home > by publication type > daily analysis > 'Peace' Feelers Toward Pyongyang
Email
| Prepared by: | Esther Pan |
|---|
Spent nuclear fuel rods in a cooling pond at North Korea's Yongbyon facility. (Photo: AP)
On May 17, the New York Times reported the United States is considering opening talks with North Korea on a formal peace treaty while negotiations on its nuclear program are still underway. The next day, officials confirmed that the Bush administration is considering the change, but only if North Korea returns to multilateral talks, as this CFR Background Q&A explains.
A formal peace treaty is a longtime demand from the North Korean side, and, in fact, the United States has not rejected the idea in the past, but has insisted on nuclear disarmament as a prerequisite. Now, the prerequisite appears to be in question. If such a policy shift takes place, it would be a departure from the Bush administration's former demand that North Korea completely and verifiably give up its nuclear weapons program before gaining any concessions, including bilateral talks. The U.S. insistence on this point, combined with Pyongyang's position that it must receive concessions before giving up its nuclear program, contributed to the glacial pace of the six-party talks over the last few years, described in this CFR Background Q&A. North Korea's nuclear status is another headache on the world map for the Bush administration as it wrestles with Iran's intransigence over its own nuclear program and the continuing chaos in Iraq.
The Christian Science Monitor says the move could signal a policy shift away from "regime change" toward negotiation with rogue nuclear powers. In a Washington Post op-ed, Henry Kissinger writes, "Focusing on regime change as the road to denuclearization confuses the issue." He encourages the United States to look instead to diplomatic efforts when dealing with the nuclear issue in both North Korea and Iran. Others are encouraging a similar move. Former South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung urged North Korea and the United States to return to six-party talks (Reuters), saying Pyongyang should give up its nuclear weapons program and, in return, gain U.S. security guarantees and an end to economic sanctions.
Writing in Strategic Insight, the magazine of the Monterey Naval Postgraduate Institute, Edward Olsen says U.S. policy toward North Korea in recent years has been less than effective. "The United States has not devised the means on its own to induce North Korea to truly abandon its nuclear weapons agenda," he writes, advocating that U.S. policy move toward the active engagement chosen by South Korea and China. Seoul, long a U.S. ally, is defying Washington's approach on North Korea and choosing a more assertive role in the region, as explained in this CFR Background Q&A.
The Monterey Institute's Center for Nonproliferation Studies offers an analysis of North Korea's ballistic missile capabilities (PDF). It says that, as yet, Pyongyang is not able to deliver nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles, but could possibly reach Japan with nuclear-equipped medium-range missiles. David Albright and Kevin O'Neill detail in their book Solving the North Korea Nuclear Puzzle how "serious misunderstandings, missed opportunities, and false expectations have often plagued the U.S.-North Korean relationship." Paul Kerr offers a timeline of U.S.-North Korean nuclear negotiations in Arms Control Today.
A PINR brief says only the United States and Japan, who have the most to lose from a nuclear-armed North Korea, are showing any urgency about resolving the diplomatic standoff. And Fred Kaplan of Slate notes that the nuclear energy assistance deal Europe, the United States, and Russia are currently offering Iran is very similar to the one the Clinton administration made to North Korea ten years ago—which kept Pyongyang from building nukes for a decade.
Weigh in on this issue by emailing CFR.org.
To order Task Force reports, Council Special Reports, and Critical Policy Choices, please call, fax, or order online from our distributor, the Brookings Institution Press: phone +1.800.537.5487, fax +1.410.516.6998.
For information on other reports that are not for sale, or for general publications information, please call +1.212.434.9516 or email publications@cfr.org.
Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel—a country of 7.1 million, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies— produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? With the insights of geopolitical experts and investors, the authors examine this nation’s adversity-driven culture to answer this question and offer prescriptions for a global economy on the rebound.
In Forces of Fortune, Vali Nasr presents a paradigm-changing revelation that will transform the understanding of the Muslim world at large. He reveals that there is a vital but unseen rising force in the Islamic world—a new business-minded middle class—that is building a vibrant new Muslim world economy and that holds the key to winning the cold war against Iran and extremists.
In Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Julia E. Sweig presents a remarkably accessible portrait of Cuba's unique place on the world stage over the past fifty years, including its internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community.
Complete list of CFR Books
The report of this bipartisan Task Force of distinguished leaders and experts represents a strong consensus on the importance of repairing America's immigration policy. It makes the case that maintaining America's political and economic leadership depends on attracting talented and hard-working immigrants, and on securing the country's borders in a smart, effective, and humane way.
This report finds that nuclear weapons will remain a fundamental element of U.S. national security in the near term, and makes recommendations on how to ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. deterrent nuclear force, prevent nuclear terrorism, and strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
About Independent Task Forces at CFR
Complete list of Task Force reports
Identifying international threats and acting on them may be the most difficult job for U.S. policymakers. This report
provides an actionable road map for managing international threats before they erupt into crises and makes a strong case that preventive action is not a luxury but a necessity.
For more than a decade, the United States has mostly watched from the sidelines as Asian countries organize themselves into an alphabet soup of new multilateral groups. In this report, the authors review the relationship between pan-Asian and trans-Pacific institutions and suggest policy guidelines for a new U.S. approach to this new Asian landscape.
Complete list of Council Special Reports
To request permission to reprint or reuse CFR material, please fill out this permissions request form (PDF), referring to the instructions on page 1.
Copyright 2009 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.