North Korea's recent decision not to retaliate for South Korean military exercises creates a new opening for U.S. diplomacy to obtain a core objective of American policy: ending Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.
When New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson visited North Korea last week, he obtained critical concessions on the nuclear issue after strongly condemning North Korea for its outrageous artillery barrage against Yeonpyeong Island in late November; a strike that killed two marines and two civilians, severely damaged civilian property and shocked the South Korean people.
Pyongyang agreed to allow nuclear monitors back into the Yongbyon complex to confirm it is not producing material for nuclear bombs. North Korea also expressed a willingness to sell 12,000 plutonium fuel rods - which contain the material for building nuclear weapons - to South Korea and to open a new hotline between the North and South Korean military leaderships.
Richardson's frank and tough-minded discussions with North Korean diplomats and military officials filled a vacuum left by the Obama administration's policy of "strategic patience" toward the Korean peninsula. Richardson was able to elicit concessions by demonstrating a strong desire to achieve a negotiated resolution of the nuclear issue and avoid a new Korean War. He conveyed in words and deeds the same message that President Obama gave to Iran in early 2009: if Pyongyang "unclenches its fist," the U.S. would extend the hand of friendship.
Richardson's message stands in stark contrast to much of current U.S. policy toward North Korea which has led Washington to hold back, putting obstacles in the way of resuming negotiations with Pyongyang. The sanctions in which the administration has placed its hopes have not brought North Korea to heel. Pyongyang has continued to defy the United States and South Korea, while demonstrating a new capability to enrich uranium to build nuclear weapons. Clearly, it will take more than sanctions to achieve American policy goals.
In the current crisis, North Korea has relied on its well-known strategy of brinkmanship to heighten tensions and increase its diplomatic leverage. What is new, this time around, is that the United States has been sucked into the North Korean game of chicken. The U.S. strategy is not worthy of the only global superpower, which has a profound international responsibility for ensuring peace and stability in Northeast Asia.
The better approach was recently outlined by Joel Wit - a former U.S. official with extensive experience negotiating with North Korea - who commented that "instead of continuing to stumble forward with a failed approach that is inimical to U.S. national interests, the United States needs a realistic strategy to secure those interests." Wit called for the Obama administration to urgently review U.S. policy toward North Korea.
As part of a review, the administration should seriously consider two recommendations made by Ambassador James Goodby, who served as special representative of President Clinton for Nuclear Security and Dismantlement, and is affiliated with the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at The Brookings Institution.
In Goodby's view, the U.S. ought to launch a two-track approach, with one track focusing on regional security and the other on North Korean issues. In the first track, the five nations that have been trying to negotiate with North Korea - South Korea, the U.S., Russia, China and Japan - should convene a meeting of their foreign ministers to which North Korea could be invited. The meeting would put diplomatic pressure on Pyongyang to make serious progress on the nuclear issue and could lead to a multilateral consultative mechanism that would help bring a stable peace to the region.
In the second track, the U.S. should seek to replace the 1953 Armistice Agreement with a U.S.-North Korea interim agreement for regulating military activities on the Korean Peninsula that other nations, especially South Korea, could join.
This interim agreement would not be a peace treaty, but rather a technical agreement to define borders, including the Northern Line Limit which is at the root of the present crisis. It could provide its own consultative mechanism and include military confidence-building measures such as an "incidents at sea" agreement, which played an important role in drastically reducing U.S.-Soviet naval confrontations during the Cold War.
It now appears the United States and South Korea will emerge from the current crisis without being plunged into a new war on the Korean peninsula that would put the lives of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Koreans at risk. The U.S. should take advantage of this opening by pursuing a new diplomatic initiative in Northeast Asia that leads to the denuclearization of North Korea and a new basis for regional peace, stability and security.
