By Anthony DiFilippo
The North Korean nuclear issue is currently in retrogression. Setbacks are obvious: The dismantlement of the North's Yongbyon nuclear facilities, recently mostly complete, has been reversed.
U.S. monitors and inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were forced to leave the country, and Pyongyang has declared that it will no longer participate in the six-party talks involving the United States, North and South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.
When Hillary Clinton was campaigning to win the Democratic Party's nomination for president last year, she pointed out that the Bush administration's North Korean policy was responsible for the creation of serious problems with Pyongyang, thus implying that its failed policy contributed, if not caused, the nuclear arming of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
Ironically, within 100 days in office the Obama administration has managed to reverse the important gains made since early 2007 by its predecessor. His government managed this, quite simply, by getting a little help from its friends ― Tokyo and Seoul.
Indeed, Pyongyang could have waited until its relations with the United States had improved enough before it decided to launch what it has called a communications satellite in early April.
But this does not mean that Pyongyang's decision to go ahead with the launch makes it completely responsible for the recent retrogression in efforts to resolve the DPRK nuclear issue.
In early January when I visited Pyongyang for several days, prominent North Koreans were cautiously optimistic that the verification impasse that the Bush administration would leave the incoming Obama administration could be resolved, assuming most importantly that Washington respected the sovereignty of the DPRK.
Pyongyang wanted Washington to understand that its reluctance to accede to American verification demands was directly related to the fact that, since the DPRK and the United States are still technically at war, visits to military sites are unacceptable.
More than once I heard or was told that if the United States abandons its hostile policy and establishes a normal and trustful relationship with the DPRK then it would have no reason to possess nuclear weapons.
Fundamentally, Pyongyang wants, as it has for some time, a permanent peace treaty to supplant the Cold War armistice agreement. This, combined with normal bilateral relations with the United States, is what Pyongyang maintained it would take to get the DPRK to eliminate its nuclear weapons and the facilities to produce them.
But the Obama administration did not pursue this course of action, which would have compelled Pyongyang to make good on its promise. As a result, the cautious optimism quickly soured and equally rapidly morphed into skepticism.
Everyone, including the North Koreans, heard Obama's campaign pledge that he would meet with any world leader without preconditions.
Pyongyang did not like being ignored by the new Obama administration, something exacerbated by the North's hyper-anxiousness that relations with the United States would improve through high-level dialogue.
But neither Washington nor Pyongyang budged, both perhaps waiting for the other to make the first diplomatic move.
By mid-February, suspicions that the DPRK was preparing to launch a missile were met not by an offer to dialogue but by warnings to Pyongyang not to take any provocative action.
Conservative critics have been relentlessly pounding the Obama administration for its very liberal ― often characterized as socialist ― policies.
But while the Obama administration has reached out to Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and even Nicaragua, its DPRK policy has been tainted by Cold War-type animosities that continue to pervade Northeast Asia.
In her speech given in mid February at the Asia Society in New York, Secretary of State Clinton made clear that the Obama administration would deal with the North Korean nuclear issue through the six-party talks and urged Pyongyang ``to avoid any provocative action and unhelpful rhetoric toward South Korea."
While her speech did indicate that the United States was prepared to normalize relations and sign a permanent peace treaty with the DPRK, her comments appeared to establish the precondition that Pyongyang must first verifiability and fully account for its nuclear weapons program, something that the North sees as violating its sovereignty and runs counter to its ``military first" policy based on the juche (self-reliance) ideal.
Secretary Clinton ended her comments on North Korea by stressing that the Obama administration still remembers the abduction issue, words very similar to those often used by former President Bush and his top officials even after, to Tokyo's chagrin, the DPRK was removed from the U.S. State Department's list of countries sponsoring terrorism.
Clinton's first stop on her maiden trip abroad in February as secretary of state was Japan, where she met with members of the abductees' families.
The chairman of one of the abductee associations and a relative of a kidnapping victim stated that Clinton commented ``that isolated talks, just between Japan and North Korea would not work, because North Korea is a cruel country whose methods she cannot comprehend."
In an interview with Japanese broadcaster NHK, Clinton stated that she made clear to the abductees' families that ``the abduction issue is part of the six-party talks."
What was bad news for Pyongyang was great news for Tokyo, which does not want the Untied States to meet bilaterally with North Korea.
Such a meeting would marginalize Japan's nationalist-driven abduction issue. Moreover, Tokyo knows that Pyongyang is very unlikely to agree to meaningful bilateral talks with Japan, especially as long as the nationalist Taro Aso is prime minister.
This makes the six-party talks the only major channel that Tokyo currently can use to bring attention to the abduction issue. Thus, the Obama administration gave Tokyo exactly what it wanted: avoiding bilateral dialogue and expressing its commitment both to the six-party talks and to resolving the abduction issue.
Again warning Pyongyang not to rely on any kind of provocation, Secretary Clinton continued to talk tough with respect to the North during her visit to Seoul.
This was not especially perspicacious, since Pyongyang has been incensed with Lee Myung-bak's conservative government for several reasons, not the least of which is its insistence that Seoul has abandoned both the June 2000 and October 2007 declarations that had created a foundation for improved relations between South and North Korea.
Proclaiming, ``there is no issue on which we are more united than North Korea," Clinton again indicated that Washington and Seoul are committed to the six-party framework, which has the objective of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula in a thorough and verifiable manner.
In all likelihood, had there been a high-level meeting between Washington and Pyongyang before the end of March, the DPRK would not have gone ahead with the launch in early April.
With warnings from Washington, Pyongyang, Tokyo and Seoul going back and forth, and after Obama extended a conciliatory hand to Iran in March but continued to ignore the DPRK, the North Korean launch became a fait accompli.
The Obama administration must learn, just like the Bush administration did before it, although after too much wasted time, that the Japanese abduction issue is not tantamount to the North Korean nuclear issue.
These are quite separate issues. Ultimately, the abduction issue must be settled between Tokyo and Pyongyang. While the six-party talks have made important contributions in trying to resolve the DPRK nuclear issue, currently Washington and Pyongyang must recognize the necessity of having a high-level bilateral meeting, perhaps, for example, in the form of Secretary Clinton visiting North Korea.
Anthony DiFilippo is professor of sociology at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. His most recent book is ``Japan's Nuclear Disarmament Policy and the U.S. Security Umbrella" (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). He can be reached at difilippo@lincoln.edu. The views expressed in the above article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of The Korea Times.