The Cato Institute’s Ted Galen Carpenter tells us why he believes North Korea’s nukes must be the top priority:
The most recent round of six-party talks (involving China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, North Korea and the United States) made, at best, incremental progress toward a solution to the crisis. Throughout the negotiations, the U.S. goal has remained the same: a complete, verifiable and irreversible end to North Korea’s nuclear program.
A growing number of influential Americans are dissatisfied with such a “narrow” agenda, however. Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution and Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute are among those who demand that the United States add North Korea’s human rights practices and the issue of regime “transformation” to the list of topics the next round of six-party talks must address. Congressional passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act last year points to a similar strategy.
That approach would be a profound mistake.
Improving the abysmal human rights situation in North Korea or achieving regime change in that long-suffering country may be desirable in the abstract, but U.S. leaders cannot let those goals interfere with the fundamental objective of the negotiations - the elimination of North Korea’s nuclear weapons capability.
A nuclear-armed North Korea threatens to destabilize the security environment in East Asia, a region of considerable strategic and economic value to the United States. Even worse, a cash-strapped North Korean regime with a surplus of nuclear weapons in its arsenal might be tempted to sell one to al-Qaida or some other terrorist organization.
Progress in the six-party talks has been difficult enough without adding issues to the agenda that the North Korean government regards as an intolerable threat to regime survival. Broadening the agenda in that fashion is almost guaranteed to torpedo any conceivable deal on the nuclear issue.
Read the rest on your own.
6 Comments
It will never happen. I would liken it to a whore promising to give up hooking AND agreeing to put on a chastity belt with the US holding the only key with only the promise of fickle politicians that financial incentives will be discussed in committee at some undetermined point in the future. The whore knows that once its ability to hook is compromised, it has nothing. NK also knows that the whole human rights issue is guaranteed to come up and there is a probability that any financial incentives or economic aid should be tied to human rights issues too. For a regime that is struggling to survive, it would take a watertight guarantee for me to give up my biggest bargaining chip (if I were KJI) and even then I would be sorely tempted to keep it because one never knows what the future holds.
Since it’s 4:25AM and everyone else in Korea is asleep, I’ll take this opportunity to express my pessimism that the Norks will EVER allow thorough verification of the dismantling of their nuclear projects, innocent or otherwise.
So, yeah, nukes should come first on the agenda, but…
Mu-seun so-yong isseoyo?
Kevin
There’s only one thing that might get the North to give up its nukes and submit to inspections for verification. And that is an announcement by the ROK and Japan of their decison to withdraw from the NPT by a certain date.
The US could reinforce such a declaration by declaring a limited exception to its own participation in the NPT. In that it would provide a limited number of its own acft-deliverable nukes to both the ROK and Japan.
Such nukes to remain under US control, but deployed in such a manner that the national command authorities of the ROK and Japan could have them readily released by the US President. For arming and then possible delivery, on order of the NCA’s of Japan or Korea (using their own national air forces).
In response to an actual attack, or the threat of an impending attack.
If all three countries (US, ROK, and Japan) could coordinate such a strategy (in conjunction with privately providing the assurances that North Korea seeks), then this might work. (I admit agreement on such a strategy is unlikely; politicians of democracies are much too risk-adverse to normally play this kind of high-stakes poker).
Such an announcement would throw the world into an uproar, but this would not be nearly as bad as the uproar that would result if a North Korean nuke ever “gets loose” (in whatever manner one might care to stipulate).
A first-strike by the current regime in NorK, or their deliberate sale of a device to terrorists, is IMO very unlikely. But an accidental explosion, launch, or loss of control of a device to rogue elements becomes more possible in the event of future political instability in North Korea. And such instability is something that is highly likely, as time marches on.
We talk about nuclear “gamesmanship” in formats such as these, but deep down inside I think most people don’t really believe that a nuke will ever actually be used. But once-in-a-lifetime type events keep happening to prove old assumptions wrong, don’t they?
Current example: for years there has been sbstract discussion of what would happen to below-sea-level New Orleans if a really big Category V hurricane ever hits the Louisiana coast at just the right angle. Well, now it appears (as of Sun night 28 Aug US PDT) that we’re actually going to find out.
Maybe the hooker wants a sugar daddy in order to stop hooking.
You make a good case, James, for why not to mix the human rights issue with the nuclear issue. If bringing up the human rights issue is guaranteed to make the nuclear talks fail and we don’t want the nuclear talks to fail, then logically the human rights issue shouldn’t be brought up.
Human rights is an important issue, but mixing the two together will at worst lead to no resolution on either, and at best a seriously flawed compromise position on human rights.
Do one, and then do the other. Just make sure you don’t forget the second one when the first is finished.
monday links
Red Herring reports that the crackdown o
Some recent news:
North Korea has agreed, it seems, to come back on September 12. They cited the war games held by South Korea and the United States (What?! War games?! But South Korea is in China’s camp!) and the appointment of the U.S. envoy on North Korean human rights.
Shameless plugs brought to you in the spirit of OOB.