Negotiation Can Work With North Korea

Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.

Reading List

What to Read on North Korean Politics

Nicholas Eberstadt

An annotated Foreign Affairs syllabus on North Korean politics.

Snapshot

The Free Trade Agreement Could Spoil South Korea's State Visit

Victor D. Cha

Relations between Washington and Seoul have never been better. But if the two do not reconcile differences on North Korea and seal the deal on a Free Trade Agreement, the alliance will suffer.

Almost everyone working on North Korea in Washington seems to have convinced one another that negotiating with the country is a waste of time. The Obama White House is no exception. Acting on the faulty premise that Pyongyang alone was responsible for the breakdown of six-party talks in 2008, the administration insists that North Korea satisfy a series of preconditions -- including agreeing to a halt to uranium enrichment and nuclear testing -- before returning to the table. Yet, as nuclear envoys from the North and South get together on Wednesday in Beijing, Washington is missing a real opportunity to take the lead in reining in Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs by trying diplomatic give-and-take in earnest.

It is an article of faith in Washington that the North cheats on every deal. Granted, Pyongyang's brinksmanship and aggressive bargaining behavior have never made diplomatic give-and-take easy, and they will not now. But that is hardly a reason for Washington to shrink from testing the North's intentions face to face. Indeed, any concessions will prop up the regime, but two decades of isolation and embargo have done little to cause its collapse, or, for that matter, stop its nuclear-arming. The North's internal regimentation and denial of human rights are surely abhorrent, but only engagement can bring about the changes Washington desires, however grudging and gradual they may be.

In fact, since Pyongyang shut down its Yongbyon reactor, it has not been able to generate more plutonium, produce enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon, or conduct the additional missile and nuclear tests it
needs to develop its new deliverable warhead and more reliable missiles. But it could do so in 2012. The only way to prevent such a nuclear tsunami is to work from an honest accounting of recent events, exploit Pyongyang's energy needs, and, over the long term, chart a path toward signing a peace treaty.

A brief recounting of historical facts shows that for the better part of two decades, stonewalling the North has consistently produced dangerous developments. Indeed, Pyongyang began acquiring the means to enrich uranium in 1997, but only after the Clinton administration was slow to live up to its end of the Agreed Framework, the U.S.-North Korean pact freezing North Korea's nuclear effort. When the Bush administration
confronted the North over enrichment in October 2002 and refused further negotiations, Pyongyang resumed its plutonium program, stepped up acquisition of enrichment equipment, and proclaimed itself a nuclear-armed state.

Yet the North has demonstrated more restraint than it is usually given credit for. Until last year, the only
way for North Korea to make the fissile material it needs for nuclear weapons was to remove spent nuclear fuel from its reactor at Yongbyon and reprocess it to extract plutonium. But North Korea stopped reprocessing in 1991 -- three years before signing the 1994 Agreed Framework -- and did not resume it until 2003. Pursuant to a six-party accord reached in February 2007, it shut down its reactor at Yongbyon and has kept it shut since. In so doing, it has denied itself many bombs' worth of plutonium.

Similarly, it has conducted just four sets of medium- and longer-range missile tests in twenty years. And every one of them came in direct response to disengagement by Washington or to what Pyongyang considered acts of bad faith by the United States.

In Pyongyang's view, it was not alone in failing to live up to the six-party agreements -- and it has a point. In the second-phase six-party accord, Pyongyang had pledged to provide "a complete and correct declaration of all its nuclear programs" and to disable its plutonium facilities at Yongbyon, pending their permanent dismantlement. In return, it was promised energy aid, an end to U.S. sanctions, and removal from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Pyongyang provided that declaration, but, under pressure from Seoul and Tokyo, President George W. Bush delayed the delisting and sanctions easing until Pyongyang agreed to cooperate in verifying the declaration. The 2007 accord said nothing about verification, which was left to a later
phase of negotiations. Yet, even after Pyongyang accepted arrangements that might have allowed the West to ascertain exactly how much plutonium North Korea had extracted in the past, Seoul, with Washington's blessing, suspended delivery of promised fuel oil. The Obama administration continued down the same misguided course.

Predictably, Pyongyang retaliated. In late January 2009, it began assembling a rocket, which it test-launched the following April. Spurning a Security Council statement that condemned the launch and imposed further sanctions, Pyongyang immediately began preparations for its second nuclear test, which it conducted a month later. Cue additional U.N. and U.S. sanctions. North Korea's response, in turn, was to reveal both a
new missile facility and a uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon, underscoring the futility of sanctions in curbing its nuclear activities.