Wednesday, February 21, 2007
The "Six Party" deal with North Korea and the limits of intransigence
James Laney, United States Ambassador to South Korea during the Clinton years, on the recent deal with North Korea:
Last week's agreement on North Korea's nuclear program has many critics. Those on the right have assailed the Bush administration for abandoning its core principles and setting a bad example for other states that misbehave (read: Iran) by rewarding North Korea's blackmail. They also maintain that the agreement is so vague agreement and full of loopholes that North Korea will never adhere to it. Those on the Left, meanwhile, claim that the deal came too late and at too great a cost. They argue that the administration, blinded by its own ideology, scuttled the 1994 Agreed Framework only to sign a very similar deal six years later, after Pyongyang had restarted its nuclear program, quintupled its plutonium stockpile, increased its number of nuclear bombs from two to perhaps eight, and conducted a nuclear test.
There are elements of truth in both critiques, but there is no denying that the accord reached in Beijing marks a watershed moment for the Korean peninsula and, more broadly, for Northeast Asia.
Some of the reasons for this are clearer than others. For North Korea, the agreement represents its last and best shot at avoiding absolute isolation. If Pyongyang fails to adhere to the deal, it will infuriate Beijing, which served as host for the negotiations and whose prestige is now on the line. More important, China wants the nuclear issue resolved before the 2008 Olympics, especially after North Korea's nuclear test in October demonstrated how willing Kim Jong Il's regime is to jeopardize regional stability for its own benefit. If North Korea walks away now from a deal it signed with China, it will risk losing critical Chinese aid and prove to all parties, including South Korea, that it can never be trusted as a negotiating partner.
Frankly, I think Ambassador Laney is correct, even if I also think he is (forgiveably) soft-peddling the weaknesses in the 1994 Agreed Framework.
Regardless of what one thinks of the 1994 Agreed Framework and the significance of the subsequent years of neglect (under Clinton) and sabre-rattling (under Bush), the problem for the United States is that our influence in northeast Asia has waned, even since 1994. However much the Democrats and the New York Times demanded it, there was no room for a bilateral deal. China has emerged as a much more powerful force in the region and Pyongyang's primary, even if reluctant, benefactor. Japan and South Korea are both shaking off their dependencies on the United States, and will no longer reflexively do everything we ask them to do. Even Russia is more assertive. Whether or not the Agreed Framework was a reasonable deal at the time, 13 years have passed during which time it has become much easier for the North Koreans to play the various regional actors against each other. Pyongyang desperately wanted to deal with the United States bilaterally because it knew that the United States could not easily enforce any agreement without the cooperation of China and South Korea. China especially was unlikely to cooperate in enforcement if it was not a party to the agreement in the first place. That is why the first requirement for dealing with North Korea today was careful multilateral diplomacy to build a united front. That is exactly what the Bush administration did.
And, no, much as I like the guy I don't hang on John Bolton's every opinion. He is opposed to the Six Party deal because it "crosses the line" into "rewarding" North Korea for its bad behavior. I have three objections to Ambassador Bolton's position.
First, he offers no alternative for dealing with North Korea's weapons program other than intransigence. While intransigence in foreign affairs is far more useful than transnational progressives and international bureaucrats dare to admit, one wonders what its purpose is here. Ambassador Bolton, I'm sure, hopes that North Korea's economy will eventually collapse and with it the disgusting regime in Pyongyang. Not only is there no sign of that happening, but China and South Korea, which are essential to any strategy of intransigence, want to avoid chaos in North Korea even more than they want Kim to give up his nuclear weapons. The best end-game of intransigence is revolution, but that is a highly problematic result for the four powers that border North Korea or are in range of its weapons and refugees.
Second, the policy of intransigence effectively cedes the geopolitical initiative to Pyongyang. North Korea, in its desperation for economic assistance, will continue to provoke its neighbors until it gets attention of some sort. In this case, intransigence is tantamount to begging North Korea to "show us what ya got". I think it is understandable that the South Koreans and Japanese do not want to see everything North Korea has got.
Third, intransigence assumes that our bargaining power will never be lower than it is today. That is a dangerous and probably incorrect assumption in northeast Asia, where our leverage has been steadily declining for quite some time with the rising affluence and psychological independence of China, Japan and South Korea. Also, China's obsessive interest in a peaceful 2008 Olympics -- which would present a perfect opportunity for Pyongyang to provoke the United States -- may have created a near-term peak in American bargaining power. A policy of inflexible intransigence would cause us to miss that window of opportunity.
Of course, John Bolton's dark predictions for this deal may yet come to pass. It is far from obvious, though, that he has any alternative strategy that is any less risky than the Six Party talks. As regular readers know, I am not a diplomacy fetishist, thought John Bolton was a great Ambassador to the United Nations, and strongly believe that intransigence has its useful applications. However, it is a tactic, not a strategy. I won't agree that it is the best tactic in this case until somebody explains to me how it results in a deal that China and South Korea will endorse and enforce.
