Rethinking the U.S. Approach to North Korea

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today: Wednesday January 5, 2011.

Momentum Builds for North Korea Nuclear Talks - Global Security Newswire [link]

• Recent diplomatic exchanges between South Korea, Japan and the United States appeared to signal increased willingness among the powers to resume long-stalled multilateral negotiations aimed at North Korea's denuclearization.
• Negotiations, last held in December 2008, sought to establish terms for the North's permanent nuclear disarmament in exchange for international security pledges and massive infusions of foreign aid."Once the terms are finalized, we are going to try delivering them to North Korea via an inter-Korea dialogue channel," a South Korean official said. "All five partners agree that talks between the two Koreas should start off discussions regarding the six-party talks."
• "Partners also persist that the denuclearization talks can only resume after North Korea puts into action its commitment to disarm," the official said.
• "To some extent, what we're hearing publicly is promising. However, words have to be followed by actions," U.S. State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley said.
• "We believe that serious negotiations must be at the heart of of any strategy for dealing with North Korea and we look forward to being able to launch those at a reasonably early time," said U.S. special envoy for North Korea Stephen Bosworth.

Strategic Patience Has Become Strategic Passivity - James Goodby and Donald Gross for The Brookings Institution [link]

• The Obama administration says that it will not return to a process which rewards North Korea for bad behavior. But the bad behavior goes on.
• A contributing factor [to the stalled six-party talks with North Korea] has been the inability of successive U.S. administrations to keep a high-level focus on managing the North Korea portfolio and pursue a coherent policy goal. A policy of so-called “strategic patience” will not fix that problem.
• Fortunately, after years of false starts, miscalculations, and willful blindness to the real complexities of nuclear weapons issues on the Korean Peninsula, it now appears that a consensus has finally emerged in Washington that nothing less than a broad approach to North Korea has any chance of resolving the nuclear issue.
• To regain the initiative, the United States needs, as a first step, to embrace a concept of what a peace system for the Korean peninsula would look like. That means something more than vague references to a peace treaty and economic cooperation, which is about all the Obama administration has said so far. The U.S. should launch a two-track approach, with one track focusing on regional security and the other on North Korean issues.
• Although a solution to the basic political and security issues in Northeast Asia is not likely to be found in the near future, we should be clear about one other thing: U.S. disengagement from talks with North Korea effectively contributes to instability in the region. Strategic patience is no longer viable. Diplomatic initiatives and vision must replace passivity, and soon.

Iran Invites Some Nations, Not U.S., for Nuclear Tour - Mark Landler of The New York Times [link]

• Iran has invited Russia, China and several European Union members to visit its nuclear facilities this month, but pointedly snubbed the United States, European diplomats said on Monday.
• The invitation — which seemed calculated to divide the alliance of nations opposed to Iran’s nuclear ambitions before the next round of negotiations over the program — was swiftly dismissed by the United States.
• “It’s a clever ploy, but it’s not a substitute for Iran’s responsibilities to the I.A.E.A.,” said the State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley.
• The European diplomats said the invitation was not likely to be accepted, if at all, until after the next round of negotiations, expected to be held in Istanbul at the end of this month.
• The Associated Press, citing an unidentified diplomat, said Iran was offering access to sites at Natanz and Bushehr, as well as meetings with two top officials involved in the program: Ali Salehi, the acting foreign minister who oversees it, and Saeed Jalili, the chief nuclear negotiator.

Iran Nuclear Weapons is Further Off, Israel Says - Richard Spencer of The Telegraph [link]

• Iran no longer has the capability to create a nuclear weapon on its own, Israel's deputy prime minister said on Wednesday, in a new assessment that would seem to make military action less likely in the near future.
• The new view lengthens considerably previous time frames of about a year, and suggests the programme has been seriously damaged by sabotage, sanctions or both. It lends weight to the theory that a highly sophisticated computer worm called Stuxnet was inserted successfully last year into Iran's uranium enrichment programme.
• "These difficulties postpone the timeline, of course," he said. "Thus we cannot talk about a 'point of no return'. Iran does not currently have the ability to make a nuclear bomb on its own. I hope it won't succeed at all and that the Western world's effort will ultimately deny Iran a nuclear capability."
• Iran claims it has no interest in developing a nuclear weapon, and some analysts say the country will stop short of doing so, hoping that the presence of a "breakout" capability would be enough to give Iran the extra regional clout it seeks.

Taseer's Murder Another Sign of the Dysfuunctional Pakistani State - Mosharraf Zaidi in The AFPAK Channel [link]

• Salmaan Taseer's alleged murderer is a twenty-six-year-old security guard, named Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri…His motivation was allegedly Taseer's vocal opposition to the provisions of the Pakistan Penal Code that deal with blasphemy.
• Taseer's death should bring home a much more urgent set of realizations. The disturbing reality is that the continued existence of the blasphemy laws, his assassination and the varying shades of reactions to his murder all point to a set of very deeply embedded structural problems within the Pakistani state and Pakistani society.
• Pakistan is in desperate need of a viable counter-weight to the irrational and frankly un-Islamic voices of religious extremism that dominate religious discourse in the country. That is not a year-long fight. It is an intergenerational struggle.
• Pakistan is also in need of urgent reforms to the legal and judicial system that allows and in many ways encourages mindless vigilantism. That too is a not a fight that can be won quickly. Enabling parliamentarians to feel secure and confident in making changes just got even harder with Taseer's assassination. This is also an intergenerational struggle.
• Salmaan Taseer's assassination raises legitimate questions about the viability of this struggle and its success. On an already cold and tragic day in Islamabad, that represents a devastating reality.

A View from the Dark Side

North Korea: Not the Time for Talks - John Bolton for The Wall Street Journal [link]

• Having for two years correctly resisted resuming the six party talks on the North's nuclear-weapons program, Mr. Obama is now pressuring South Korea to do just that. This is a significant mistake.
• It would have been bad enough had Mr. Obama simply picked up where the Bush administration left off in January 2009, but restarting the talks now will signal weakness and indecisiveness.
• The talks themselves exemplify how, for almost a decade, Washington has followed Beijing's Korea policy as if it were its own.
• Our objective should be to increase pressure on Kim Jong Il's regime, hopefully leading to its collapse.
• We should thoroughly isolate North Korea by denying it access to international financial markets, ramping up efforts to prevent trade in weapons- related materials and pressuring China to adhere to existing U.N. sanctions resolutions.
• After 10 years of error, we should recognize, better late than never, that unifying Korea is key to Asian peace and stability.