International Relations theorist Charles Glaser has joined a growing chorus calling for the abandonment of Taiwan. His take on why we should abandon the island is tucked into his "nuanced version of realism" argued on the pages of Foreign Affairs. As do most "abandon Taiwan" arguments, he begins with a "realist" argument for why war between the United States and China is unlikely. Why? Because besides Taiwan, Sino-U.S. interests are compatible.

Parting company with other "pessimistic" realists who believe that "power transitions" -- the historic condition of a rising power challenging the existing hegemon -- more often than not lead to war, Glaser believes that this time it is different. The security dilemma (in pursuing our security we take steps which decrease their security which leads them to take steps which decrease our security, a process that can end in conflict) in the Sino-U.S. case. The task for Beijing and Washington (but mostly Washington) is to trust that each country just wants security, not domination. 

For example, the United States should not fear China's nuclear build-up because of Beijing's limited ability to strike the U.S. homeland. According to this logic, the United States should forego temptations to increase its own nuclear arsenal in response to China's own increases. All China is doing is increasing its security with a second strike capability. In turn, China should not fear U.S. conventional capabilities because most are resident across the Pacific.

But ultimately, the argument goes, it is up to the United States and not China, to make adjustments to its security posture and not exaggerate threats that China poses. The United States is safe because China will never have the means to destroy its deterrent.

Glaser concedes that this theory overlooks the fact that U.S. security alliances could seem threatening to China. Here we get to the nub of his argument. The United States must ask itself how important its security alliances are. Unlike "Neo-isolationists," Glaser, an advocate of "selective engagement," believes that the alliances with South Korea and Japan are important. And the United States could defend those alliances without creating a debilitating arms race if it provides just enough conventional deterrence, plus the threat of nuclear retaliation should those countries come under attack.  

To Glaser, Taiwan is different. China's belief that Taiwan is part of it is non-negotiable, and Beijing and Washington have very different views of what constitutes the status quo across the Strait. The Taiwan dispute has no diplomatic solution and the risks of nuclear war are getting too high, particularly with China's advancing second strike capability. His answer is for the United States to make the necessary "adjustments" and abandon Taiwan.

He acknowledges potential critics who may say appeasement usually whets the appetite of the appeased. But, says Glaser, not all adversaries are Hitler, and China has limited territorial goals. Even if China has more expansive territorial claims, the United States can remediate any military imbalance through a greater conventional presence.

In the end, the real danger is a self-fulfilling prophesy, a failure by the United States to realize that its basic goals are compatible with China's. Glaser fears that this is already happening -- the United States is taking a much more competitive military stance because its ability to operate along China's periphery is in danger. According to Glaser, this dilemma has two solutions. The first is for Washington to realize that U.S. interests are changing -- Taiwan is not really vital. And second, the United States should forego the kind of nuclear superiority that could counter China's second strike capability. Problem solved.

This is a fairly conventional international theory argument about the relative stability of Sino-American relations. Glaser is essentially taking a side in an old debate. His innovation is the abandonment of Taiwan, a necessary step to decrease the security dilemma and reveal China's truly limited aims.

Read on

After campaigning on the untenable promise that he would meet with leaders like Kim Jong Il without preconditions, President Obama has actually approached North Korea with a firmness that sometimes eluded the Bush administration in its last year. The Obama administration has strengthened trilateral security coordination with Japan and South Korea; implemented tough U.N. Security Council sanctions against the North after its nuclear tests; and rebuffed Chinese pressure for emergency six-party talks in the wake of Pyongyang's unprovoked attacks on South Korea. Given the North's escalating provocations and nuclear cheating and Beijing's dangerous complacency, this is the only strategy that has a prospect of deterring further belligerency and reversing the incentives the North sees in proliferation on the peninsula and beyond.

This past week, however, senior Japanese and South Korean officials are reporting that the administration has begun signaling to them that the United States is ready to "shift back to dialogue" with the North. The Blue House in Seoul now feels under pressure to accelerate its own resumption of North-South dialogue so that U.S.-DPRK talks can get under way (since the administration has rightly stated that it would not get ahead of its ally South Korea's own diplomacy toward Pyongyang). In Tokyo there is an eerie sense of déjà vu at yet another potential swing in the pendulum of U.S. North Korea policy. Both Tokyo and Seoul want some dialogue with the North, and the administration deserves credit for how closely it has coordinated strategy with both capitals. But since the Hu Jintao visit to Washington, the dynamic seems to have shifted from U.S.-Japan-ROK trilateral pressure on China to rein in the North to a new pattern of U.S.-China pressure on Seoul to pick up the pace of engagement (that, at least, is how one senior ROK official put it to me). Given our inconsistent history on North Korea to date, one can understand why our allies would be a bit nervous about where all this might go.   

Read on

To further Peter's thoughts in his recent post, I agree that the Obama administration is right to reject China's call for more talks with North Korea, and to refuse any further negotiations with the DPRK until Kim Jong Il's regime changes its behavior. Yet one can't escape the irony that the Obama administration is following the same policy of refusing to negotiate that brought much self-righteous criticism from many commentators against former President George W. Bush. And as a presidential candidate, Barack Obama made the centerpiece of his foreign policy a pledge to do just the opposite, specifically offering to talk without preconditions to hostile regimes.

