Nuclear Faceoff: US vs. NK (1)

By Anthony DiFilippo

Washington and Pyongyang are now involved in a nuclear faceoff. For months, the Obama administration had stuck to its guns, insisting that it would not meet bilaterally with Pyongyang outside of the context of the six-party talks ― the multilateral discussions between the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia that were begun in August 2003 to settle the North Korean nuclear issue.

Incensed by a U.N. Security Council presidential statement condemning the launch of its Kwangmyongsong-2, what Pyongyang called a scientific satellite, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has maintained since April that it will no longer participate in the six-party talks.

Pyongyang reasoned for months that if the U.N. Security Council could not accept its legitimate right afforded by international law to launch an artificial satellite, then the only alternative it had to protect the DPRK's sovereignty was to further demonstrate its commitment to songun, its military-first policy.

Thus, as Pyongyang said it would do in the wake of the international ruckus caused by its hasty decision to launch a satellite only 75 days after the Obama administration took over the reins of government in Washington, the DPRK detonated its second plutonium-charged nuclear bomb and, subsequently, performed more missile testing.

However, recently things have changed. During the summer, Pyongyang suddenly started making conciliatory gestures to Washington and Seoul and of late has even publicly considered improving its relations with the new Japanese government.

Some observers have speculated that Pyongyang's conciliatory gestures stem from the strengthened sanctions regime it must contend with. In early September, Pyongyang decided that while showing goodwill is important, it is necessary to pair conciliation with its military-first policy, a move that reduces the plausibility that tough sanctions led to the DPRK's irenic behavior.

The Obama administration also changed its game plan. After Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, returned from his trip to China, South Korea and Japan in early September, the Obama administration announced it would be willing to hold a bilateral discussion with Pyongyang.

Hedging as best as it could, the U.S. State Department indicated that a bilateral discussion with Pyongyang would occur, ``hopefully within the six-party context,'' and that this dialogue is ``designed to convince North Korea to come back to the six-party process and to take affirmative steps toward denuclearization.''

This is not all that different from what took place during the Bush administration, whose failed policies, including its refusal to meet bilaterally with Pyongyang led to the DPRK's first nuclear test in October 2006 and perhaps even caused it to develop plutonium-charged nuclear weapons.

After the DPRK detonated its first nuclear device, the Bush administration, suddenly recognizing that hegemonic policies can engender unanticipated consequences, decided to have bilateral discussions with the North.

Separate from, but in conjunction with the six-party talks, bilateral discussions between Washington and Pyongyang beginning in late 2006 contributed to the DPRK destroying its cooling tower at Yongbyon and to its disabling about 80 percent of its nuclear facilities by early July 2008.

At least part of the Obama administration's months-long refusal to meet bilaterally with North Korea outside of the six-party framework was because of Japan's nationalist-driven abduction issue.

Fearing that the still-unresolved abduction issue (the kidnapping by North Korean agents of Japanese citizens during the 1970s and 1980s) would be ignored in U.S.-DPRK discussions, Tokyo preferred that Washington not meet bilaterally with Pyongyang.

By mid-summer, Tokyo recognized that, despite continuing statements by the Obama administration maintaining that there would be no bilateral discussion outside of the six-party framework, such a meeting was becoming more likely; short of war, Washington had no other option.

Tokyo wanted Washington to consult with Japan both before ― which it apparently got during Bosworth's recent trip to Japan ― and after a U.S.-North Korean meeting.

Apart from Tokyo's influence on the Obama administration, Seoul insisted, like Washington, that concessions to Pyongyang must remain conditional, that the integrity of the six-party talks must be maintained and that assistance to the North will come after its denuclearization. But Pyongyang has long rejected this kind of conditional model, seeing it as a direct threat to the DPRK's sovereignty.

Anthony DiFilippo is professor of sociology at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the U.S. The author of several books dealing with security issues in Northeast Asia, he is currently completing the book ``Irrepressible Interests: Japan-North Korean Security Concerns and U.S. Objectives." He can be reached at difilippo@lincoln.edu.