Blog
10:04 AM
::
Stephen
(contact)
The lessons of history. In a New York Times op-ed entitled "Escaping North Korea's Nuclear Trap," Nancy E. Soderberg, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., relates the following history behind the North Korean nuclear crisis:
What to make of this series of events? Soderberg argues that they support further talks: "If he has learned from history," she writes, "Mr. Bush will negotiate directly with the North Koreans." However, someone less charitable than Soderberg might draw a different conclusion: that North Korea, having gone 0 for 3 on compliance thus far, has no intention of keeping any agreement when cheating will only bring additional concessions. Faced with this record of backsliding, one wonders how Soderberg can say with a straight face that "As President [George W.] Bush's predecessors learned, negotiation is the best option in each new North Korea crisis."
If negotiation is going to work, it has to be backed up by something more than paper. CSIS adviser Robert J. Einhorn, writing on the same page, recognizes this fact: "To be acceptable, a negotiated arrangement would have to provide reasonable assurances that we could detect North Korean cheating, and it would have to be structured so as to enable us to withhold critical benefits in the event of noncompliance." Moreover, he adds that "if North Korea has indeed already decided that it must become a nuclear power, then the talks will fail."
One can always hope for a diplomatic solution along these lines; Einhorn, for one, supports a new round of talks. I certainly hope he's right. But then one should also be ready for a second possibility, that diplomacy may not succeed unless it is accompanied by the threat of isolation, sanctions, or worse. The most important lesson that history has to teach us is that wishing doesn't always make it so.