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North Korea's pivot
John Feffer
Mar 3, 2012
WASHINGTON - After three years of frozen relations between North Korea and the United States, the two long-standing adversaries are on the verge of a thaw.
In what has been called the "leap-day deal", North Korea has pledged to stop uranium enrichment and suspend nuclear and missile tests. The US, meanwhile, will deliver 240,000 tonnes of food to the country's malnourished population.
The administration of US President Barack Obama has maintained a policy of "strategic patience" toward North Korea, which amounted to a wait-and-see approach while Washington was preoccupied with other foreign-policy issues. Obama administration officials portray the leap-day deal as a modest first step in re-engaging North Korea.
"After the really tough sanctions that were put in place by the UN Security Council and the North Koreans announced that they wanted to return to six-party talks, talks that they had previously abandoned, we and our allies made clear that North Korea needed to take a number of steps that would demonstrate their seriousness of purpose," said a senior US official at a background briefing on February 29 - leap day.
"We were firm that we were only interested in credible negotiations leading to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."
The death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in late 2011 interrupted the preparatory steps toward this deal. Although the country remains officially in its 100-day mourning period, the leader's youngest son and successor, Kim Jong-eun, has continued key elements of his father's policies. Foremost among these is the more energetic diplomacy North Korea has conducted over the past year.
As the Obama administration attempts a "Pacific pivot" to refocus its geopolitical energies from the Middle East to Asia, North Korea has been executing a pivot of its own. The centennial of the birth of the country's founder Kim Il-sung, 2012 is also the year in which North Korea has pledged to achieve the status of kangsong taeguk: an economically prosperous and militarily strong country.
To attract the economic investment necessary to achieve this goal, Pyongyang has reached out to friend and foe alike.
It has been negotiating with Russia, for instance, over a natural-gas pipeline that would extend down the peninsula to customers in South Korea and possibly Japan. Extensive deals with China have been concluded over access to minerals and ports. Even inter-Korean relations, which bottomed out over the past several years as a result of low-level military clashes and high-level belligerent rhetoric, promise to improve as both ruling- and opposition-party leaders in the South lean toward a more conciliatory policy.
Meanwhile, the industrial zone at Kaesong, run by 123 South Korean firms on North Korean territory, has expanded to employ more than 50,000 Northern workers.
But the focus of the North Korean negotiating strategy has been the US, with which it has frequently insisted on bilateral discussions.
"The North Koreans have been interested in reaching some accommodation with the United States for a while now," observed Joel Wit, a former US State Department official and currently a visiting fellow at the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University's Washington-based School of Advanced International Studies.
"It's been a year now that they've been sending signals that they're interested in talking and taking some limited steps forward. The Obama administration didn't take them up on it because the South Koreans were against it. But South Korea's position changed last summer," he said.
Another reason for the North Korean pivot is its perennial push-pull relationship with China.
"The North Koreans feel that they've become very close to China over the past few years because of the US policy of 'strategic patience', which has forced them into the Chinese arms," Wit continued. "But the North Koreans aren't comfortable with that. They're trying to create some distance with the Chinese, using the United States as a balancer."
US reaction to the leap-day deal has ranged from relief at North Korea's moratorium on nuclear testing and missile launches to skepticism that the agreement represents anything new.
"North Korea's promise to suspend certain nuclear activities can't be taken at face value, given the almost certain existence of several undeclared nuclear facilities," US Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a press statement. "Pyongyang will likely continue its clandestine nuclear-weapons program right under our noses. We have bought this bridge several times before."
North Korea, meanwhile, seems to interpret the agreement somewhat differently than the US. A Korean Central News Agency article reported that the Six-Party Talks would prioritize "the lifting of sanctions on the DPRK and provision of light-water reactors", neither of which is mentioned in US government statements.
The humanitarian community has reacted with unambiguous support for the resumption of food aid, which will consist of nutritional supplements designed particularly for children and pregnant women.
"There have been over six nutritional assessments, most everything done on our own dime, to verify that there is a need for food," said Robert Springs, the head of Global Resource Services, one of the five non-governmental organizations involved in the last round of US food-aid distribution. "We welcome this nutritional assistance. It's responding to a need. It should have been done a long time ago."
(Inter Press Service)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/NC03Dg01.html
Damage control, not the end of nukes
By Kosuke Takahashi
Mar 3, 2012
TOKYO - Although the nuclear deal between North Korea and the United States may help defuse spiraling tensions in East Asia, it represents a harsh new reality: US nuclear diplomacy is unable to "end" North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Rather, it can only halt it.
With American foreign policy swamped with Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, the Barack Obama administration apparently aims to just "manage and control" the US relationship with North Korea - by keeping it from escalating out of control.
Experts expect North Korea's actions this time may pave the way for a resumption of the six-party talks, but the talks would be more aimed at arms control and disarmament of the Korean peninsula, rather than its denuclearization.
"In recent years, senior US government officials have managed and controlled US relations with North Korea, rather than pursued an engagement policy," Young C Kim, professor emeritus of George Washington University, said at a recent forum in Tokyo. "It is problematic in that it tends to become a policy of tacit approval."
On Wednesday, Washington and Pyongyang announced that North Korea had agreed to implement a moratorium on long-range missile launches, nuclear tests, and nuclear activities at its Yongbyon research center including uranium enrichment activities, in return for US food aid.
But on the same day, key differences on the agreement emerged. The US said Pyongyang has agreed to monitoring of its plutonium program and uranium enrichment activities by the International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA), while the North did not confirm this.
In any case, the US and South Korean intelligence agencies know there are other uranium enrichment facilities besides Yongbyon - North Korea only offered Yongbyon up as a concession while hiding other cards, in a classic salami-slice strategy.
A hungry child knows no politics
The US is to provide 240,000 tonnes of nutritional aid such as corn-soy blend, vegetable oil and therapeutic foods for children under the age of 6, pregnant women and elderly citizens to meet the North's urgent needs.
Interestingly enough, the tonnage of nutritional assistance is almost the same amount then Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi offered in May 2004 in return for the family members of five former abductees by North Korea.
Pyongyang is no doubt desperate for food. A call made in a joint New Year's Day editorial by three major North Korean newspapers on January 1 that were considered Pyongyang's policy guidelines for the new year stressed increased efforts in the country to address food shortages, which it said are a ''burning issue in building a thriving country".
For the US, bilateral negotiations with North Korea on humanitarian assistance such as food aid, as well as on the hunt for the remains of soldiers missing-in-action from the Korean War, have been always possible even amid intensified tensions.
This is because the traditional US food aid policy is based on the slogan of "a hungry child knows no politics," as the late president Ronald Reagan said, although every famine is complicated by politics.
Buying time and putting off the inevitable
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the current consensus view in the Obama administration appears to be that the North Korean problem is best managed through diplomacy. A CSIS study shows that over the past 35 years, Pyongyang has not fired missiles or torpedoed ships when its diplomats are sitting at the table with Americans (with one exception in 1998).
Obama's personal mission to advocate "a world without nuclear weapons" is fading, especially when a nuclear Iran seems ever more imminent. But he needs to keep Pyongyang from conducting a third nuclear bomb test in the lead-up to the US presidential election due this November. The US may want to grasp an understanding for the newly born Kim Jong-eun's rule via bilateral talks and the six-party talks - involving the US, Japan, South and North Korea, China and Russia.
"Please note that the United States has long said that we will never accept North Korea as a nuclear power," Pentagon spokesperson Leslie Hull-Ryde told Asia Times Online.
For Pyongyang, all of the recent movements may be just dilatory efforts. Military experts expect the North would develop intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of carrying downsized nuclear warheads and reaching the US mainland, which would significantly strengthen the North's hand and deepen the security fears of regional rivals such as Japan and South Korea.
There is a widespread view among experts that Pyongyang will not and cannot abandon its nuclear and missile development, despite any compromises by the Obama administration as it eagerly seeks another foreign-policy success in this election year.
For young leader Kim Jong-eun, nuclear-tipped missiles are still the strongest weapon and best deterrent against regime collapse in the Hermit Kingdom. He will hang on to them by all means.
The existing six-party talks could be set aside and a foreign ministerial meeting be held among six nations "to discuss the issue of peace, security and economic cooperation," George Washington University's Kim said. "By way of that foreign ministerial meeting, bilateral talks between North Korea and the US, between South and North Koreas, and between Japan and North Korea, can be held."
Lee Jong Won, professor of International Politics at Rikkyo University, echoed Kim's views.
"Professor Kim's proposal is based on realism," Lee said. "Future six-party talks could be reclassified as 'disarmament' negotiations, rather than aiming at the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. It would be more like Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which adopted the Helsinki Declaration."
Kosuke Takahashi is a Tokyo-based Japanese journalist. His twitter is @TakahashiKosuke
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/NC03Dg02.html
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