North Korea continues to rattle the cages of both friend and foe.\u00a0 Despite near-universal condemnation of its fourth nuclear test and a deplorable human rights record, Kim Jong-un defiantly disregards the major powers and the United Nations. And now, adding insult to injury, the UN Secretary-General reports that North Korea has notified various UN agencies of its intention to launch a satellite, apparently to test its ballistic missile technology.<\/p>\n
Continued nuclear testing by North Korea is its way of demonstrating independence of action.\u00a0 Nuclear weapons are the DPRK\u2019s \u201cinsurance policy,\u201d David Sanger writes<\/a> \u2013 its last best hope for regime survival and legitimacy, and the most dramatic way to insist that the North\u2019s interests should not be neglected.\u00a0 All one has to do is, through North Korean blinkers, see what has happened in Iraq, Iran, and Libya, where dictators did not have a nuclear deterrent.\u00a0 Two of them were invaded, and all had to surrender their nuclear-weapon capability.<\/p>\n The longstanding US approach to North Korea\u2019s nuclear weapons is way off the mark.\u00a0 The Obama administration\u2019s strategy of \u201cstrategic patience\u201d shows little attention to North Korean motivations. The US insistence that no change in policy is conceivable unless and until North Korea agrees to denuclearize ensures continuing tension, the danger of a disastrous miscalculation, and more and better North Korean nuclear weapons.\u00a0\u00a0The immediate focus of US policy should be on trust building.<\/p>\n Increasing the severity of punishment, with threats of more to come, is representative of a failed policy.\u00a0 When the White House press secretary acknowledged recently that the US goal of defanging North Korea had not been reached but that \u201cwe have succeeded in making North Korea more isolated ever before,\u201d he was actually acknowledging the failure.\u00a0 The task is, or should be, not to further isolate North Korea but rather to\u00a0bring it out of its isolation<\/em>, starting by accepting the legitimacy of its security concerns.\u00a0 The more isolated the regime is and the more it is driven into a corner, the more likely it is that it will resort to provocations and shows of strength.<\/p>\n Demanding that China step up and use its relationship with North Korea as leverage to get it to agree to denuclearize is a fool\u2019s errand.\u00a0 Secretary of State John Kerry has chided<\/a> his Chinese counterpart to abandon \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d with the North and join in enacting sanctions on shipping, banking, and oil.\u00a0 Over many years, Chinese leaders have made plain that North Korea\u2019s nuclear and missile testing endanger China\u2019s as well as Korean peninsula security.\u00a0 They have shown their displeasure by resuming trilateral Japan-South Korea-China security dialogue after three years, and by condemning<\/a> North Korea\u2019s latest nuclear test in statements from Beijing and in a UN Security Council press statement.<\/p>\n But with all that, the Chinese are not about to dump Kim Jong-un.\u00a0 Political distancing, yes, but no serious (i.e., destabilizing) economic sanctions such as the US is now demanding. While in Beijing in late January, Kerry threatened that the US, with South Korea\u2019s possible approval (a reversal of position), would go ahead with installing a theater missile defense system (THAAD) that the Chinese have long regarded as actually aimed at neutralizing their own missiles rather than only North Korea\u2019s.\u00a0 Rest assured that all such a threat will accomplish is to harden Chinese views of US strategy in Asia, lately strained further by heightened US patrolling in the South China Sea, and lessen their commitment to imposing sanctions on the North.<\/p>\n The DPRK\u2019s possession of an increasingly sophisticated nuclear program that aims at miniaturizing bombs is no small matter.\u00a0 As Sigfried Hecker, former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, points out<\/a>, the North Koreans \u201cmay have enough bomb fuel for 18 bombs, with a capacity to make 6 to 7 more annually. That, combined with the increased sophistication they surely achieved with this test, paints a troublesome picture.\u201d \u00a0Sanctions, threats, and \u201chalf-hearted diplomacy,\u201d Hecker observes, have failed to change the nuclear picture.<\/p>\n Serious engagement with North Korea remains the only realistic policy option for the United States and its allies. To be effective, however (i.e., meaningful to the other side), engagement must be undertaken strategically\u2014as a\u00a0calculated use of incentives with expectation of\u00a0mutual\u00a0rewards, namely in security and peace. And it should be undertaken in a\u00a0spirit of mutual respect\u00a0and with due regard for sensitivity in language and action.