No dialogue!
By Oh Young-jin
Assistant managing editor
There appears to be few new tricks left unused by South Korea and the United States in their joint effort to dissuade North Korea from pursuing nuclear weapons.
The two allies have tried the carrot without success and the two have used the stick but still to no avail.
They employed a good-cop-bad-cop tactic but it also produced few results.
However, there is one trick that they have not given a go to and, if they use it this time, it may just work.
That trick has been in plain sight but passed up for a reason: it is not an exciting proposition for politicians of either of the two countries.
That unused trick is none other than policy consistency. We know of the moral of an Aesop fable pitting the hare against the tortoise in a race, a case that shows consistency trumps capacity.
If this policy is earnestly adopted, it would mean that U.S. President Obama rejects a request by Chinese President Hu Jintao to engage the North during their summit in Washington.
It would help Obama avoid following the failed path of his Republican predecessor George W. Bush in handling the North.
It would only work if Washington fully backs President Lee Myung-bak in his attempt to get tough with the Kim Jong-il regime now in its father-to-son transition to his chubby third son Jong-un. It is the second such hereditary succession in the North. Kim Jong-il was the beneficiary of the first such power handover, when he took power after the death of his father and the North’s founder Kim Il-sung. .
Of course, bringing consistency in taming the North is easier said than done.
In his summit with Hu, Obama will feel under pressure to show results. Beijing has already repeatedly expressed its wish to have the U.S. come back to the six-party talks. We know that the multilateral forum involving North and South Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan has made no breakthrough on its goal of disarming the North.
Rubbing Beijing the wrong way and humiliating its leader is something the U.S. President can’t afford.
Plus, rejecting Hu’s suggestion on the resumption of the North Korea talks would force Obama to yield to Hu in some other areas.
Can Washington barter China’s economic concessions for progress on the North Korean dilemma? Not likely. Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Defense Gates have already dropped unmistakable hints that the Obama administration wants to talk to the North.
But you don’t have to be a neocon hawk like John Bolton, Bush’s controversial U.N. ambassador, or a post-Cold War unilateralist Victor Cha, to point out that Bush may have blown his chance to resolve the North Korean conundrum by zigzagging from a hard-line to soft-line approach toward Pyongyang.
It is worth remembering that Bush designated North Korea as a member of an axis of evil together with Iran and Iraq but reneged on it during his second term.
I find fault not with Bush’s change of tactics but with the lack of principle that accompanied it. In other words, Bush took a conciliatory approach because his strong-arm tactic failed without providing any grounds for his change. This unprincipled change put the North in a position of strength and the North proved adept in using this to its advantage.
Seeing Obama trying to backpedal from its original policy on the North reminds me of the repetition of the same day in the movie “Groundhog Day.” Bush played this out the first day.
You may argue that consistency doesn’t work by pointing out a 10-year liberal rule by late former Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun who sought to cajole the North into giving up its weapons of destruction.
As a matter of fact their Sunshine Policy of engaging Pyongyang failed also for a lack of consistency, although not by their choice.
During the better part of the two Presidents’ combined 10 years in office, Bush didn’t consider Pyongyang as a partner for dialogue, hobbling Seoul’s peace effort.
Given another five years of conciliatory efforts, I would say that we could have found ourselves in a better situation, although, admittedly, better is a word hard to define in describing relations with Pyongyang.
From Seoul’s point of view, it is not certain that President Lee is determined enough to stick to his stated policy of applying the rule of stricter reciprocity with the North, considering, on more than one recent occasion, he talked about the possibility of reopening talks with the North.
It would be a mistake for him to talk to the North without clearing the public animosity toward it for two fatal attacks on the South. Any unconditional talks would deepen our sense of defenselessness, thereby weakening voter support for Lee.
I don’t agree on Lee’s North Korea policy that derailed Seoul’s Pyongyang policy from the soft approach of his two predecessors. What I believe is that, since the direction has changed, we would better off seeing it through. That is why I support Lee’s national security advisor Chun Young-woo when he recently talked to U.S. Public Broadcasting System’s Margaret Warner about “critical mass” that is being achieved for North Korea’s “demise.” So let’s tough it out and stick to what we are doing for a couple of years to come. We may see the North crumble.
By now, some may wonder whether the current policy will invite the North to attack again or trigger its implosion. My answer will be the subject of another column.