Making A Deal With North Korea

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

By Maureen S. Steinbruner

The Bush Administration's decision to allow senior North Korean officials to meet with members of Congress is extremely welcome, even if it only came about, as some suspect, as a ploy to pre-empt a John Kerry critique of progress in the 6-party talks.

The fact is, no deal will be struck without significant congressional understanding and support for its detailed provisions. Members of Congress of both parties want and need to weigh in on what can be offered as well as what must be attained in this critical negotiation over North Korea's nuclear program.

The U.S. is concerned, rightly, that a process that proceeds in stages, with North Korea achieving something concrete and valuable at each stage, does not guarantee reaching the necessary endpoint of complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement.

At the same time, the North Korean government is correct in its judgment that U.S. policy is fundamentally hostile to it. "Normalization" of relations is a distant prospect at best, no matter who is U.S. president and no matter which party leads Congress.

Clarifying the extent to which both of these statements are true and unlikely to change is exactly what congressional involvement is needed for.

In the end, there may be no path to agreement because of the uranium enrichment issue. If the administration has robust evidence -- really robust evidence – that the North Koreans have an on-going, active, weapons-oriented program, or equally strong evidence of the capacity or intention to mount one, then the North Koreans need to address this issue forthrightly. If there is any question as to the nature of the evidence, however, and if the North Koreans continue to deny the charge, it's hard to see how compromise is possible.

Even if this difficult problem can be resolved, there needs to be a way to get North Korea to accept something short of a normalization promise. In the case of Vietnam, the U.S. continued an actively 'hostile policy,' and maintained sanctions for two decades after signing the Paris Peace Treaty. An agreement to begin normalization discussions after a specific set of disarmament accomplishments might be possible, but a commitment to an endpoint in this instance is highly unlikely. This is one of those 'devil in the details' problems that could be insurmountable.

That said, contingent actions as evidence of good faith in the effort to resolve both of these core difficulties could achieve valuable results. If party A does X, and party B does Y, then another set of actions will be implemented. And so on. This means, in effect, that both sides agree to get, and give, something up front, and at each milestone along the way – not necessarily things that can or should be precisely specified in advance.

A degree of confidence in such a process will only be established effectively as a function both of the commitments of the other four countries – China, Russia, Japan and South Korea – and the commitments of the U.S. Congress.

None of these entities was directly party to the ill-fated Agreed Framework, although there was participation by South Korea and Japan in implementing its provisions, and pretty significant consultation occurred as well.

Certainly, the U.S. Congress was kept at arms length throughout. No wonder there was sniping, mistrust, and foot-dragging on fulfilling promised energy commitments.

A comprehensive, contingent collectively-accepted agreement that engages all of these entities holds the best prospects for success this time around.