http://blog.psaonline.org/2008/10/03/dprk-ja-vu-all-over-again/ Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:45:45 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://blog.psaonline.org/2008/10/03/dprk-ja-vu-all-over-again/comment-page-1/#comment-1285891 Matt Rojansky Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:07:33 +0000 http://blog.psaonline.org/?p=617#comment-1285891 Blundering negotiations with Pyongyang twice hasn't cost us much other than time, and a bit of face, but the next time is likely to be our last. North Korea is the only state that has both nuclear weapons and a thinly veiled but very plausible policy of passing those weapons to terrorist groups. That puts the US in the impossible position of having to negotiate a denuclearization deal while maintaining a credible threat of nuclear retaliation against North Korea should a terrorist nuclear attack be traced to North Korean materials. As Mike rightly points out, the nukes themselves are the North Koreans' only bargaining chips. Blundering negotiations with Pyongyang twice hasn’t cost us much other than time, and a bit of face, but the next time is likely to be our last. North Korea is the only state that has both nuclear weapons and a thinly veiled but very plausible policy of passing those weapons to terrorist groups. That puts the US in the impossible position of having to negotiate a denuclearization deal while maintaining a credible threat of nuclear retaliation against North Korea should a terrorist nuclear attack be traced to North Korean materials. As Mike rightly points out, the nukes themselves are the North Koreans’ only bargaining chips.

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