Report Reveals New Options for Dealing with North Korea
Journalist: Van Jackson
Original Post: Report Reveals New Options for Dealing with North Korea
Type: News Article
July 24, 2009 — The debate on how best to handle the North Korea “problem” has long consisted of whether to engage North Korea through dialogue and aid or contain North Korea through sanctions and military deterrence. Some of the more creative Koreaphiles have at times argued for a nuanced approach to North Korea that combines the “carrots” of engagement with the “sticks” of containment. To date, none of these approaches have worked. With its second nuclear test and denunciation of the Six-Party Talks framework, North Korea has reinforced the idea that its nuclear weapons capability may be permanent.
But all is not lost. A new report issued last month by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) takes stock of the complexities of U.S.-North Korea relations and argues for a paradigm-shifting approach that might actually yield progress in America’s efforts to denuclearize the Korean peninsula. The game-changing recommendations in this report free U.S. policy from the demonstrated failures of previous approaches.
The CNAS report calls for reinforcing existing security commitments, providing incentives for North Korea to return to negotiations to denuclearize, tougher sanctions and interdiction regimes, and a Five-Party Dialogue to expand regional security cooperation.
While the first three recommendations have been previously attempted in some fashion and with varying degrees of success, the notion of building a regional security mechanism such as the Five-Party Talks is quite novel. Throughout much of the Bush administration, the Six-Party Talks provided the only forum for the United States to address North Korea in a coordinated manner with other relevant stakeholders. When negotiations shutdown or reached an impasse, multilateral discussions ceased. In this way, North Korea actually exercised a certain amount of de facto control over alliance coordination. North Korea’s current unwillingness to return to the Six-Party Talks framework actually opens a window of opportunity to initiate a coordinating mechanism such as the Five-Party Talks.
More practical than simply establishing a venue for multilateral policy coordination, the Five-Party Talks forum would be essential to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. A nuclear North Korea is dangerous but the potential for nuclear proliferation to other rogue regimes and non-state actors poses a far greater threat to national security. If the United States hopes to prevent nuclear proliferation beyond North Korea’s borders, it will require the assistance of as many regional allies as possible.
Further, America’s current security approach to the region consists of a tangled mess of bilateral agreements. While these agreements are important, they place tremendous onus on the United States to preserve regional stability, despite the fact that all nations in the region have a stake in preventing nuclear proliferation. If the Five-Party Talks could produce a consensus among stakeholders on how to address issues like North Korea, such consensus would lend credibility when attempting to gain buy-in from other regional bodies, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Instead of the United States or a single Northeast Asian nation raising an issue in an ASEAN forum on behalf of its own interests, a nation could raise an issue such as North Korea with the full backing of all parties to the Five-Party Talks; stakeholder consensus establishes threats to the common interest rather than the national interest, thereby creating a greater sense of legitimacy.
As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton returns from her trip to Asia, one can only hope she carried with her a copy of this report. The United States must be willing to hold discussions with North Korea at any time, in any place if it hopes to produce a long term positive outcome. But in the absence of North Korea’s willingness to come to the table, a multilateral security forum like the Five-Party Talks could prevent near term disaster.
Related:Topic(s): Regional Security Challenges, Development and Diplomacy, U.S. National Security and Defense Policy, WMD and Nuclear Proliferation
Project(s): Asia-Pacific Security
People: Zachary M. Hosford
