by
Dr. C. Kenneth Quinones
[]
posted November 2, 2005
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 Preface : |
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Article : |
Context for the Six Party Talks
Widely held misconceptions of the DPRK influence official and
public views about North Korea. These directly affect the Bush
administration's goals and tactics for dealing with Pyongyang.
One of the more enduring perceptions is that North Korea is
"aggressive," a view rooted in its 1950 effort to forcefully unify
Korea. Ever since, the majority of Americans have held the view
that North Korea is aggressive, untrustworthy and morally bankrupt.
In recent years, the tendency to label North Korea's leader Kim
Jong Il "irrational" has been replaced by the Bush
administration's preference for moralistic condemnation of Kim as
being a "tyrant" and similarly derogatory characterizations.
Since the middle 1990s, Americans have acquired two relatively new
but contradictory views of North Korea. Simultaneously, North
Korea's most vocal U.S. critics depict it a mini-superpower
paradoxically on the verge of starvation and economic collapse.
The Bush administration has relied extensively on these
characterizations to claim that Kim Jong Il and his people are
desperate. Kim is seen to be desperate to sustain his regime
while his people are depicted as being desperate to sustain
themselves and to escape his tyranny.
The actual reality in North Korea is radically different.
Beginning in 1994, North Korea replaced national unification with
regime survival as its foremost goal. Russia and China's
normalization of relations with South Korea ended their nuclear
umbrella and altered their defense commitments to North Korea. At
the same time, North Korea's worsening economic woes, a
consequence in large part of declining trade with its two primary
allies, undermined its economic vitality. Paralleling this was a
severe decline in agricultural production, in part a consequence
of nationwide floods in the late summer of 1995 that destroyed
major portions of the nation's fall harvest.
These developments prematurely convinced some foreign observers to
predict that North Korea would soon collapse, first economically
and then politically. Obviously, this has not happened. If
anything, North Korea's determined effort, combined with
substantial international humanitarian aid, has enabled North
Korea first to impressively increase domestic food production
while simultaneously initiating the re-invigoration and reform of
other sectors of its economy. Today, North Korea is far from
collapse, politically and economically. On the contrary, it has
restored good relations with China and Russia while significantly
improving relations with its former nemesis South Korea. One
consequence of this has been China and South Korea's eagerness to
provide North Korea impressive amounts of economic assistance.
Another very significant consequence of international humanitarian
aid is that North Korea no longer can be considered an "isolated
hermit nation." Here too, it has made impressive progress toward
engaging the international community since it joined the United
Nations together with South Korea in 1991. Since 1999, it has
established normal diplomatic and commercial relations with
numerous nations in Europe, South American, and Southeast Asia.
But one of the most worrisome accomplishments of North Korea in
recent years has been its development of nuclear weapons. While
it claims this to be a defensive move compelled by the United
States' hostile policy toward it, Pyongyang's possession of
nuclear weapons, together with short and medium range ballistic
missiles, is a matter of grave concern to its neighbors and the
United States. This concern spawned the Six Party Talks, which
first convened in Beijing, China in the summer of 2003.
Washington and Pyongyang's Goals
The Bush administrations goals regarding North Korea have varied
since it assumed office in 2001, but one objective has not
wavered: disarming North Korea of its weapons of mass destruction
(WMD). These include ballistic missiles as well as nuclear and
chemical-biological weapons (CBW). Parallel to this consensus has
been ongoing dueling within the administration over whether to
promote so-called "regime change" or to coerce Pyongyang into
complete disarmament.
A consensus among the nations of Northeast Asia, led primarily by
China and South Korea, advocated multilateral diplomacy and
opposed unilateral U.S. military action to disarm North Korea.
This set the stage for the Six Party Talks.
Since the talks began in the summer of 2003, the United States has
resolutely pursued its goal of North Korea's "complete, verifiable
and irreversible dismantlement" (CVID) of all its nuclear programs,
including plutonium and uranium based, as well as peaceful
electricity generating programs.
Intensive diplomacy at the Six Party Talks eventually forged a
multinational consensus, which includes North Korea, that aims to
make the Korean peninsula free of all nuclear weapons and programs
designed to produce them. Only the United States clings to the
aspiration of compelling North Korean to rid itself of both
peaceful and weapons' oriented nuclear programs and facilities.
At the same time, North Korea asserts that it seeks "peaceful
coexistence" with the United States. Pyongyang insists that this
include: the normalization of bilateral U.S.-DPRK diplomatic and
commercial relations, a process that would require a peace treaty
to end the Korean War; the lifting of all U.S. economic sanctions
on North Korea; the admission of North Korea to international
financial institutions such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB),
World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), among others;
the withdrawal of all U.S. military personnel from South Korea;
and the end of the U.S. nuclear umbrella over South Korea.
At the most recent round of Six Party Talks, the participants
formulated a Joint Statement that incorporated most of the goals
sought by Washington and North Korea. But sharp disagreement
between Washington and Pyongyang persist over how to implement
this joint statement. Of particular concern to both sides is
Pyongyang's demand that the United States provide it a light water
nuclear reactor (LWR) as reward for North Korea's willingness to
return to the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
(NPT), compliance with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
mandated nuclear safeguards and inspections, and ultimately,
dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear weapons related facilities
and bombs. Washington adamantly opposes the provision of an LWR
to North Korea both because this would be viewed as "rewarding"
Pyongyang for its past misdeeds and would contradict its goal of
CVID. Pyongyang claims it will not move to implement its promises
until the United States "respects is inalienable right to develop
a peaceful nuclear program." According to the terms of the NPT,
North Korea, once a member in good standing both in the treaty and
the IAEA, would in fact have such a right.
