FYI
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Viewpoint: Are US-North Korea talks possible?By Andrea Berger Royal United
Services Institute
North Korea says it will not talk until all UN sanctions against it have been
repealed
Continue reading the main story
While North Korean rhetoric appears to be finally tapering off, tensions on
the Korean Peninsula persist. In a matter of only a few weeks, the Kim
regime has unravelled two of the greatest successes of detente with its
adversaries.
Pyongyang announced that it would restart production of
plutonium for nuclear weapons at its Yongbyon reactor, whose cooling
tower was famously demolished in 2008 as part of its commitment to the
six-party talks.
More recently, it has withdrawn from the joint Kaesong Industrial Zone with
South Korea.
These developments serve as a reminder that talks with North
Korea can yield modest, but desirable outcomes like the establishment of
Kaesong.
Dialogue should not be expected to end North Korea's nuclear
programme, especially in the near-term. But it may help defuse the
current tensions and avoid a return to escalation.
Washington and Pyongyang are now trading conditions for
resuming regular official engagement, which would be more than just
"talks for talks' sake".
That is, if concerned nations could agree on the subject of,
and forum for, discussion. It is here that the greatest divide lies.
On his recent trip to Asia, Secretary of State John Kerry
reiterated that Washington is ready to engage with Pyongyang, but only
if certain conditions are met.
The US wants denuclearisation to be a precursor to negotiations with North
Korea
His offer presumably relates to more regular, official talks than those already
quietly and sporadically taking place.
Foremost among his conditions is a demonstration by the North of "seriousness
of purpose to go towards denuclearisation".
This could be done by, for instance, ceasing production of
fissile material for nuclear weapons or refraining from conducting
missile tests.
Though the messenger may be new, Mr Kerry's conditional offer is not.
In theory, the Obama administration has for some time been
quietly open to resuming nuclear talks with North Korea if convinced
that Pyongyang would come to the table in good faith.
In response to Mr Kerry's statements, North Korea brushed off the subject of
denuclearisation and announced its own list of
conditions: the United States must apologise for its recent
provocations, repeal all UN and unilateral sanctions, withdraw
nuclear-capable assets from the region, and abstain from conducting
military exercises on the Korean Peninsula.
Both lists of conditions are non-starters, and speak to the underlying, vast
gap in opinion on what should be talked about.Cemented positions
A useful framework for understanding the divide are the
stalled six-party talks, the series of negotiations that began in 2003
between China, the US, North and South Korea, Japan and Russia, and were
abandoned in 2009.
While active, the six-party talks had three multilateral
working groups: peaceful energy co-operation; the denuclearisation of
the Korean Peninsula; and peace and security in Northeast Asia.
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“Start Quote
It is clear from the latest tensions that the United States and North Korea
continue to disagree about what to talk about”
The subject of the first working group on peaceful energy co-operation is
unappetising to the US and its allies, for obvious reasons.
The second, denuclearisation, is of little interest to
Pyongyang, which now heavily emphasises nuclear weapons in its national
doctrine. Washington needs Pyongyang to discuss denuclearisation much
more than the reverse, and until that changes, the North is unlikely to
be tempted into talks on this subject.
However, Pyongyang favours keeping the third avenue for
dialogue open, though perhaps not with a six-party talks label. From
their point of view, a peace treaty is needed to guarantee the absence
of an external enemy before the country can safely renounce nuclear
weapons.
Washington believes the opposite: fully normalised relations
are not possible while the North maintains an active nuclear-weapons
programme.
At the moment, none of these topics are palatable to all key
countries, and the latest crisis has cemented the difference of opinion.
North Korea is unlikely to move towards denuclearisation anytime soon
In January, North Korea's National Defence Commission declared
flatly that North Korea would maintain a nuclear deterrent so long as
other states possess nuclear weapons - a policy conveniently borrowed
from the US and UK.
This position was later bolstered by the Supreme People's Assembly, which
declared nuclear weapons to be "the nation's life".
If there was any doubt about North Korea's disinterest in talking about
disarmament, it has now been shattered.
The latest conflict may also have hardened Washington's stance against broader
peace and security talks.
North Korea's March decision to restart plutonium production
and its apparent quest to develop an inter-continental nuclear strike
capability may have convinced the Obama administration that dialogue on
non-nuclear issues would give the Kim regime precious time to further
advance its nuclear and missile programmes.
As Pyongyang slowly creeps closer to a long-range nuclear missile, time is
something the US cannot afford.
As a result, the US may feel that anything but
denuclearisation talks, with a preceding North Korean demonstration of
sincerity, would be unacceptable.Bilateral or multilateral?
Statements by the US and North Korea also largely avoid the
question of whether sustained, official talks should be bilateral or
multilateral.
North Korea has long preferred to deal directly with its
adversary. The Obama administration, on the other hand, seems wary of
getting burned in another bilateral effort.
The failed 2012 "Leap Day Agreement", which traded North
Korean nuclear concessions for American food aid, quickly fell apart to
Washington's chagrin.
Indeed, for the time being, the US may have locked itself into a primarily
multilateral approach to the North Korean problem.
Amid the recent tensions, the US repeatedly declared Beijing
the "key" to resolving the stand-off, in hopes of pressuring them to
abandon their traditional apathy. Any effort to resolve Korean Peninsula
insecurity without the "key" would now therefore seem nonsensical.
It is clear from the latest tensions that the United States
and North Korea continue to disagree about what to talk about, and whom
to talk about it with.
And despite Mr Kerry's assertion that he will not "be so
stuck in the mud that an opportunity to actually get something done is
flagrantly wasted", it is unfortunately difficult to foresee anything in the
near term that could create common ground.
Regular dialogue with the US and North Korea at the table is far out of reach.
Andrea Berger is a research fellow in nuclear analysis at the Royal United
Services Institute. Follow her on Twitter
@AndreaRBerger.
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