<\/p>\n Here are three elements of an engagement package:<\/p>\n First is\u00a0revival of the Six-Party Talks without preconditions\u00a0and with faithfulness to previous six-party and North-South Korea joint declarations\u2014in particular, the principle contained in the Six-Party Joint Statement of September 2005: \u201ccommitment for commitment, action for action.\u201d\u00a0 At a new round of talks, the US and its partners should present a package that, in return for verifiable steps to neutralize North Korea\u2019s nuclear, provides the North with security assurances, a proposal for ending the Korean War, a nonaggression pact with big-power guarantees (with China on board), and meaningful economic assistance from both NGOs and governments.\u00a0 Such a major departure from \u201cstrategic patience\u201d would be in line with Kim Jong-il\u2019s message to President George W. Bush in November 2002: \u201cIf the United States recognizes our sovereignty and assures nonaggression, it is our view that we should be able to find a way to resolve the nuclear issue in compliance with the demands of a new century. . . .If the United States makes a bold decision, we will respond accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n Second is\u00a0creation of a Northeast Asia Security Dialogue Mechanism. We might recall that such a group was anticipated in the final statements of the Six-Party Talks, and that South Korea\u2019s President Park has proposed a similar peace initiative. \u00a0In the absence of honest brokers for disputes in Northeast Asia, the NEASDM can function as a \u201ccircuit breaker,\u201d able to interrupt patterns of escalating confrontation when tensions in the region increase\u2014as they are now. But the NEASDM would not focus exclusively on North Korean denuclearization.\u00a0 It would be open to a wide range of issues related to security in the broadest sense, such as environmental, labor, poverty, and public health problems; a code of conduct to govern territorial and boundary disputes; military budget transparency, weapons transfers, and deployments; measures to combat terrorism and piracy; creation of a nuclear-weapon free zone (NWFZ) in all or part of Northeast Asia; and ways to support confidence building and trust in the dialogue process itself.\u00a0 Normalization of relations among all six countries should be a priority; full recognition of the DPRK by the United States and Japan costs nothing but is an important incentive for meaningful North Korean participation.<\/p>\n Third is\u00a0significant new humanitarian assistance to North Korea.\u00a0\u00a0The US and South Korean emphasis on sanctions punishes the wrong people.\u00a0 Kim Jong-un\u2019s complete disregard for human rights, vigorously condemned in a UN commission of inquiry report in 2014, is before the General Assembly and will be debated in the Security Council despite China\u2019s disapproval.\u00a0 (The vote to debate was 9-4 with two abstentions.)\u00a0 But neither human rights deprivations nor nuclear testing should affect humanitarian aid to North Korea\u2014food, medicine, medical equipment, technical training\u2014which at least helps some portion of its population and sends the message that the international community cares about the North Korean people.\u00a0 Humanitarian assistance to the DPRK is pitifully little\u2014under $50 million in 2014, and declining every year.<\/p>\n The same kind of steady, patient, and creative diplomacy that led to the nuclear deal with Iran is still possible in the North Korea case.\u00a0 As the Under Secretary-General of the UN, Jeffrey Feltman, said<\/a>, Iran shows that \u201cdiplomacy can work to address non-proliferation challenges.\u00a0 There is strong international consensus on the need to work for peace, stability and denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.\u00a0 To achieve this goal, dialogue is the way forward.\u201d<\/p>\n ______________________________________<\/p>\n Mel Gurtov, syndicated by <\/em>PeaceVoice<\/em><\/a>, is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University and blogs at <\/em>In the Human Interest<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Serious engagement with North Korea remains the only realistic policy option for the United States and its allies. To be effective, however, engagement must be undertaken strategically\u2014as a calculated use of incentives with expectation of mutual rewards, namely in security and peace. And it should be undertaken in a spirit of mutual respect and with due regard for sensitivity in language and action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weapons-of-mass-destruction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}