10 Comments:
By 
, at
Wed Feb 21, 09:47:00 AM:
Fururist Thomas P.M. Barnett on the NORK nuclear agreement:
Still, I would sum up as follows: Bad deal. Freeze only, with possibility of real deal down the road.
We wuz taken, but what else to expect given Bush's post-presidency? Don't even get me started on the deal not including held fuel and bombs, plus the suspected secondary enrichment facility bought from Pakistan.
Bush and Co. are kidding themselves and us on this one. While Chris Hill is laboring hard and must be commended for his effort, this was a total non-win--a repeat of Clinton's deal that the Bushies are trying to pass off as Qaddafi-II.
By , at
Wed Feb 21, 10:07:00 AM:
If i do remember when NORTH KOREAS former dictator died it was slick willie who offered condolences from america when hundreds of korean war vets were objecting to clinton gushing for a tyrant
By 
TigerHawk, at
Wed Feb 21, 10:38:00 AM:
Anonymous,
So what's your strategy for getting to a better deal, taking China, South Korea, and other unavoidable inconveniences into account?
By , at
Wed Feb 21, 02:06:00 PM:
Tigerhawk -- the better deal would be to appreciate reality.
Reality is that NK will never under any circumstances give up Nukes because that is how they survive (people like Iran buy them, or the US makes a counter-offer). Nukes are essential to NK's "Juche" strategy (make military weapons) and that won't change.
Our interests are not South Korea's or China's or even Japan's. Our interests are in seeing NK GONE.
For that to happen we should as Bolton suggests walk away from any deal and take aggressive steps to collapse the regime; even to the point of embargoing their sea trade (we can't do anything with land-trade with China).
Or if that's just too risky the Treasury Dept shutdowns of Kim's Macau money laundering banks, and sanctions against NK traders.
So what if China and South Korea have a tidal wave of refugees when NK collapses. Too bad so sad. America wins because the main nuke collaborator with Iran gets taken off the table.
Anything that lets Kim and his nukes survive which this deal does means Iran keeps its outsourced nuclear partner.
This is merely kick the can down the road as Clinton did years ago. It might buy a fig leaf of "peace in our time" but it ignores the obvious.
There is no pain-free means to deal with NK. And that pain deferred is greater for the US.
By TigerHawk, at
Wed Feb 21, 03:17:00 PM:
Mycroft,
Very well put. I agree completely. The unspoken reality here is that we have substantially less leverage today than in 1994, and probably will have less leverage in 2009 than we have now. I really think that banking on the collapse of the regime is a fool's errand -- South Korea and China will pump in aid just to avoid that, and then there will be very little left to bargain with.
By Escort81, at
Wed Feb 21, 04:31:00 PM:
I tend to agree with Mycroft and TH. Sometimes you do a deal knowing that it will most likely come undone (which Bolton believes is its best feature!), but you do it nonetheless to focus attention on one of the parties to the deal.
The interesting point in time for NK will be right after the 2008 Olympics are completed -- 551 days from today (coincidentally right before the stretch run of the U.S. elections) -- when China's leadership may have more flexibility of action with the event behind them and less of a need to keep up appearances and maintain regional stability. Will that bode well, on balance, for North Korea? Or will Beijing bitch slap Kim the first time he steps out of line? There should really be a Vegas line on this.
By Lanky_Bastard, at
Wed Feb 21, 08:42:00 PM:
From Woodward's State of Denial:
"I get these briefings on all parts of the world," Bush said, "and everybody is talking to me about North Korea."
"I'll tell you what, Governor," Bandar said. "One reason should make you care about North Korea."
"All right, smart alek," Bush said, "tell me."
"The 38,000 American troops right on the border." ..."If nothing else counts, this counts. One shot across the border and you lose half these people immediately. You lose 15,000 Americans in a chemical or biological or even regular attack. The United State of America is at war instantly."
"Hmmm," Bush said. "I wish those assholes would put things just point-blank to me. I get half a book telling me about the history of North Korea."
The more our military gets tied up in hostile countries, the more salient Bandar's point becomes. We aren't negotiating with the strength we used to have.
By TigerHawk, at
Wed Feb 21, 09:42:00 PM:
So, Lanky, it sounds as though Bush listened to Bandar. After all, he cut a deal that most conservatives hate (bleating notwithstanding, my sense is that liberals do not hate the deal so much as believe that it is several years too late and several bombs worth of plutonium later).
By Purple Avenger, at
Thu Feb 22, 08:29:00 PM:
If Clinton's deal was so good, how did we get here today?
Maybe Clinton didn't give'em enough nuclear reactors?
By Lanky_Bastard, at
Thu Feb 22, 09:18:00 PM:
I think it's the best of a lot of bad options.
