Huzzah, I’m finally a moderate!

Not being a frequent reader of Foreign Policy, I don’t know much about the leanings of the particular bloggers there, although most would call that publication a stalwart of the “realist” view that had so recently become fashionable in Washington, before Al Qaeda in Iraq was squeezed down to a small nub of its former self, and before it became evident that North Korea, Iran, and China weren’t prospective negotiating partners after all. This week, we read one FP contributor calling for us to give up on the six-party talks, and another, Will Inboden, coming to the realization that we need leverage against North Korea to have any prospect of productive negotiations:

In the case of North Korea, the lead officials in the Obama administration realize that they have little leverage, in part as a result of the concessions made in the last two years of the Bush administration (such as removal of the DPRK from the state sponsor of terror list, and lifting of the Banco Delta Asia sanction along with returning Kim Jong Il’s $25 million of ill-gotten gains) that failed to secure a meaningful improvement in North Korea’s behavior. Refusing to negotiate from the current posture is a good starting point and helps turn North Korea’s (possible) desire for talks into a source of some small leverage. To gain more leverage, reimposing the financial market sanctions on the private accounts of the regime’s leaders would help, as would revisiting the state sponsor of terrorism list. Equally important will be exploring ways to change China’s cost/benefit calculation for its support of the DPRK. Perhaps after these kinds of steps are taken, it will be time to talk again.

I knew that if I waited long enough I could be a moderate, too! The consensus, it seems, has washed right past the self-professed Militant Wing of the Korea blogosphere, and we are all neocons again. I don’t mean to pick on these gentlemen, by the way, for their delayed arrival at the idea that negotiation alone is no way to deal with people like the North Koreans. Words like these from Inboden are especially welcome in wresting this debate from the shrill voices who dominated it for too long:

Let me be clear — I support the White House on this aspect of their North Korea policy. But I also think this might be a good occasion for reflection by commentators on all sides, myself included. It seems that the same voices that so indignantly condemned the Bush administration for its occasional refusal to engage in unconditional negotiations with unsavory regimes (such as Iran) now fall silent when the Obama administration does the same thing. Perhaps this is another example of what Ross Douthat perceptively described earlier this week as the “partisan mind” at work.

It is also a reminder to partisans and observers on all sides to resist caricaturing each other’s positions. I hope this latest impasse with North Korea at least helps elevate the policy debate beyond the hackneyed and simplistic “negotiate or not” rut. As any serious policymaker knows, in practice negotiations are one tool in the policy arsenal.

I’ve been as guilty as caricaturing as anyone. It’s fun, and some people just insist on making caricatures of themselves. But to expand on what I said here, I’ve never been a fan of Americans who blame each other for Kim Jong Il’s outrages (here’s a particularly discredited example). I believe those Americans vastly overestimate our influence over Kim Jong Il. Kim Jong Il’s perceptions of President Obama or Lee Myung Bak may or may not have played a role in his recent decisions, but it’s more likely that once he correctly dismissed our long-lost capacity to deter him, he made his own decisions for domestic reasons. Or, maybe because he’s just not all there anymore.

Actually, I think the administration is playing the talks issue exactly right — refusing to talk when North Korea makes war on its neighbors, but displaying some willingness to talk in the future should talks ever show real promise. I doubt that talks with North Korea will show any promise as long as the Kim Dynasty persists, but if the six-party talks become five-party talks, they might become a useful forum for pressuring China, and for doing the important diplomatic business of averting conflict over North Korea in the event of a sudden or “rolling” collapse of the regime’s authority.

China’s conduct is more rational (if malicious) to us, and more responsive to diplomatic and economic stimuli. In China’s case, there may be more that all of our recent presidents might have done to present an image of an America willing to attach consequences to China’s support for Kim Jong Il. For those Koreans that this regime hasn’t yet killed, there is still time for America to learn that.

Meanwhile, it’s heartening to see conservatives again taking up the idea that (lacking real military or diplomatic options) we should try to undermine the regime from within. Michael Gerson has been particularly persist about this:

There is, however, a third possible outcome that has not been considered seriously enough – an option other than possible war or strategic humiliation. South Korea, America and Japan, employing their technology and vast wealth, could attempt to undermine the North Korean regime from within. An aggressive, sustained campaign to break the North Korean information embargo, expose the barbarity and corruption of the regime to its own people, promote the work of dissidents and defectors, and encourage disloyalty among North Korean elites may or may not work. But the alternatives are increasingly unattractive.

Hat tip to Theresa.

Update: A better-informed reader tells me that I’ve quoted the more conservative “Shadow Government” blog, as opposed to FP’s “The Cable,” which represents a view I’d tend to associate with that publication. That certainly weakens my case that these posts prove that Washington is moving my way, although I do believe that that is the case, for many other reasons. The most important of those is Kim Jong Il’s behavior, but a close second is the Obama Administration’s admirable refusal to reward it. I hope that by now, they’re thinking hard about ways to deter it.