OP ED: NORTH KOREA

A NEW APPROACH NEEDED FOR NORTH KOREA

First, the U.S. must realize that it needs a new North Korea policy. The current policy of avoiding negotiations, while threatening military aggression and wanting regime change, is not working and cannot work.

Before I get into my brief list of ideas for dealing with North Korea, I must preface it with a list of what North Korea really wants and needs:

1. North Korea wants to become a part of the international community.

2. North Korea needs economic development and humanitarian assistance.

3. North Korea wants normalized relations with the United States.

4. North Korea wants a comprehensive Peace Treaty with the U.S., which would include a mutual or multi-lateral non-aggression agreement. Security guarantees are important to North Korea.

All of these issues (and more) present creative diplomats with plenty of opportunity to use carrots rather than sticks during any kind of negotiation process with N. Korea. If U.S. diplomats are serious, there are plenty of ways to reach a permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula.

With that said… there has never been an official Peace Treaty ending the Korean Conflict. This is a good opportunity to come up with a Comprehensive Peace Treaty with North Korea that would cover areas from Security to economic development and it should encourage the North Korean government to gradually open its society & become a true part of the international community. Such an agreement is favored by South Korea. This is one of the main obstacles getting in the way of South Koreas own efforts to negotiate with the North. There can be no reunification without a final peace settlement there.

The 6 country approach has cluttered the negotiations with too many unrelated issues. The other 4 countries involved in the negotiations are Russia, China, South Korea, and Japan. The main reason why this framework is not working is due to the different goals and interests that each country has. Each additional country exponentially increases the level of complication for the negotiation process. One issue gets tied to some other unrelated issue in the all or nothing approach. Eventually there is a web of interconnected issues which makes it impossible for an agreement to be reached.

This is why negotiations should be conducted separately between all parties involved. For example, the problems between North Korea and South Korea are different than the problems between North Korea and Japan. Conversely, the problems between North Korea and Japan are much different than the problems between North Korea and the U.S. Many of these issues between the parties stem from long standing cultural differences and grudges unique to the 2 parties involved. These problems must be, and can only be sorted out country to country. It has been a mistake for the U.S. to try to lump all of these issues together in the current 6 Party framework. It’s a framework that is built to fail.

It is unclear why the U.S. has been avoiding a genuine, peaceful, and long lasting settlement with North Korea. One possibility is that the U.S. is better served by having a boogeyman in East Asia. This allows the U.S. Defense industry to reap huge profits from weapons sales to countries in the region. It also allows the U.S. to maintain a significant “footprint” or troop presence in the area. With increasing pressure in recent years from the Japanese and South Korean people for U.S. troops to leave, having a bad guy in the region gives the U.S. the excuse to stay put. It is no surprise that the U.S. is in no hurry to put together a permanent peace treaty with North Korea.
Why is this important? Why else does the U.S. want to maintain a significant military presence in East Asia? Because the U.S. wants to be able to project military power in other areas throughout the region, particularly Taiwan. In order to do this, the U.S. needs platforms to keep troops, supplies, planes, and ports for its ships. However, while the U.S. attempts to take care of one problem (Taiwan) it is aggravating another, with North Korea.

The U.S. must enter one on one negotiations with North Korea without pre-conditions. There should be a sincere effort on the part of the U.S. to resolve the long standing Korean conflict once and for all. So far, there has been no effort on the part of the U.S. to take negotiations seriously.

The U.S. should address North Koreas security concerns. North Korea cannot move forward with reconciliation with South Korea or Japan when it feels under threat from the United States.

Efforts should also be made to increase Trade and cross border business activities, as well as opening the Korean border to more travel. If diplomats can get the Koreas to open their shared border, reunification may occur naturally over time, without a shot being fired. This is what occurred in Eastern Europe in the late 1980’s. So many people were migrating out of certain parts of Eastern Europe that the East could no longer sustain itself and eventually collapsed, due to the lack of human resources. This effectively ended the Cold War… or at least brought us into a halftime- I never really believed that the Cold War was actually over… mainly due to militarism on the part of the United States. But the same could be done with North and South Korea, over time.

There must also be an effort to provide the top members of the North Korean regime with some level of amnesty, should they agree to step aside or if there is some sort of collapse. This could provide a much easier platform for negotiations down the road. This fear alone causes some in the regime to want to hold onto power at all costs, to save their own necks. For some, this may sound like an unacceptable idea. However, sometimes in life you are left with the scenario of deciding between 2 bad choices. In this case, do we provide a couple hundred high level and mid level officials with free passage to wherever they wish to go, and a pension, so that they (along with their families) can go away quietly? Or do you risk war which could kill or maim tens of thousands of people, risk a wider war, and cost billions to fight and billions of dollars in property losses? This is really an easy decision, although not without some pain.

The ultimate goal of these negotiations should be the signing of a comprehensive Peace Treaty, officially ending the Korean conflict and putting both parties on a path towards normal relations.

Instead of the 4 other countries being primary parties in the talks, these countries should remain a part of the discussions as witnesses and should sign the Treaty as witnesses. In fact, all members of the U.N. Security Council, willing member countries of the General Assembly, and the UN Secretary General should send representatives to be present for all or part of the negotiations and should sign the Treaty document as witnesses. This would make it difficult for either party to break their agreements.

Unfortunately, I am not confident that the U.S. will seek this approach. The only "diplomacy" that the U.S. knows is military threats or aggression. Everything else in U.S. policy seems to be built around flexing its military muscle. No matter how unproductive this approach is, U.S. policymakers consistently return to the flawed ideology of sticks rather than carrots to solve all of its problems.

What will it take for the U.S. to change course?


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For use of this opinion article, contact the author at: Websteru2006@Yahoo.com

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