Let me be clear -- I support the White House on this aspect of their North Korea policy. But I also think this might be a good occasion for reflection by commentators on all sides, myself included. It seems that the same voices that so indignantly condemned the Bush administration for its occasional refusal to engage in unconditional negotiations with unsavory regimes (such as Iran) now fall silent when the Obama administration does the same thing. Perhaps this is another example of what Ross Douthat perceptively described earlier this week as the "partisan mind" at work.

It is also a reminder to partisans and observers on all sides to resist caricaturing each other's positions. I hope this latest impasse with North Korea at least helps elevate the policy debate beyond the hackneyed and simplistic "negotiate or not" rut. As any serious policymaker knows, in practice negotiations are one tool in the policy arsenal. They are not a neutral tool, as the act of negotiating inherently incurs potential risks (such as the other side using it to play a delay and dissemble game while still pursuing a nuclear program) along with potential rewards. And it is a fact that negotiating, especially if public, does confer some sense of legitimacy and political capital to the other side. Think of the debates in the 1980s over whether the odious apartheid regime in South Africa should be "isolated" or "engaged," and many critics rightfully pointed out that engagement would give the government a degree of legitimacy that it craved but did not deserve.

A realistic approach to negotiating must include leverage. For the United States, the most effective entry point for negotiating with an adversarial regime begins with assessing what kind of leverage we can bring to the negotiating table, and what kind of negotiating posture it would give us. Such a leveraged posture could include inducements we possess that the other side desires, or coercive instruments that are either in place and the other side wants lifted, or that haven't been triggered yet and the other side wants to avoid. If a careful "leverage assessment" reveals a weak hand, then it is usually best not to enter into unconditional negotiations, especially because in those cases the best type of leverage might actually be the prospect of negotiations, desired by the other side.

In the case of North Korea, the lead officials in the Obama administration realize that they have little leverage, in part as a result of the concessions made in the last two years of the Bush administration (such as removal of the DPRK from the state sponsor of terror list, and lifting of the Banco Delta Asia sanction along with returning Kim Jong Il's $25 million of ill-gotten gains) that failed to secure a meaningful improvement in North Korea's behavior. Refusing to negotiate from the current posture is a good starting point and helps turn North Korea's (possible) desire for talks into a source of some small leverage. To gain more leverage, reimposing the financial market sanctions on the private accounts of the regime's leaders would help, as would revisiting the state sponsor of terrorism list. Equally important will be exploring ways to change China's cost/benefit calculation for its support of the DPRK. Perhaps after these kinds of steps are taken, it will be time to talk again.

The pattern is sickeningly familiar. North Korea reveals (or is caught with) a previously unknown nuclear weapons program (except that the intelligence community had warned it was there all along). The United States and its allies vow that this will only lead to further "isolation" of the North (next the comfy pillow). North Korea pledges to bring all out war to the peninsula and engages in dangerous military escalation. The North then invites some well-meaning Americans to Pyongyang to profess their sincere interest in de-nuclearlizing the Korean peninsula, if only the United States would abandon its "hostile policy." Beijing calls for restraint on all sides and an immediate return to talks. The administration is skeptical, but seeing no other path agrees to return to the talks. An agreement is finally hammered out where the North freezes the least interesting part of its fissile material production (temporarily, of course) in exchange for sanctions relief, heavy fuel oil, aid or other concessions. The North waits, cheats on the agreement, creates another crisis, and continues marching towards its goal of marrying nuclear warheads to ballistic missiles and winning acceptance as a full nuclear weapons state.

....repeat as necessary.

And repeat North Korea has. With the North-South denuclearization accord in 1991 (violated); the Agreed Framework in 1994 (violated); the DPRK-Japan Pyongyang Declaration in 2002 (violated); the 2005 Six Party Joint Statement (violated) and the 2007 and 2008 Six Party agreements (violated).

But this time, according to former President Jimmy Carter in the November 24 Washington Post, North Korea really is interested in an agreement for denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.

Anyway, back to what is really happening. And that is this. Kim Jong Un, the 27-year-old third son of Kim Jong Il (recently promoted to Four Star General) needs to demonstrate that he is willing to go all the way to war (in the worlds of the DPRK's Japanese language website). When Kim Jong Il had his coming out party in the 1980s, he demonstrated his bona fides by directing operations to blow-up the South Korean cabinet in Rangoon and plant a bomb in a Korean Airlines Flight, killing everyone aboard.

That is the first goal. The second goal is to knock the United States and its allies off guard after revealing to former Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Sigfried Hecker that the North had built an advanced uranium enrichment facility in violation of all its prior agreements. Sanctions and pressure? Only if you are prepared to be met with massive firepower. That is the message to the outside world.

This round of the North Korean game is more dangerous though, for two reasons. First, Kim Jong Un is on much shakier ground than Kim Jong Il was three decades ago. The fabric of North Korean society and the legitimacy of the regime are much more fragile. It is not clear whether the younger "Great General" or the aging "Dear Leader" will be able to pull back from escalation as easily as they have in the past.

The second reason this is more dangerous is because uranium enrichment opens a new production line of potentially a bomb a year to the North. This is particularly threatening when one considers North Korea's support for Syria's El Kibar reactor construction, which Israel bombed in 2007, and Pyongyang's dialogue with Burma about a similar capability. It is also worrisome since the centrifuge facility shown to Hecker may only be one part of the North Korean uranium enrichment (and probably highly enriched uranium) capability.

