Not A Shortcut, But An Ambush

Yes, Bush Has A North Korea Policy. It Might Even Work

Jonathan Rauch | March 17, 2003

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No, it hasn't, replies the official. "China, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and the E.U. have all told North Korea that reprocessing is a red line," the official said. "I think that has caused the North Koreans some pause, because the Chinese never went in this hard before, and neither have the Japanese." The prospect of diplomatic isolation may be part of the reason the North Koreans have not taken the fateful step of firing up their reprocessing facility. "They're flailing in all directions. The important thing is that, as far as we know at this point, they have not crossed the Rubicon of reprocessing."

Publicly, China has said it prefers bilateral, U.S.-North Korea negotiations. "For China domestically," says the official, "this is incredibly tough. However, we're getting lots of movement from China. We're talking to the Chinese now not about bilateral versus multilateral but about the modalities of making a multilateral approach work."

Meanwhile, on March 7, the South Korean foreign ministry told reporters that North Korea should "accept the idea [of] multilateral dialogue and seek dialogue with the U.S. within such a multilateral framework." So the region is moving, however grudgingly, toward collective engagement. If the U.S. were to offer bilateral talks now, all of that progress could evaporate.

Regional talks, the official said, could be modeled on the so-called Contact Group, a multinational council that confronted Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia in the 1990s. Serbia began by snubbing the group but then, seeing no alternative, came to the table. A similar multilateral council could offer North Korea generous inducements to give up its nukes once and for all, while also credibly threatening North Korea with economic strangulation and diplomatic isolation should it refuse. Pyongyang, rather than Washington, would then be boxed in.

Neither America nor Japan can credibly convene a multilateral council, because U.S.-led talks would seem bilateral and because both Koreas mistrust Japan. That leaves China and South Korea -- preferably China. I did not succeed in pinning down the official as to when and how either country could be induced to stick its neck out. He preferred to emphasize gradual movement in the right direction.

Well, it might work. It might not. The official succeeded in convincing me that bilateral U.S.-North Korean talks are not a shortcut but an ambush. What is not so clear is whether the ambush can ultimately be avoided.