Not Talking to the DPRK is a fatal mistake

I deeply, wholeheartedly and enthusiastically embraced elements of the "grand bargain" as spelt out by O'Hanlon and Mochizuki. (Michael O'Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki, "Toward a Grand Bargain with North Korea", The Washington Quarterly 26.4, 2003)

I only have one minor but not inconsequential reservation, and that is, how is the deal to be carried out when both the United States and North Korea are not talking directly to each other?

Elements of the "grand bargain" which I found appealing include allowing Pyongyang to retain some of its conventional weapons, while concurrently dealing with the three fundamental areas of security, economic recovery, and international engagement/diplomatic recognition for North Korea.

But it seems that unless the next US administration comes in with a new North Korean policy, it is unlikely that the present Bush administration will alter its policy of not talking one-on-one with Pyongyang, which I think is a fatal mistake with far-reaching consequences. Talking to Pyongyang will not be giving in to blackmail. Rather, it will be answering to a plea for help from a tiny isolationist state whose only inducement in getting the US to come to the negotiating table is, unfortunately, its arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Talking to the DPRK directly - while unleashing elements of the "grand bargain" - would also allow Pyongyang to stop obsessing about its security, and allow the regime to return to its by-now-stalled experiment of emulating China's economic opening up process, albeit in a slower and incremental way, or a case of "building Socialism with North Korean Characteristics."

While some would argue that Bush's policy is no better or worse than Clinton's policies (which had failed to deliver substantive, durable and comprehensive results), I am more inclined to the view that the North Korean problem had become more intractable under the Bush administration. It does not help when North Korea is labeled "an axis of evil", and Kim Jong-II was called "a tyrant" and "a pygmy." Bush even once blurted out "I loathe Kim Jong-II" while shouting and waving his finger in the air.

As Nicholas Eberstadt had pointed out in another article (Alternative Futures of the Korean Peninsula, Strategic Asia 2004-5), the only proactive thing that Washington had done was to initiate the multinational Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) for interdicting North Korea's contraband abroad.

Which is why I absolutely had to applaud former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright when she recently pointed out that there were at least no nuclear crises, and no test firings (whether successful or otherwise) of nuclear missiles during the Clinton administration. Of course, relations between Washington and Pyongyang were not exactly lovey-dovey then, but at least the two sides were not trying to get at each other's neck.