The Obama administration's opening response has been smart. They have not fueled the sense of crisis in a way that would give Pyongyang more leverage, but they have shown resolve by deploying the USS George Washington to the coast of the peninsula. Now comes the hard part: changing Beijing's calculus so that China deters the North from further escalation (at a minimum) and perhaps brings enough pressure to bear to change North Korea's calculus about its nuclear weapons program (much harder). Beijing's opening response- an expression of sympathy and a call for restraint on all sides and immediate resumption of the Six Party Talks--is not promising. If we are going to dissuade North Korea from repeating business as usual, we will first have to find ways to convince Beijing that the United States is no longer going to respond as usual. That means visibly enhanced defense cooperation with Japan and Korea, a refusal to return to the Six Party Talks without North Korean moves to return to the status quo ante, and enhanced interdiction operations against North Korea based on existing UNSC resolutions. That will be uncomfortable for an already heavily laden U.S.-China bilateral agenda, but so be it. 

The Washington Post recently reported that China is pushing for a resumption of the Six Party Talks. This means one thing: President Obama's North Korea policy is working. The relationship with China works best when China needs something from us. Consider this: former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld refused to see the Chinese for a year after the PLA rammed our EP3 surveillance aircraft with a fighter jet. The Chinese were begging to see him, and DOD got what it wanted from the relationship. That is the proper way to handle Beijing -- the deft use of leverage.

Now we want China to use its influence to disarm North Korea, join our contingency planning for a political transition in Pyongyang that could get messy, and discuss the eventual unification of the peninsula. The fact that China is practically begging the other Six Party participants to come back to the table means that China is feeling the pain of Obama's policy. The administration has conducted joint exercises with the Republic of Korea, enacted harsh sanctions on Pyongyang, and refused to negotiate with Pyongyang unless it stops its provocations. We are demonstrating to Beijing that if it does not control its North Korean ally, China should be ready for intense U.S. pressure on its periphery. The administration should stick with its approach until Beijing forces Pyongyang to abide by international law and give up its nuclear weapons.

But the Washington Post article closes on a somewhat troubling note: the administration wants some contact with Pyongyang. This is not the time to talk to Pyongyang. Obama should not repeat President Bush's mistake -- as soon as he used U.S. leverage over North Korea and China in the form of biting sanctions, he lifted them only to receive more dangerous provocations in return. Obama should wait until China is clear about its choices: disarm Kim or face unrelenting U.S. pressure.

Washington is demonstrating strong support for its South Korean ally after the tragic murder by North Korea of 46 ROK sailors. Secretaries Gates and Clinton are visiting Seoul in the first ever U.S.-ROK "2 plus 2" meeting (a reference to the regular meetings between the Secretaries of State and Defense and their Japanese counterparts). The leaders issued a joint statement calling for the "complete and verifiable" denuclearization of North Korea and they finalized details for major joint exercises to be conducted next week.

The exercises will include up to 8,000 sailors, airmen, and marines. The massive USS George Washington carrier strike group will be involved, as will F-22s (by far the most capable aircraft ever made -- I am sure the South Koreans and Japanese wish we had produced more of them) and air and missile defense assets, including Aegis-equipped destroyers, and other anti-submarine warfare capabilities.

All of this is welcome. Less promising is an unnecessary concession to China. The first exercises, which include the George Washington, are not being held anywhere near the site where the South Korean corvette, the Cheonan, was sunk by the North. Administration officials protest that they never said the carrier would exercise in the Yellow Sea, so there is no concession at all. But that is beside the point. The Chinese clearly did not want a massive show of force near their coastline. The answer should have been "too bad."

This concession is a mistake for two reasons. First, the Chinese have made the crisis worse by protecting the North Koreans from tough responses to their war-like behavior. Second, the Chinese are increasingly trying to change the rules of maritime behavior. The U.S. Navy is well within its rights to exercise in the Yellow Sea. China's resistance comes at the same time that it is trying to restrict lawful U.S. operations in other parts of its Exclusive Economic Zone. We certainly need not always be tough on the Chinese (leave them alone on climate change, for example -- they need to grow). But when China acts irresponsibly, our instinct should not be to reassure them. To the contrary, we should demonstrate that there are costs for irresponsible behavior, including allied exercises right off their coast. If Beijing wants such exercises to stop it should control its North Korean ally.

In addition, Washington should not talk about "a return to the Six Party Talks." After the murder of South Korean sailors, a return to talks seems rather disconsonant. North Korea has pretty well demonstrated its lack of interest in any talks that do not involve the other parties offering one-sided concessions to it and recognizing it as a nuclear state. Rather, South Korea, the United States, and Japan should talk about a vision for a unified Korea under ROK rule. China should be invited to join such talks, but the allies should set the agenda.

Because a unified Korea under South Korean rule is a long-term goal, the allies should discuss measures to deter North Korean provocations, ways in which South Korea and Japan can improve ties and operate more closely together, and contingency planning for a North Korean collapse.

In short, the visit by secretaries Gates and Clinton to South Korea is an important and deft alliance management move. But there is no reason to placate a China that should be controlling its dangerous ally.

For too long, Beijing has coddled, excused, shielded, subsidized, and appeased the indefensible -- Kim Jong-Il's nightmarish regime in North Korea.

China is the key to solving the Korean quandary. The Middle Kingdom is North Korea's largest trade partner, most generous aid donor, and only real friend. Without help from China, North Korea is not viable -- if such an impoverished and benighted nation can be said to be so. In what should be an embarrassment to modern business and political leaders in Beijing, relations between China and North Korea are still conducted by their recondite and fossilized Communist Parties.

Again, the North has crossed the line of civilized behavior -- if indeed it has ever resided on the proper side of that boundary -- by torpedoing a South Korean ship and killing 46 sailors.  This is not new behavior. In October 1983, North Korean agents attempted to blow up South Korean President Chun Doo-Hwan during a wreath-laying ceremony in Burma.  The attempt failed, but killed 21 people, including several of Chun's cabinet.  In the 1970s and 1980s, North Korea kidnapped dozens, if not hundreds of Japanese and South Korean citizens, ripping them from their families to exploit them for their knowledge of the outside world.  In the 1990s, Pyongyang's policies of meeting military needs first and autarky starved more than 1 million North Koreans. Later, North Korea exported nuclear weapons material and technology to Libya and Syria. 

In response to the North's latest atrocity, Chinese Premier Dai Bingguo toured Northeast Asia, urging restraint and maintaining studied neutrality between the aggressor and the aggrieved.  Surely, this is a prelude to asking the United States, Japan, and South Korea to make further concessions to Pyongyang.  At the same time, North Korea seems to be implementing plans for Kim Jong-Eun to succeed his father, perhaps after a period of regency. Undoubtedly, Pyongyang consulted its Chinese patrons on this plan. But rather than perpetuating this monstrous dynasty, Beijing should seize the opportunity for change.

Read on

After the suspicious sinking on March 26 of the South Korean corvette Cheonan in the Yellow Sea, an investigation was conducted by South Korea with assistance from the United States, Britain, Sweden, and Australia to determine the cause. The results are expected to be officially announced this week. It will come as little surprise that a North Korean torpedo attack will be found responsible for the death of 46 South Korean sailors.

Since 2008, North Korea has stepped up this kind of hostile activity. It has conducted more nuclear tests, launched at least 12 missiles and rockets, increased its arms trade with regimes like Iran, Republic of Congo, Syria and Burma, and increased its intelligence activities against South Korea. Even in the midst of this stepped-up bellicosity, the sinking of the naval ship Cheonan is perhaps the most blatant provocation against South Korea in the past two decades, and an act of war under international law. Ironically the DPRK continues to advocate publicly for the reunification of the Korean peninsula - while it attacks its own relatives.

It is not clear what drives North Korea's actions. Many speculate the regime does this to distract the international community during a volatile time of a leadership succession, or to divert the attention of its own oppressed citizens who live on less than 1700 calories a day, many of whom resort to grazing in local parks for edible grasses (which I saw firsthand during a visit to Pyongyang). The country as a whole continues to face the potential of another famine. Callous hardliners remain steadfast in tormenting their own people only for the sake of maintaining the regime's monopoly on power.

How will the international community react? Thus far, the U.S. has depended largely on the six-party talks to find a peaceful resolution to security concerns with North Korea, and during the past three years of South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak's administration, Seoul only took a reactive stance against North Korea's aggressions and left Kim Jong Il  in the driver's seat. Similarly in this instance, South Korea, the U.S. and the international community look likely to react by taking the sinking of the Cheonan to the U.N. Security Council and seeking greater sanctions against North Korea.

UNSC sanctions and condemnation are a necessary but not sufficient step. Now is the time for both South Korea and the United States to step up and define a firm policy towards North Korea. The Lee administration needs to stop pursuing a reactive policy and firmly declare its position towards the North. South Korea should preempt another North Korean provocation by defining new rules of engagement such that if North Korea seeks reunification or economic growth, it must adhere to an international framework with clear conditions and benchmarks. The burden of compliance must be put on the North. 

Next week, Seoul will be meeting with delegations from the United States and China.  During these meetings, South Korea should take the initiative to seek support for its North Korea policy. The U.S., which still has major military facilities on the peninsula, should express its unwillingness to resume six-party talks until the North demonstrates that it is meeting the clearly defined benchmarks set forth from the South Korean administration. Until North Korea starts adhering to South Korean and international standards, it should be put back on the United States list as a state sponsor of terror.  The U.S. should also press China, which is seeking an FTA with South Korea, to declare its support for Seoul's policy and not succumb to North Korea's manipulative appeals for continued aid. 

As long as China remains ambivalent in its reaction to North Korea's aggressive behaviour, it is demonstrating a continued interest in maintaining a divided peninsula that produces regional tension and instability. Without a clear strategy towards North Korea, we can expect more of North Korea's hostile actions.

This week's bad news on nuclear proliferation far outweighed the pleasant production values surrounding the Washington Nuclear Security Summit. But let's look at the good news first.

Representatives of 47 nations declared this week that nuclear terrorism is a bad possibility. They issued a communiqué to that effect and provided a non-binding work plan to counter "one of the most challenging threats to international security," as the communiqué characterized it. The White House blog was stronger, calling nuclear terrorism "the most dire threat of our time." The fact that the administration recognizes this is very welcome.

But such declarations are not new. The United States saw the problem immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union and, under President Clinton, worked with Russia to safeguard nuclear material. The United Nations recognized the danger and in 2005 adopted by consensus the Convention for the Suppression of the Acts of Nuclear Terrorism. That extensive set of measures entered into force in 2007 and, by the end of last year, had been ratified and agreed by 59 nations, more than attended this summit. Both this week's communiqué and work plan recall that convention and call for its implementation.

Nothing in the work plan is binding beyond agreement to meet again in South Korea in 2012. The tentative wording of the plan often betrays its own ineffectual outcome. For example, it says:

Participating States encourage nuclear operators and architect/engineering firms to take into account and incorporate, where appropriate [emphasis added], effective measures of physical protection and security culture into the planning, construction, and operation of civilian nuclear facilities and provide technical assistance, upon request, to other States in doing so."

Is there somewhere it would be inappropriate to incorporate physical protection and safety culture into nuclear facilities? But at least the participants were able to agree that, for the most part, this is a good idea.

The other outcomes of the summit -- reiteration of a 2000 agreement between the United States and Russia on plutonium disposal, a fuzzy but positive step forward on Ukraine's disposal of nuclear materials, closure of a Russian nuclear facility that ceased production last year -- were all useful. They are, however, unlikely to achieve any real reduction in the risk of proliferation and nuclear terrorism.

Read on

President Obama starts 2010 with a crowded agenda for his second year in office. His greatest challenge this year will be turning his rhetoric about a world free of nuclear weapons into reality. 

Despite having spent much of 2009 pursuing a follow-up agreement to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), Obama has little to show for his abandonment of U.S. missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic and other steps taken as part of his "reset" of the U.S.-Russian relationship. Instead, Russia has drawn out negotiations on a treaty that President Obama said in July 2009 "would be completed this year." Even if he and his Russian counterpart wrap up an agreement in the coming months, its fate in the Senate remains uncertain. In addition to his problems reaching a follow-up to START, Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) does not appear imminent. Posing perhaps the greatest challenge to the president's disarmament agenda in 2010 will be the actions of Iran and North Korea. Obama has bolstered his disarmament agenda by arguing that U.S. nuclear reductions and ratification of treaties like the CTBT will somehow convince Iran and North Korea to forgo their nuclear ambitions. In reality, Iran may go nuclear in the near future, setting off a wave of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. North Korea has rebuffed all Obama administration attempts to lure it back to the negotiating table and may be proliferating its nuclear wares to other rogue regimes. 

President Obama spent 2009 talking about disarmament and pursuing engagement with rogue regimes. If he wants to rescue his disarmament agenda in 2010, he should focus less on the supposed threat posed by the U.S. nuclear deterrent and more on the real problem -- the regimes in Tehran and Pyongyang.

By Michael Green

Surprises?

The biggest (most pleasant) surprise on Asia has been the Obama administration's willingness to use pressure on North Korea. After campaigning on a promise to meet with the leaders of nations like North Korea without conditions, the Obama White House has turned out to be quite hard line vis-à-vis Pyongyang.

Of course, it would be difficult to miss the obvious failure of Ambassador Chris Hill's conciliatory negotiating style at the end of the Bush administration -- let alone the fact that North Korea responded to President Obama's initial promises of engagement by detonating a second nuclear device. Still, in the case of North Korea the administration seems to have embraced the premise that there must be consequences for proliferators.

The administration has moved forward smartly with implementation of sanctions under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874 (unlike the Bush administration's decision not to implement UNSCR 1718 after the first nuclear test) and thus far the Special Envoy for North Korea has refused to sit down with the North Koreans until they first agree to return to the Six Party Talks. Even the visit of former President Clinton to Pyongyang was done with most of the administration holding its nose and limiting the mission to the humanitarian goal of bringing home two American journalists taken by the North. We will see how long this holds, but for now the administration looks pretty tough.

Praiseworthy?

The Obama administration deserves praise for its selection of an Asia team. There were more than 60 "advisors" on Asia to the Obama campaign (close to the total number of advisors for the entire world working with McCain). Most of these advisors were calling for wholesale changes in Asia policy, echoing the usual canards about the Bush administration's "unilateralism" and "militarism." But in the end, the top jobs in NSC, State and Defense were filled by non-partisan centrists and pragmatists who recognized the successes of the Bush administration's Asia strategy and wanted to tweak rather than redefine the U.S. approach to the region. Better yet, the top officials at State, NSC and DOD are associated with the successes of the Clinton administration's Asia policy, including the revitalization of the U.S.-Japan alliance and the successful negotiations to bring China into the WTO. The team is professional, knowledgeable and very reassuring to the region.

Constructive Criticism?

The administration deserves criticism on two fronts. The complete lack of a trade strategy leaves the United States without any tools to counter the growth of exclusive regional economic arrangements within Asia. This will become obvious when Obama travels to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in two weeks and calls for an open and inclusive architecture like his predecessors -- only his predecessors actually were bringing something to the table in terms of trade liberalizing agreements with Korea and other countries in the region. The second area of criticism would be the administration's willingness to pull punches on human rights and democracy. The president's decision not to meet the Dalai Lama in Washington in August (the first rebuff to the Tibetan Spiritual Leader by a U.S. President in recent memory) was particularly problematic.

Predictions?

The Obama administration will grow tired of China. Obama expanded the Bush administration's Strategic Economic Dialogue into a Strategic and Economic Dialogue and raised expectations of progress with Beijing on everything from climate change to Iran and North Korea. But in the wake of the financial crisis Beijing sees itself as externally stronger and internally more vulnerable. That is not a recipe for more cooperation with Washington. Chinese support for North Korea's economy is increasing in the wake of Pyongyang's nuclear test and China will be relying on coal for 80 percent of its energy no matter how well discussions of climate change cooperation go (and they are not going that well). Then there is the unyielding PLA position on the South China Sea, cyber-security and a host of other security problems that will vex the Obama administration's China policy over the coming years. Usually, new administrations come into power in Washington having talked themselves into a tense relationship with Beijing during the election campaign and then they adjust to a more centrist and stable relationship with China (true of Regan, Carter, Clinton and G.W. Bush). The Obama administration came in without having engaged in a contentious debate over China policy with McCain, but may now find itself under increasing pressure to be tough with Beijing.

Photo by Korean Central Television/Yonhap via Getty Images

By Christian Brose

It seems the Obama team is doing a big rethink of North Korea policy, in light of the Hermit Kingdom's recent missile launches, nuke test, journalist incarceration, and all-around clenched-fist-shaking:

In France on Saturday, Mr. Obama referred to the same string of broken deals, telling reporters, "I don't think there should be an assumption that we will simply continue down a path in which North Korea is constantly destabilizing the region and we just react in the same ways." He added, "We are not intending to continue a policy of rewarding provocation."

While Mr. Obama was in the Middle East and Europe last week, several senior officials said the president's national security team had all but set aside the central assumption that guided American policy toward North Korea over the past 16 years and two presidencies: that the North would be willing to ultimately abandon its small arsenal of nuclear weapons in return for some combination of oil, nuclear power plants, money, food and guarantees that the United States would not topple its government, the world's last Stalinesque regime.

Now, after examining the still-inconclusive evidence about the results of North Korea's second nuclear test, the administration has come to different conclusions: that Pyongyang's top priority is to be recognized as a nuclear state, that it is unwilling to bargain away its weapons and that it sees tests as a way to help sell its nuclear technology.

This reminds me of the Bush administration's talk circa 2001 and 2002. So will Obama break with the assumptions of the past 16 years and adopt what sounds like a more hard-line policy toward North Korea? Color me skeptical. At this point, I think the administration's talk tells us more about what they want their policy not to be, rather than what it will be.

Just work through the math. The administration is going to get tough with North Korea. OK, but to what end? Squeezing Pyongyang harder is not a policy in and of itself. It's a tactic to advance a broader goal. And if the Obama team now believes that the old assumptions of Clinton and Bush no longer hold, and that the North Koreans won't negotiate away their nukes, then what's the new goal of a new policy?

Presumably, the administration is not assuming that it can just turn the screws ever tighter on the North Koreans, eventually making them cry uncle and hand over their weapons. It would be great if they did, but by the administration's own logic, there is no reason to believe that Pyongyang is now willing to surrender the one card it has, and there is every reason to believe that the regime will just continue passing all of the extra pain we impose onto its starved, broken, and beleaguered population.

So does that mean Obama is moving toward a policy of regime change in North Korea? After all, that would seem to be the logical conclusion to which the administration's recent statements would lead them: The North Korean regime won't change its behavior because it's the regime itself that is the problem; therefore, if you want to solve the problem, you have to get rid of the regime. That has been the conservative argument all along. But Obama isn't saying that is the goal either. It would be pretty hard to square a policy of regime change in North Korea with Obama's pledge of unconditional engagement with anyone and a renaissance of U.S. diplomacy.

Another option is simple containment (or quarantine): assuming the North Koreans won't change their behavior, try as best we can to keep a lid on the problems they cause. The assumption here is that we've been living with a nuclear North Korea for a few years already, and we can go on living with it; we just need to limit the worst repercussions, like proliferation. But there's the risk: We won't catch everything (like, say, a nuclear reactor in Syria), and it's a matter of time before a purely containment policy gets attacked as ineffective. At that point, if the administration is talking to North Korea, it will be urged, both at home and in the region, to be more accommodating (sounds familiar, right?); if it is not talking to North Korea, it will be pilloried for dismissing diplomacy as ... well, let's just say Obama will have all his words read back to him.

But of course, Obama has not foresworn either bilateral or multilateral engagement with North Korea. Nor will he. To do so would undermine the entire narrative of his presidency. Indeed, by every indication the administration has given thus far, the purpose of getting tougher with North Korea now would be to enhance U.S. leverage at the negotiating table later. But then, aren't we right back to the same old process with the same old goal that the administration now says it is dispensing with -- trying to push North Korea to give up its weapons and change its behavior, with both the lure of carrots and the prod of sticks? And it would be naive to assume that this time it would all be different, that the North Koreans would not be up to all their same old tricks again: salami-slicing agreements, missing deadlines, blustering and blackmailing, walking away from talks and then demanding payment to return, etc.

If this is where the administration ends up, which it seems quite likely is where they will end up, it's hard to imagine how this policy will look any different than the diplomatic dog and pony show of the past 16 years -- and with much the same result.

By Dan Twining

North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests, new threats of war against its declared enemies, and the predictable results of these developments -– expressions of concern at the UN Security Council, U.S. offers of more unconditional talks, China’s ambivalent response –- suggest that we remain in the “Groundhog Day” cycle of crisis and response that has characterized U.S. policy towards Pyongyang since 1994. In fact, new dynamics on the peninsula and in the region, and the fresh opportunity provided by what can now clearly be judged to be years of failed policy on denuclearization and disarmament, present an opportunity for a creative rethink about U.S. policy options. To clarify a way forward, it’s worth considering how the playing field has shifted (I see five ways that it has), and how this may create a different set of possibilities for the United States and our allies vis-à-vis the North Korean regime -– one that breaks decisively from the past and offers real hope for change.

1. Regime transition in North Korea

The current crisis cycle with North Korea dates to the leadership transition from Kim Il-sung to Kim Jong-il in 1993-4, when the U.S. embraced a set of policies centered around bilateral negotiations and fuel supply to induce North Korean cooperation on our disarmament objectives. With the exception of the “axis of evil” period from 2001-03, the Bush administration largely continued these policies within the framework of the Six-Party Talks. Following Kim Jong-il’s apparent stroke last year, we are now in the midst of the second leadership transition in North Korean history, that from the Dear Leader to his youngest son, Kim Jong-un (demonstrating that dynastic politics trumps communist ideology). 

This transition creates serious risks, including the empowerment of the North Korean military as a political constituency that the leadership in Pyongyang must appease (for instance, by testing nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles). But it also raises the possibility of a new cycle in Washington’s relations with North Korea, one that could include exploiting newly apparent fissures in its regime and creating a different incentive structure for the emerging leadership’s decision-making on ongoing nuclear and missile programs.  

2. Political realignment in South Korea

Since the election of Kim Dae-jung in 1997 and the administration of his successor Roh Moo-hyun, the Achilles’ heel of U.S. efforts to wield sticks as well as carrots towards North Korea has been South Korea’s opposition to tough measures in favor of a “sunshine policy” of unconditional engagement. For a decade, Seoul effectively elevated inter-Korean comity over its U.S. alliance relationship, reducing any leverage the United States and partners like Japan sought to bring to bear on the North. In turn, fundamental differences in style and strategy between Washington and Seoul enabled Pyongyang to drive a wedge between the allies and isolate Japan. The United States turned to China as its key partner on North Korea, with questionable results.

The election in South Korea of conservative president Lee Myung-bak in 2008 changed the equation. Lee has spoken out forcefully about the abuses of Korean people’s rights under Pyongyang’s totalitarian rule and ended the provision of unconditional food aid, which independent monitors judge to have mainly benefited the North’s ruling elite. Washington now has a like-minded partner in Seoul committed to greater realism and toughness in containing the insecurity emanating from Pyongyang, again creating new possibilities for North Korea policy going forward.

3. A new security environment in Northeast Asia

Pyongyang has now declared that it will no longer observe the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War and has threatened South Korea with military attack. Though Pyongyang has a history of shrill and alarmist declarations, it would be a mistake to assume that an unstable regime in the midst of a leadership transition and now possessing nuclear weapons will never act on its own discourse. These moves create a new security environment on the Korean peninsula –- one that requires the United States to demonstrate its commitment to the defense of core allies Japan and South Korea, including through heightened readiness and deployment of offensive weaponry as well as enhanced missile defenses. 

Pyongyang is testing our new president, and he would do well to surprise it on the upside -– just as President Clinton surprised Beijing during the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis by deploying multiple aircraft carrier battle groups to the region, leading China to stand down after bracketing Taiwan with missiles. Indeed, President Obama could consider the advice of Clinton Defense Secretary William Perry and senior Pentagon official Ash Carter to signal a willingness to “strike and destroy” North Korean missile launch sites to deter -- or preempt -- further North Korean mischief. As Philip Zelikow points out, such a move could also strengthen the president’s diplomatic hand on Iran.

Signaling to allies is as important as signaling to adversaries, and Japan and South Korea will be watching the U.S. response carefully. Japan is also debating a more robust military role in light of the North Korean tests: the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is debating the adoption of what former Defense Minister Nakatani calls “active missile defense,” or preemptive strikes against North Korean missile launch sites. A Japanese doctrinal and political decision to deploy offensive ballistic missiles against North Korea would transform the East Asian strategic environment and enhance American deterrence and compellence capabilities vis-à-vis Pyongyang.

4. New possibilities for quarantining North Korea

This week, South Korea joined the Proliferation Security Initiative -– a decisive move that will make it a key partner rather than the missing link in a strategy to quarantine North Korean proliferation. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council is considering the imposition of additional multilateral sanctions, including targeted sanctions against North Korean leaders and companies that have proven effective in the past. Indeed, U.S. sanctions against Banco Delta Asia proved so effective in squeezing the regime’s supply of hard currency that Pyongyang made the release of a mere $25 million a condition for the resumption of Six-Party negotiations during the Bush administration.

In reality, the U.S. debate over what mix of carrots and sticks to employ against North Korea misses a key point: America and its allies have never pursued a genuine quarantine strategy against North Korea. Such a strategy would interdict North Korean air and maritime traffic to disrupt its global trade in missile and nuclear components (a trade which continued lucratively throughout the Six-Party negotiations); end provision of food and fuel assistance to the North; and limit Pyongyang’s access to international finance through multilateral banking, corporate, and leadership sanctions. Its purpose would be to squeeze the regime in ways that would create fissures within it, coercing a change in external behavior and perhaps the rise of new leadership less committed to confrontation.

