By Andy Jackson
As has happened so many times over the past fifteen years, negotiations with North Korean officials on its nuclear programs have degenerated into a Monty Pythonesque argument of ``Yes you did! No, I didn't!"
On March 13 in Geneva, for the umpteenth time, U.S. negotiators asked the North Koreans to make a complete and correct declaration of their nuclear programs and activities. The North Koreans replied that they have already declared everything, despite information to the contrary.
It was enough to make the normally unflappable U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Christopher Hill complain that the North Koreans ``seem to think I have nothing better to do in my time or in my life than to keep asking them questions."
With less than a year to go in office, the Bush administration is giving one last push for a settlement of the North Korean nuclear issue, but it appears that the clock will stop with Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs intact.
So where do we go from here?
A good first step would be to resurrect the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG). TCOG was the vehicle by which the United States, Korea and Japan coordinated their respective policies towards North Korea between 1998 and 2004. TCOG was suspended as its activities became incorporated into side meetings in the six-party talks.
Even if TCOG had been active since then, tensions between Roh Moo-hyun and Japanese prime ministers Junichero Koizumi and Shinzo Abe, along with significant differences between the Roh and Bush administrations on North Korea, would have made effective cooperation between the three difficult.
Changes in both the Korean and Japanese governments over the last six months have helped bring them closer together. President Lee Myung-bak and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda have pledged to revitalize relations that were strained over Dokdo and other controversies.
Fukuda was the first world leader to meet with Lee following his inauguration on February 25. Before that meeting, he announced that he would seek Lee's cooperation to ``establish mature bilateral relations'' and pledged to work towards greater cooperation with Korea in the region. For his part, Lee has said he seeks a ``future oriented" relationship with Japan and will likely place less emphasis on historical grievances.
Lee's proposal to more strongly tie economic (but not humanitarian) aid to Pyongyang to progress on denuclearization is also music to the ears of U.S. State Department officials who have long sought a less conciliatory North Korea policy from Seoul.
So, Seoul, Tokyo and Washington find themselves in broad agreement on a range of issues for the first time in nearly a decade. That kind of unity could have gone a long way in making the six-party talks more successful had it been achieved several years earlier.
Michael Auslin and Christopher Griffin, with the American Enterprise Institute, would like to see relations between the three grow even closer. In a paper published earlier this month, they called for the creation of a ``trilateral security committee'' between the United States, Korea and Japan.
There are ongoing reductions and redeployments of U.S. forces in both Korea and Japan. Seoul and Tokyo have also been modernizing their forces to increase their defense capabilities. While these measures are being taken simultaneously, they are uncoordinated. In fact, the two American allies have viewed each other's military modernization somewhat wearily.
Auslin and Griffin see their proposed trilateral security committee as means to effectively cooperate on regional crises, humanitarian disasters, maritime security and missile defense. They believe that a committee could be the first step in replacing America's current hub-and-spoke system of alliances, which was designed to contain communism, with a ``nascent multilateral system in which our security relationships are more closely entwined."
Such a trilateral security system could have significant benefits for Korea even if it never reached the point of a being a formal alliance. Developing a common strategic vision in concert with both Tokyo and Washington would build confidence between Korea and Japan and allow for a faster and more effective response to any provocation from Pyongyang.
Just as important, it would allow for a more effective response to any breakthroughs in the negotiations on North Korean denuclearization (Japan is currently refusing to actively participate in providing aid to Pyongyang) or in the event of regime collapse in North Korea.
The proposal for a three-way security arrangement will have to overcome doubts in both sides of the Korea Strait. Disagreements over historical grievances and the ongoing dispute over Dokdo will not be overcome easily. However, a trilateral security committee could be a vehicle for more effectively addressing those disputes.
While a formal three-party alliance may not be in the cards, closer cooperation between Seoul, Tokyo and Washington can only help.
Andy Jackson teaches American government in the Lakeland College bridge program at Ansan College, Gyeonggi Province. He can be reached at andyinrok@lycos.com