Methods -- Washington's "Strategic Resolve with Tactical
Flexibility"
As previously alluded to, the Bush administration has consistently
and resolutely pursued its strategic goal of "CVID." Although the
words to describe this goal have occasionally varied, the
administration has never altered its goal.
"Tactical flexibility" is a much more ambiguous concept. Its
underlining premise is that the goal and circumstances justify the
tactics to be employed. These options range from diplomatic
dialogue and negotiation to coercion, using the so-called
"Proliferation Security Initiative" (PSI) to interdict and
possibly embargo North Korea's exports, to even armed
confrontation as justified by the Bush administration's doctrine
on "pre-emptive counter-proliferation."
The administration's preference for coercive tactics from 2001
until the summer of 2005 failed to achieve any concrete results.
If anything, such tactics impeded progress toward President Bush's
avowed goal of "peaceful diplomatic resolution of the nuclear
issue." Reliance on coercion paradoxically precluded the
utilization of tools vital for achieving a diplomatic outcome, i.e.
diplomatic dialogue and negotiation.
Washington's resolute reliance on coercive tactics appear to have
been rooted in the Bush administration's assumption that North
Korea would prefer regime survival to collapse once confronted
with the absence of other alternatives. First China, and then
South Korea determined that North Korea's collapse was
inconsistent with the national and security interests. Both
nations moved to sustain political stability in North Korea by
promoting its economic revitalization in return for leverage to
convince it to forgo its nuclear ambitions.
Meanwhile in Washington, the Bush administration reluctantly
recognized that failure breeds pragmatism. In May 2005, after
four years of unproductive coercive tactics, President Bush
finally relented and sanctioned increased reliance on diplomacy to
resume the Six Party Talks after a one-year hiatus. The talks
soon resumed, setting the stage for the Joint Statement of
September 19, 2005.
Pyongyang's Preference for Conciliatory Diplomacy
Meanwhile, Pyongyang concentrated on conciliatory diplomacy to
compensate for the limits of its leverage vis-a-vis the United
States and take full advantage of Washington's vulnerabilities.
Early in the Six Party Talks, North Korea determined that the
other participants opposed its possession of nuclear weapons but
just as resolutely opposed Washington's assertive unilateralism.
Ever since, North Korea has endeavored to diplomatically minimize
U.S. influence in the talks. It accomplished this by first
conceding to the other participants' primary goal of de-
nuclearizing the Korean peninsula while at the same time depicting
itself as a hapless target of the United States' awesome military
might.
By and large, these tactics have nearly isolated the United States
in the Six Party Talks process. Washington's failed coercive
tactics are therefore, at least in part, a consequence of its own
resolute assertiveness and unilateralism. Nevertheless, Pyongyang
felt compelled to promise to forego its nuclear ambitions, but as
a direct consequence it won support for its goal of setting the
stage for the normalization of relations with the United States.
Are the Six Party Talks Working?
Undoubtedly, the answer is yes. The talks have sustained peace
and stability in Northeast Asia by channeling effort into seeking
a diplomatic solution and away from a resumption of escalating
tensions between Washington and Pyongyang. Consensuses on goals
and an outline for implementation, the September 19 Joint
Statement, has established a road map for achieving a peaceful
diplomatic resolution. The United States appears to have learned,
finally, the limits of its military might and recognized its East
Asian allies' and friends' preference for peace and stability in
the region so that they might continue their pursuit of prosperity
while peacefully achieving the phasing out of weapons of mass
destruction from the Korean peninsula. North Korea on the other
hand, has had to accept that it must eventually give up its
nuclear weapons ambitions and phase out this capability if it
wishes to join in the regions prosperity. None of this would have
been possible without the Six Party Talks.
Future Prospects
Near term prospects for the next round of talks, which are
expected to commence on November 7, 2005, are rather bleak. Once
again, the United States and North Korea are at odds over a common
concern. Washington adamantly opposes North Korea's possession of
any nuclear program, peaceful or otherwise, and has ruled out
either sanctioning or contributing to the construction of an LWR
in North Korea.
Pyongyang is equally adamant that the United States must provide
it an LWR to demonstrate its political will to respect North
Korea's sovereignty, to reward it for having initiated the
processing of disarming itself of nuclear weapons, and as a joint
confident building measure designed to forge trust between the two
enemies. So long as this remains unresolved, progress toward a
peaceful diplomatic resolution will be impeded.
Longer-term prospects, however, favor a peaceful resolution. The
price of failure remains the primary inducement for success.
Failure could result in a second Korean War, which would wreck
havoc across the region and severely disrupt world commerce and
communication while also posing the threat of a nuclear war. This
reality should help concentrate the participants' attention on
diplomacy. Success ultimately will be determined by the
willingness of Washington and Pyongyang to put the region's common
concerns ahead of their own unilateral priorities.
Dr. C. Kenneth Quinones has been involved with Korea since 1962 as a soldier, scholar and diplomat. He
has published three books and numerous articles about U.S.-Korea relations in academic journals and
newspapers in the United States, South Korea, Japan, and Canada. He holds a Ph.D. in History and East
Asian Languages from Harvard University (ckquinones@msn.com).
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