5. China’s diminishing influence –- or interest –- in North Korean compliance

In building the Six-Party Talks around a Sino-American axis, the Bush administration made a bet that China was more likely to be part of any solution on North Korean denuclearization than part of the problem. Two nuclear weapons tests, multiple ballistic missile tests, and a shredded war armistice later, it appears that Beijing is either unable or unwilling to coerce better behavior from what Chinese analysts admit is an uncontrollable client state. At the same time, the Sino-American axis within the Six-Party talks may no longer be dominant: South Korea has again become a like-minded partner, Bush administration officials’ disregard for the legitimate concerns of our Japanese ally is a historical relic, and Russia, eager to preserve the sanctity of the UN Security Council as a vehicle for its own international leadership as a declining power, has called for a robust international response to North Korea’s latest weapons tests. 

Beyond securing our people and our allies against blackmail or attack, America’s long term goal must be positioning our country to be a decisive player in a unified Korea governed from Seoul and aligned with Japan and the United States in East Asia. Both North Korean leaders -- who have in the past sought a special relationship with the United States to balance Chinese influence -- and South Korean leaders identify a Chinese design to enjoy privileged influence on the Korean peninsula, in part for defensive reasons related to competition with Japan and the United States. If our Korean friends, whose sense of danger derives from centuries of living in a neighborhood of giant, predatory powers, believe that China and the United States are engaged in a fundamentally competitive rather than cooperative relationship on the peninsula, Washington may wish to move beyond reliance on Beijing to deliver Pyongyang on denuclearization in favor of an allies-first strategy to induce strategic change on the Korean peninsula.

By Mitchell B. Reiss

North Korea's recent launch of its rocket over the Pacific no doubt served multiple agendas for Kim Jong-il: demonstrating toughness to a domestic audience at a time when some may be questioning his life expectancy, retaliating against both South Korea and Japan for perceived and real slights, enhancing the country's marketing strategy for foreign missile sales, and raising the price for any possible buy-out should the Six Party Talks reconvene. Not a bad day's work for the leader of a poor, dysfunctional, friendless country.

Obama administration officials, after having warned (and failed to dissuade) the North not to launch, are now blustering about how Pyongyang's action violated UN Security Council 1718 (a pretty strained reading of the resolution), further isolated the North (as if that was possible) and should now be punished by additional UN sanctions (not going to happen). 

So what can the United States do? Let's review the options.

Military action is not viable, especially with the United States already committed to two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Short of a second Korean war, military options have priced themselves out of the market, as indeed they have for the past fifty-plus years.

Economic sanctions have been ineffective in shaping Pyongyang's behavior, even when there has been rare agreement in the UN Security Council.  (Enforcing compliance is another matter altogether. Despite past UN resolutions banning luxury items, there appears to be no shortage on fine cognac and fancy electronics in Pyongyang.) China and Russia have already stated publicly in the past few days that they are not willing to impose additional UN sanctions. The United States, Japan, and South Korea could unilaterally adopt commercial and other trade sanctions. But the reality is that these countries' leverage is limited due to their relative lack of interaction with the North, Pyongyang's willingness to allow its people to suffer hardship and, perhaps most important of all, China's unwillingness to allow the North to collapse. 

Diplomatically, that leaves the Six Party Talks (6PT). During the past few years, the Bush administration staked out untenable positions only to capitulate after the North raised tensions, whether over the Banco Delta Asia accounts in Macau or the October 2006 nuclear test. Predictably, rewarding North Korea's misbehavior only encouraged more misbehavior. By repeatedly telegraphing its eagerness to return to the Six Party Talks, the Obama administration now appears to be making the same mistake. 

So what to do? I would advocate a policy of what might be termed "malign neglect." The starting assumption is that the North Koreans will now play hard to get, using their reluctance to return to the Six Party Talks as leverage for an easing of sanctions, provision of additional food aid, a resumption of energy assistance, or other benefits. And no doubt the Obama team will try to appease the North's desires and ease them back to the negotiating table.

This would be a mistake. Although it is possible for the United States to bribe the North back to the negotiating table (we have done it before), this would be mistaking process for substance. The goal of the Six Party Talks is not to get to the North Koreans to the bargaining table. It is for the North Koreans to want to come to the table to investigate whether it makes sense for them to abandon their nuclear weapons programs and forge a fundamentally new relationship with the United States and the region. The United States and the other 6PT members cannot make this calculation for Pyongyang and they should stop trying to do so.

Instead, the Obama administration should do three things:

First, it needs to state that it is prepared to resume the Six Party Talks whenever the North is ready to do so -- and then say nothing else. There is really not much more to say, anyway. For once, we should at least try to be as patient as the North Koreans.

Second, the United States needs to repair relations with our two major allies in Asia, Japan and South Korea. Both relationships have been bruised in recent years and Seoul and Tokyo are anxious about whether the new team in Washington will fully consult and coordinate on its North Korea policy. In this sense, the North Korean nuclear issue is not about North Korea at all. It is about the United States preserving alliance relations. After all, we can't control what the North does, but we can control what we do in relation to Seoul and Tokyo. 

Third, we ought to welcome South Korea's joining the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and encourage China to do so. These actions should be part of a clear and unequivocal message sent to Pyongyang that the international community will not tolerate the North's export of any nuclear technology or ballistic missiles. In addition to enhancing global security, this would choke off a source of hard currency to the regime.

These modest steps, forming a policy of "malign neglect," may be unsatisfying to many. But they have the merit of placing the burden for progress in the negotiations on North Korea, where they should be, on playing to U.S. strengths in our alliance relations in the region, and on aligning our nonproliferation interests for the Korean peninsula with those of the international community.