North Korea comes off ‘terror’ list

>Archive - PWW Print Edition Archive - 2008 Editions - July 5, 2008


 

In a victory for negotiations, the U.S. took North Korea (DPRK) June 26 off its list of alleged terror-sponsoring nations. Plus, the Bush administration agreed to lift trade sanctions against the country.

For its part, the DPRK has submitted the most comprehensive report of its nuclear facilities to date, and has gone so far as to blow up the tower of its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.

The developments were hailed by South Korea’s largest liberal newspaper, Hankyoreh, as allowing “South Korea, North Korea, the United States and China, which fought each other in the Korean War, to launch four-way talks on the construction of a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.” The peninsula has officially been in a state of war for more than half a century.

The current progress is based on agreements made at the outcome of the February 2007 round of six-party talks (which included Japan and Russia). Under the agreement, the DPRK would provide information on its nuclear program and begin shutting it down. In return, the U.S. would normalize relations between the states, as well as provide fuel and aid assistance to compensate for the loss of power the plants generated.

The recent goodwill between the two states is seen as a major victory for diplomacy, negotiations and multilateralism.

When the Bush administration came into office, one of its first acts was to jettison all diplomacy with North Korea and declare it part of an “axis of evil.” As a result, the DPRK, feeling threatened, threw international inspectors out, removed itself from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and developed and tested a nuclear weapon.

The Bush administration has been characterized as dominated by neoconservative war hawks who have favored using military might over diplomacy and unilateralism over multilateral approaches. Leading advocates of this policy have been Vice President Dick Cheney, John Bolton and Donald Rumsfeld. Seeing a fall in President Bush’s political fortunes, lesser zealots located in the State Department, notably Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and chief negotiator Christopher Hill, forced a policy switch and negotiated with the North, leading to the recent breakthrough.

The current dangers to the agreement are manifold since the hard-line faction in the Bush administration still exists and could reemerge as dominant. Also, an ultra-right South Korean government has come to power, and its policy towards the North is more in line with the anti-negotiation group in the Bush administration, to which it is closely tied.

Many have argued that the results of isolating the North, versus the results of negotiations illustrate the necessity of negotiation over confrontation with Iran. Currently, the Bush administration and Republican presidential candidate John McCain favor sanctions and isolation in dealing with Iran, while Democratic candidate Barack Obama favors “tough” diplomacy and negotiations.

dmargolis @pww.org