By Nicholas Eberstadt
Time (Asia)
February 5, 2007 issue; posted January 25, 2007
http://www.time.com/time
What's the world's most worrisome nuclear-proliferation hotspot? Answer: the diplomatic table in Beijing where six-party talks are periodically convened to discuss North Korean nuclear disarmament. Every time the international negotiators gather -- or even threaten to gather -- Pyongyang seems to take another step toward unrestrained nuclear breakout.
In the summer of 2003, when the talks were first planned, Pyongyang merely
insisted on its right to hold what it coyly called a "war deterrent." Five
rounds of dialogue later, there has been real progress -- not in the
negotiations, but in North Korea's nuclear program. After defiantly admitting
that the nation already possessed nukes and later stating it would not get rid
of them "under any circumstances," the North last October shocked the world with
its first nuclear test. You might think that the diplomatic sophisticates in
charge of the negotiations would have detected a discouraging pattern by now.
Apparently not. Recent reports suggesting that Pyongyang may be preparing for a
second test have only increased urgent calls for the North to return to the
bargaining table, possibly as soon as early February.
Perhaps most astonishing of all, even Washington is now straining for another
chance to coax Pyongyang into voluntary nuclear self-disarmament. Over the past
year, the Bush Administration, once the only actor in the cast committed to
pressing North Korea into nonproliferation compliance, has performed a dizzying
climb-down. Gone are U.S. demands for the complete, verifiable, irreversible
dismantlement of the North's nuclear programs. American diplomats no longer even
talk of North Korea's highly enriched-uranium program, whose public exposure by
State Department officials in 2002 triggered the ongoing proliferation drama.
Since North Korean officials now insist they've never had such a program, it
would be undiplomatic to suggest otherwise.
Instead, the U.S. was reduced last month to promising North Korea an "early
harvest" in return for good behavior. This concept called for the U.S. to pledge
economic aid (food, oil) and other benefits (including, perhaps, diplomatic
recognition) in return for a provisional North Korean freeze of its plutonium
facilities and a readmission of nuclear inspectors. In other words, the Bush
Administration was proffering a zero-penalty return to the previous nuclear
deals Pyongyang had flagrantly broken -- but with additional goodies, and a
provisional free pass for any nukes produced since 2002. With this overture, the
Bush team embraced the very approach it had once mocked as weak-kneed and
"Clintonesque."
Pyongyang knows a cave-in when it sees one. They brushed aside the "early
harvest" proposal as inadequate, demanding still more before they would listen
to new denuclearization offers -- specifically, the release of $24 million of
Pyongyang's funds currently frozen in Macau's Banco Delta Asia on suspicion of
North Korean complicity in counterfeiting U.S. currency. Pyongyang's obsession
over the past year with repocketing its Macau bag money -- a paramount issue on
its foreign agenda ever since the accounts were impounded in 2005 by Macau
banking authorities under U.S. Treasury scrutiny -- is easily explained. Since
the North is in many respects a state-run criminal enterprise (reportedly
replete with drug-running operations, and scams to counterfeit everything from
U.S. dollars to Marlboro cigarettes to Viagra), this may be seen as pure
goodfella fury at being stung by the very victims its own shakedown racket was
supposed to be bilking. Or it may be that since the Macau seizures are
practically the only penalties Pyongyang has suffered (thus far the U.N.
sanctions enacted after last fall's test are mere pinpricks), it wanted to make
sure it had an absolutely risk-free economic playing field before kicking its
nuclear game into overdrive.
What matters is that when North Korea pressed, U.S. negotiators squirmed. Now
there is an unseemly tug-of-war in Washington, with State Department officials
wheedling Treasury counterparts to let up, just a bit, on their international
campaign against counterfeiting and money laundering, so that a charter member
of the Axis of Evil can be lured back to the six-party table. The outcome is
still uncertain. If Pyongyang does get its frozen millions back, and the past is
prologue, Kim will pocket the money, then detonate another nuke at the time and
place of his choosing. He understands that the six-party farce provides ideal
diplomatic cover for his unobstructed nuclear buildup. What the other players
don't seem to understand -- or in the case of an increasingly weakened Bush
presidency, may fear to face -- is that the only genuine solution to the North
Korean nuclear crisis is to push for a better class of dictator in Pyongyang.
Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute