USA TODAY International Edition
WE CAN STILL NEGOTIATE ON KOREA
Don’t get distracted by the hydrogen bomb test. Diplomats should think small.
After North Korea’s sixth nuclear test on Sunday, the first during the Trump administration and the first reaching the explosive power characteristic of a hydrogen bomb, toughening and tightening of international sanctions is the inevitable and necessary first response.
But threatening pre-emptive military strikes, or upping the pressure in the hope that Kim Jong Un will ultimately trade away his nuclear weapons for relief from sanctions, will not work if North Korea sees its nuclear weapons as central to its security. Complete denuclearization of North Korea remains a worthy goal, but it should not be our principal near-term demand.
Rather, the goal of U.S. policy should be a verifiable freeze on the testing of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles by North Korea, as well as a freeze on the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium that can be used in nuclear bombs.
PERHAPS 60 WARHEADS
North Korea has shown some openness to the testing idea in return for a freeze on large-scale U.S.-South Korea military exercises. However, American interests require a freeze on the expansion of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, now estimated at 60 warheads in size, as well. That should be our minimum demand.
What can the United States — along with South Korea, Japan China and Russia — be willing to offer North Korea in exchange for such a sweeping and indefinite freeze on its nuclear and longrange missile programs? Clearly, the incentives offered in the 1994 and the 2007 deals with thenleader Kim Jong Il, both of which sought to denuclearize North Korea comprehensively over time, could not be offered here.
First of all, Pyongyang already violated those earlier accords. Second, what it would be giving up here would be much less than it had promised.
Thus, large-scale U.S. energy assistance and other such forms of foreign aid cannot be on the table, nor can any lightening of most American sanctions on North Korea dating to the Cold War days. United Nations sanctions that prohibit assistance to North Korea’s weapons programs should also stay in place, because nothing about an interim deal would demonstrate a profound change of heart by North Korea, which remains the most militarized and the most Orwellian country on earth. But we do have other trades to make.
ANNUAL MILITARY EXERCISES
First, the military consequences of an end — temporary or even permanent — to the annual largescale exercises that “Combined Forces” now conduct on the peninsula can probably be addressed and considerably mitigated. Even without large-scale exercises, we can continue smaller unit-by-unit training. We can continue to improve plans with Seoul for defending South Korea at the level of headquarters and planning. We also could conduct larger-scale integrated exercises in America, thereby continually supporting military readiness, but in a manner that eliminates North Korea’s ability to use our exercises to justify its brinkmanship.
The recent U.N. sanctions targeting North Korea’s trade in coal, seafood and metal products can also be put on the table. These are recent sanctions applied specifically in response to the nuclear and missile tests of recent years, so it makes sense to lift them — albeit with snapback provisions should North Korea violate the accord. Specifically, North Korea’s $6 billion a year in trade with China — an amount that could be reduced by perhaps a third if current sanctions are enforced — could be largely restored under the terms of a deal that froze North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.
Some will say North Korea will never accept a freeze. We think this is a proposition worth testing. Others will say such an interim deal would offer no likelihood of a long-term nuclear disarmament accord and could wind up the new normal for years into the future. We agree. But that is still a better outcome than a North Korea conducting brinkmanship with its military programs while also expanding its nuclear arsenal every year.
Should North Korea agree but then cheat, as history suggests it very well might, major U.S.-South Korean exercises should promptly resume. In addition, snapback provisions should apply to sanctions, and they should be automatically reimposed.
We should drive a tough bargain with North Korea, to be sure. But we should not fear to negotiate, or to accept an interim deal as a much-preferred alternative to the path we are all now on.
Ryan Hass, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, was director for China policy on the National Security Council in the Obama administration. Michael O’Hanlon is director of research at Brookings’ Foreign Policy program.