By Jason Lim
Although North Korea is often portrayed as inscrutable and untrustworthy, it can also represent the lowest hanging fruit in Obama's foreign policy tree because North Korea's wants and needs are fairly transparent. In short, we know where they are coming from.
Let's examine the problem from the North Korean point of view.
First, there is only one overriding want for North Korea: keep the current regime intact for the foreseeable future. Therefore, unless we are willing to risk the destruction and unpredictability of a forced regime change in North Korea, we must recognize and deal with this immovable condition as pragmatically as possible.
Two, if regime maintenance is the overriding want, what are the threats to this want? The answer to this question is important because it will tell us what North Korea needs to fulfill its primary want.
The answer is not that difficult to find. It has been well documented.
North Korea is facing economic failure, international isolation, a food shortage crisis, an outdated conventional weapons stockpile and loss of people's trust, leading to the erosion of the mandate to govern. All these directly threaten the survival of the current regime. Then how is Kim Jong-il trying to solve this multitude of problems?
He is trying to deal with this threat on several dimensions. To shore up its defense, North Korea has developed nuclear weapons. The successful development of nuclear weapons ― and the grandiose pronouncement of such ― is also crucial in propping up the political mandate of Kim Jong-il's leadership to key stakeholder groups such as the military and party. To end its international isolation, it's seeking normalization with the U.S. To stave off total economic failure, it's looking for international aid, especially developmental aid. To hold on to its people's loyalty, it's tightening control of them through increased inspections, security crackdowns and the spiritual and educational propagation of its Juche ideology.
Unfortunately for North Korea, it faces two difficult paradoxes. First, normalization with the U.S. cannot happen unless it gives up its nuclear weapons; but it cannot give up its nuclear weapons without losing the crowning achievement that props up its political legitimacy with key groups. Second, the current governance system, based on a cult of personality, cannot survive any Perestroika-type reform that would expose North Korean society to the outside world.
To satisfy its wants within these constraints, North Korea needs security guarantees and economic aid. Only then can it give up its only leverage: nuclear weapons. More specifically, it needs normalization with the U.S., the official end of the Korean War, and massive economic developmental aid. In return, it will go along with CVID, the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of its nuclear weapons program, as long as the U.S. is always one half-of-a-step ahead of the ``action for action" sequencing formula. North Korea is too weak to risk being a half step behind in the sequencing. Remember, North Korea has only one hand that to milk for all it's worth; as such, it can't show its hand, not even one second early.
We also have to keep in mind the irrefutable fact that North Korea is an absolute monarchy in which the state is synonymous with Kim Jong-il. Dealing with North Korea is dealing with the personal pride and fears of an isolated but all-controlling king.
Therefore, no one besides Kim can make any decision of national importance. If they did, it would be tantamount to treason. In short, any agreement without Kim's explicit and prior approval is always subject to a reversal or non-implementation, regardless of the merit of the agreement. Such political discipline is a matter of survival for Kim.
Conversely, this peculiarity can make negotiations easier because North Korea has no opposition, national assembly, press, or civil society. All North Korea needs to act is the decision by Dear Leader. This is why it's crucial for Obama to have a summit with Kim to have the latter directly and publicly express his commitment to give up nuclear weapons, in return for the concessions described above. Only when there is such a documented, personal seal of approval by the Dear Leader defining the framework of the grand bargain can his underlings work out any details to make it happen on the ground level.
The six-party talks are stuck precisely because their approach is the reverse to what can work with North Korea: it seeks to hammer out the details and then work its way up to a summit where the grand bargain will be finalized. The right order should be to finalize the grand bargain with Dear Leader himself on general terms and then work out the details.
Kim Jong-il must be present in the beginning of the process to make any bargain stick with North Korea. And the only bait that speaks to Kim's political needs and sense of personal grandeur is a summit with President Obama.
In fact, reinforcing Kim Jong-il's ``face'' through a summit could induce him to strike an easier bargain because the symbolism of the summit props up the credibility of Kim Jong-il as the supreme leader to his domestic audience. He would have brought home much more political bacon than they had before: security and prosperity at the same time, guaranteed by the only superpower in the world. This is how Kim would sell this to his people: the Dear Leader looked America straight in the eye with great courage and undeniable righteousness, and America blinked first.
Whatever. Let Kim have his small victory if it means a nuclear-free Korea and no more North Korean people dying from hunger or torture. The sooner the better. That would be a true foreign policy and moral victory for America.
Jason Lim is a 2007-2008 fellow at Harvard Korea Institute. He can be reached at jasonlim@post.harvard.edu