by each one of us in our own seperate offical prize command and whether it should all be wrapped up by 2009 or 2012….and so on….
A non-binding resolution.
I can go for a non-binding resolution….
….as long as – if a couple of years from now, the popular winds have changed, I want the option of being able to say I voted for the resolution before I didn’t vote for it, okay?