Cutting the North Korean Gordian Knot, Or Not

US Special Envoy to North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, is making the rounds in Beijing this week to drum up support for the stalled six-party talks – the diplomatic framework first implemented in 2003 that seeks to peacefully resolve the security concerns springing from North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Although Ambassador Bosworth has still not indicated a definite resumption of the six-party framework, recent diplomatic activity in the region suggests that Washington is pushing hard to jump-start the abandoned framework. As Bosworth explained to press in Beijing,

“This is the first stop of the visit to three countries in the region, all members of the Six-Party process. We’re going to Seoul tomorrow and then to Tokyo the next day. We just completed a very useful exchange of views with Ambassador Wu on the status of the efforts to resume the Six-Party process, on views for the future, exchanging some ideas about how to best move forward. The Chinese have had recently several contacts with the DPRK, and it was a very timely opportunity to exchange views and observations.”

It seems that the State Department is eager to capitalize on N. Korea’s newfound interest in the framework. Importantly, after a recent bilateral meeting, the first in many months, both the U.S. and North Korea announced that they had reached a “shared understanding” on the need to carry out the terms of the September 19 Joint Statement and to resume the six-party talks.

This came on the heels of a surprising announcement by N. Korean negotiators that they were open to the idea of resumption – a complete reversal of their position just weeks before.

While the time-line and a potential start date remain elusive, some analysts have predicted that it will take place “before April’s Nuclear Security Summit and May‘s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference,” which deal address issues of nuclear terrorism and non-proliferation. This progress would nicely round out President Obama’s increasingly ambitious nuclear non-proliferation agenda – a growing priority for the administration.

The lack of dialogue in 2009, and indeed the brewing perception in Washington’s Asia Pacific circles that Mr. Obama is myopically focused on Iran’s program, has likely swayed the State Department to seize this opportunity to re-start the talks. In the intervening months, N. Korea’s actions have underscored the necessity for doubling down on the regime: it was a N. Korean plane, after all, that was intercepted in Thailand allegedly enroute to Iran with a cargo load of weapons, and N. Korea has not stopped test launching missiles in the face of sanctions. And yet, despite this, public discussions of proper strategic engagement with North Korea have been quiet, if not muted entirely.

To be sure, Iran’s nuclear program has bore the brunt of censure during Mr. Obama’s tenure, as Iran and its dictator, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been escalated to the international pariah status once reserved for North Korea and Kim Jung-il. As an unsurprising result, discussions of North Korea’s program – in both the media and policy circles – have been put on the backburner. This is not to say that Mr. Obama’s engagement with Iran is misguided or that attention should be diverted to Northeast Asia. However, Mr. Obama has made little effort to engage N. Korea – an ostensible priority he mentioned in the decidedly slim foreign policy section of his recent State of the Union address – since taking office, and it is about time that we read of a new diplomatic effort in the region.

Ambassador Bosworth’s trips this weekend to Seoul and then Tokyo will likely meet little resistance in reinvigorating the talks. But they should raise important questions about what lessons can we learned from past experiences with the six party framework.

In that spirit, here is a brief (and regrettably inadequate) list of lessons.

1) Put South Korea in the driver’s seat. If any participant in the framework has the right to determine the course of security policy on the peninsula it is its inhabitants to the South. It is no small matter that Lee Myung-bak, South Korea’s president, surprised his countrymen by saying that he hoped to meet Mr. Kim “within this year.” Indeed, according to the Economist, there is evidence of a burgeoning twin-track process: to engage North Korea bilaterally and via the six-party framework. This tack should be embraced, and S. Korea should be given the opportunity to steer negotiations in the context of this twin-track framework. There is even talk of an imminent Inter-Korean Summit, which would mark a golden opportunity to kick-start this process.

2) Don’t write China off. The importance of China in these negotiations cannot be overstated, if not only because Chinese negotiators have access to the N. Korean regime’s ear in a way that no other country could imagine. It is indeed a positive indicator that China is willing to sit down at the table, as Ambassador Bosworth’s comments in Beijing suggest. But it is an entirely different thing altogether for China to actually press North Korea on its recalcitrant nuclear stance. However, past experience shows that China has little opposition to N. Korea’s cat-and-mouse diplomacy (wherein it uses highly refined diplo-double-speak to extract aid). Belligerency, on the other hand, has some nerves frazzled, as it did in 2008 when China joined the chorus of condemnation after the DPRK’s unexpected nuclear test.

3) Japan is a tough nut to crack. For many Japanese – policymakers, politicians, and others – engagement with North Korea hinges on a multitude of priorities. The abductee issue, for one, has long beset Japan’s commitment to the sic-party process – much to the chagrin of the other stakeholders. That N. Korea, situated well within striking range, regularly delivers ICBM’s over Japanese soil is not enough to trump the staunch and strident calls to redress the North for its abduction of Japanese citizens in past decades. For other participants it is thus essential to take the temperature of Japanese negotiators before making any deals. The Hatoyama administration has already made important breaks with past foreign policy precedents, which is encouraging. But before moving forward with talks it is worth thinking about the role of Japan and its willingness to move in lock-step with the six-party’s prerogatives.

4) Russia matters. Although sometimes forgotten as the sixth piece of the puzzle, Russia’s involvement in these talks is critical. The case of Iran’s nuclear program offers compelling evidence of this: it was not until Russia threw its weight behind the US call for strict sanctions that momentum began to build behind the US effort. Russia, in many ways, holds the key to unlocking China’s participation: it is only by isolating China’s allergy to participation that we can diagnose it and, hopefully, convince them that unified engagement is the best way to move forward.

This, of course, is not even close to an exhaustive analysis of the lessons that could be distilled. But as we move forward – likely at the diplomat’s preferred snail’s pace – and talk of six-party framework gains currency in the news and blogosphere, it is important to look back at how we failed (or got duped?) in order to make more judicious steps moving forward.

Bear in mind that we are right back where we started with the Six-Party process: N. Korea has been taken off the list of rogue states (the so-called axis of evil) and their nuclear program remains as robust and surreptitious as ever. They are masters at changing the goal posts, and have long duped foreign investment and aid for empty promises.

Indeed, as the Economist cautions:

“Both North Korea and its six-party counterparts have set such tough conditions on coming together that it would be foolhardy to be optimistic. North Korea wants a lifting of the UN sanctions and a peace treaty with America to out a formal end to the 1950-53 Korean War before restarting talks. Washington has resisted both. An East Asian diplomat said the other five countries are demanding that North Korea take “concrete measures” towards denuclearisation as a pre-condition for talks and the lifting of sanctions.”

Cutting the Gordian Knot of N. Korea’s nuclear ambitions is no easy task, and bringing the region’s many stakeholders together to discuss the future course of policy is a critical step to making that happen. But the real task at hand is not to feign progress by going through the motions of years past. It’s time to fundamentally rethink the six-party framework and how it can be implemented effectively. And to do so one must account for tectonic shifts in the East Asian geopolitical landscape: China’s growing assertiveness, Japan’s New Asianism, and many others.

Enough has changed in Asia to inspire hope in a patently different six-party framework. But I remain a skeptic through and through.