Who Should Concede First in Nuke Talks?
By Sunny Lee
Korea Times Correspondent
BEIJING ― Pessimism prevails over the prospect of a much anticipated visit by Obama's top nuclear diplomat, Stephen Bosworth, to Pyongyang for rare bilateral talks.
Essentially, the multi-year protracted nuclear face-off between North Korea and the U.S. boils down to this: Who should compromise first? The prevailing logic in Seoul and Washington is that North Korea should concede, by first committing to denuclearization. But the view from China is starkly different - the U.S. should make the first move.
"On North Korea's nuclear issue, a big country, especially one such as the U.S., should make an adjustment first. Only then, will there be a turning point," Wang Fan, a security analyst at the Foreign Affairs University in Beijing, said in a signed opinion piece, published in the influential Chinese newspaper, the Global Times.
"At present, the crux of the North Korean issue lies not in whether there should be a compromise, but who should make the compromise first. Since the North Korean nuclear issue erupted, it has always become tangled up on this very issue."
The two sides, in the past, clashed over whether the North should give up its nuclear programs first or the U.S. should provide economic rewards first. At present, the U.S. insists that North Korea first fully commit to denuclearization, while Pyongyang demands the U.S. first drop its hostile policy and prove it by signing a peace treaty to officially end the 1950 to 1953 Korean War. Neither Side Has Budged.
Currently, a team of U.S. negotiators, headed by Bosworth is staying in North Korea. Amid lukewarm expectation of the talks' outcome, it is not even clear who will be Bosworth's main counterpart there.
Neither Washington nor Pyongyang have made any announcement, although some media outlets speculate it will be Kang Suk-ju, a confidant of North Korea's paramount leader, Kim Jong-il. It is also not clear how many times the two will hold bilateral talks. The talks haven't come easy. In October, the U.S. shifted its policy on North Korea, by announcing it would be willing to sit down one-on-one to resolve the nuclear impasse.
However, the U.S. has delayed it until now. Wang said the U.S. hesitance has been for various reasons. "The U.S. doesn't want to give the international community the impression that it is entering into negotiations under North Korean pressure. It doesn't want to enter into a dialogue where it might end up recognizing North Korea as a nuclear country. It doesn't want to be seen compromising toward North Korea," he said.
America's prudence, Wang said, is also understandable because it believes that it was cheated in the 1994 negotiation, called the Agreed Framework, where it made concessions first. "Since then, it is in the Americans' blood to believe that North Koreans are untrustworthy." Wang said the key question now was how the two sides could change "the vicious cycle" and build mutual trust.
"Both sides fear that a concession from their side may not be reciprocated by the other. Worse, they believe that once you make the first compromise, then you're likely to be on the path to make further compromises down the road. That has shaped the current mentality in which neither side wants to compromise first," he said.
Wang also said it would be helpful for the U.S. to climb down from the moral high grounds and meet North Korea on a more egalitarian footing. "Americans view their relationship with North Koreans like 'a farmer and a snake.' They believe North Korea is the snake. But from North Koreans' perspective, the snake may be the U.S."
To build mutual trust, Wang said, "America should first make the concession and make a big one.
"The big and powerful country should make the first move. That should be the case because the concessions the U.S. makes can be reversible. If it sees that the weak party doesn't make corresponding moves, the big country can impose severe punishment." In a similar vein, Wang also said asking North Korea first to irreversibly commit to denuclearization was unrealistic; firstly because North depends on nuclear weapons for its survival and it doesn't have an alternative, and secondly, even if the nuclear facilities were destroyed, the nuclear knowledge is still preserved by North Korean engineers and the country could reestablish itself as a nuclear state if it wants.
"From this perspective, the U.S. demand for the North to irreversibly denuclearize is like an ostrich burying one's head in the sand," he said.
Wang said whether North Korea keeps nuclear weapons or not depends on its assessment of internal and external considerations, and the U.S. should help create an environment where the North feels that its possession of nuclear weapons is unwarranted. He said America could do so by establishing normalized diplomatic relations and signing a peace treaty.
"I don't think it's too much for North Korea to hope to develop a normal country-to-country relationship with America. If America doesn't recognize North Korea as a country, how can it then discuss such an important issue as nuclear weapons that touch on North Korea's core security?" he said.
"For a country like North Korea, which is economically underdeveloped, geographically isolated and emotionally hypersensitive, an approach that assures its security and prods with encouragement is more effective than sanctions."