The “Dear Leader”

In the 2008 Presidential Campaign, and in President Obama’s subsequent speeches, there has been a lot of very sensible and justified emphasis on diplomacy over military force. If nothing else, this Administration seems to have a much lower threshold for initiating diplomatic dialogue and a much higher threshold for cutting it off. But there must be times when Democrats and Republicans, conservatives, neocons, and liberals, can agree that diplomacy just isn’t enough.

The current crisis with North Korea (aka the DPRK) may be such a time. Let’s take a quick stroll down diplomatic memory lane:

• GOOD: In the 1970’s and 80’s, North Korea built the Yongbyon nuclear reactor, and joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which required international inspectors to have regular access to the country’s facilities for monitoring.
• TERRIBLE: Yet in 1993, it rejected International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors’ request to see two undeclared sites and threatened to withdraw from the NPT.
• GOOD: In October 1994 the Clinton Administration defused the crisis with an “agreed framework” requiring a freeze to the nuclear program in exchange for food aid.
• In 2001, President Bush named North Korea as a member of the “Axis of Evil,” and the Bush Administration presented evidence the North Koreans were covertly operating the reactor at Yongbyon.
• TERRIBLE: By 2003, the North Koreans had disabled IAEA inspection equipment at Yongbyon, and quit the NPT (for real this time).
• GOOD: In 2005, the “Six Parties” (North Korea, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States) held talks yielding an agreement on “abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and returning, at an early date, to the NPT and to IAEA safeguards.”
• TERRIBLE: In October 2006, the agreement crumbled when North Korea tested a small nuclear device in an underground explosion.
• GOOD: Following a renewal of the Six Party talks in 2007, North Korea agreed to permanently disable the Yongbyon reactor in exchange for $400 million in food and energy aid.
• In 2008, caving to North Korean pressure, the Bush Administration removed the country from the state sponsors of terrorism list, and the IAEA was back to work inspecting dismantled facilities.
• TERRIBLE: Then in April of this year, the North launched a multistage rocket, announced it was quitting the Six Party talks, again, and began reprocessing nuclear fuel. This month, North Korea successfully tested a much larger underground nuclear explosion (Russia estimates it at up to 20 KT, the size of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs), as well as defensive missiles.

The long and tortured history of negotiations with North Korea says just one thing: no agreement will ever satisfy the Kim regime. We have offered food aid, energy assistance, even help with light-water peaceful nuclear reactors. In exchange we have received promises not worth the paper they’re written on. Now there are some suggesting a complete US-DPRK peace and normalized relations will do the trick. It won’t. Instead, it is time to consider whether diplomacy has run its course with North Korea.

But an end to diplomacy does not have to mean military action. The threat posed by North Korea is not principally a direct threat of nuclear or conventional attack. Certainly, the US, Japan and South Korea must be prepared to defend against a direct attack, and to retaliate with overwhelming force should the North be so foolish as to deploy a nuclear device. But far more likely is that North Korea will continue its pattern of supplying nuclear materials and know-how to other rogue regimes and non-state groups who can act as proxies for its policies of irritating and threatening US and Western interests.

The smart response to this policy is not to offer more concessions, but to withhold all benefits of a negotiated settlement. Instead, we must impose tough, multilateral sanctions, a complete shipping embargo, and an absolute foreign energy blackout. It may sound cynical, but at least right now—summertime in the Northern hemisphere—the regime will suffer more than its people if we cut off the power. Food aid, medicine, and other essential products should keep coming, accompanied by clear messages to the North Korean people that this is a crisis brought on by the obstinate and reckless behavior of their own government.

This is not a positive outcome, or an appealing strategy. But that’s the problem with diplomacy—it can work miracles, but when you run up against completely intransigent regimes, sometimes there’s nothing to be done but wait them out.

No related posts.