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Carrots and sticks for North
Korea
By Ralph A Cossa
(Used by permission of Pacific Forum CSIS)
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun meets
later this week in Washington with US President
George W Bush to attempt, once again, to carve out
a common position in dealing with North Korea's
nuclear weapons aspirations. Roh will be urging
"sweeter carrots" while Bush will be calling for
"stronger sticks". They are both right.
This follows a meeting on Monday between
American officials and North Korean envoys. The
meeting was requested by North Korea and held in
New York, a State Department spokesman said. South
Korea and the US share a common objective: both
want to persuade North Korea not only to come back
to the six-party negotiating table - stalled for a
year - but also to agree to give up its
nuclear-weapons programs. To get Pyongyang to
seriously negotiate, it must be convinced that the
benefits of cooperating outweigh the benefits of
not cooperating and that the costs of not
cooperating outweigh the costs of cooperating.
Washington and Seoul both seem to agree
that rewards are in order if Pyongyang plays
along. Their main difference is in the timing.
Seoul is prepared to give rewards up front, while
Washington objects to payments in advance, given
Pyongyang's previous track record. But both agree
that there is and should be a considerable pot of
gold at the end of the diplomatic rainbow - in the
form of economic benefits and security guarantees
- if and when North Korea starts irreversibly down
the path of nuclear disarmament.
Less
recognized is the benefit Pyongyang sees in not
cooperating. To date, North Korea's stonewalling
has created problems not between Seoul and
Pyongyang, but between Washington and Seoul, with
South Korea continually calling for increased US
"flexibility" and understanding while generally
resisting direct criticism of North Korea's
actions (despite the fact that it is Pyongyang and
not Washington that refuses to return to the
negotiating table). A side benefit, from
Pyongyang's perspective, has been increased
bickering between Washington and Beijing. North
Korea has survived for decades by successfully
playing its neighbors against one another and
seems to be doing it yet again.
As long as
its refusal to negotiate continues to drive a
wedge between Washington and Seoul/Beijing, it is
in North Korea's benefit not to cooperate. This is
why it is essential that Roh and Bush reach a
common understanding regarding how to proceed -
and it is equally essential that Roh or subsequent
spokesmen do not immediately contradict or water
down whatever agreement comes out of the summit.
The continued failure of Washington and Seoul (and
Beijing) to speak with one voice in dealing with
North Korea adds immeasurably to the benefits
Pyongyang sees in not cooperating.
The
perceived cost associated with cooperating also
needs to be lowered for North Korea. Giving up its
nuclear card deprives Pyongyang of its primary
(perhaps only) bargaining chip - it will not do so
without credible security assurances, including a
US commitment not to pursue regime change, since
regime (read: personal) survival remains North
Korean leader Kim Jong-il's No 1 priority.
This leaves us with the area of greatest
disagreement between Washington and Seoul:
identifying and articulating the costs of not
cooperating. One can argue that not getting the
promised pot of gold is cost enough, but it is
clear that this has not been sufficient to draw
North Korea back to the table, especially since
many of the benefits that it enjoyed prior to
walking away from the negotiating table have been
sustained (and arguably even increased) despite a
year of stonewalling and unilateral escalation.
Roh, during his 2002 inaugural address,
warned Pyongyang that it had to chose: it could
either have the political and economic benefits
that choosing the path of cooperation would bring,
or it could chose to pursue nuclear weapons and
become isolated and cut-off from the international
community. On February 10, North Korea announced
its choice: it declared itself a nuclear-weapons
state and demanded that it be treated as such. The
response from Seoul (and from the rest of the
international community) has been resounding
silence; it remains business as usual.
In
short, there have been little if any costs
associated with North Korea's decision to walk
away from the six-party talks or its even more
egregious nuclear-weapons declaration. While
Mohammed ElBaradei, director general of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, has identified
North Korea's nuclear declaration as the single
greatest threat to the international nuclear
non-proliferation regime, Seoul (with China's
support and threatened veto) has prevented the
United Nations Security Council from even
discussing this situation.
In the lead-up
to the Bush-Roh summit, administration spokesmen
have made it clear that Washington believes the
next step must be Security Council action if North
Korea continues to refuse to return to
negotiations without preconditions. Given the
alternatives - acceptance of North Korea as a
nuclear-weapons state or unilateral US military
action being the most stark at either end of the
spectrum - the time has come for Roh to
acknowledge that turning to the United Nations is,
in fact, a continuation of the diplomatic solution
to which both he and Bush aspire.
Sweeter
carrots, by themselves, are not likely to persuade
Pyongyang to return to the negotiating table, not
when the benefits of not cooperating remain high
and the costs of not cooperating remain so low. If
the two presidents can agree both on sweeter
carrots and stronger sticks, Pyongyang may finally
conclude that it has more to gain from cooperating
than from not cooperating - and something to lose
if it continues to defy international norms of
behavior.
Ralph A Cossa is
president of the Pacific Forum CSIS, a
Honolulu-based non-profit research institute
affiliated with the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington and senior
editor of Comparative Connections, a quarterly
electronic journal.
(Used by
permission of Pacific Forum CSIS) |
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