What do we expect to achieve by talking to North Korea? Do we expect to achieve certain concrete goals that advance our interests? Do these goals include disarming North Korea, or do the talks have a cosmetic purpose? Or have talks themselves become our goal? This week, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited Kim Jong Il and secured his promise to send an envoy back to the six-party talks. As is always so with North Korea, there was a catch: the North’s agreement “depend[s] on the outcome of the DPRK-U.S. talks.”
Stated differently, North Korea will demand bilateral concessions as a condition of returning to talks to then demand multilateral concessions, in exchange for some variation on a handful of dry air. This puts us no closer to actual North Korean disarmament than we were in December 2006, when George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice fell for this the last time. We have every reason to expect the same outcome again.
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