I share the pessimism of most of my colleagues. We have  been truying for years to figure out a way to coax the North Koreans out of their paranoia, with absolutely no success. We give, they take, they then do what they want. That has been the pattern.

Neither  China, Japan, nor South Korea are ready for a united peninsula. The North knows that, and recognizes, therefore, that it is actually quite safe from any "aggression" by the RoK. Those who rule the North are far more worried about their own positions of power, and they recognize that any accommodation with the RoK, or the US, could jeopardize their position.  It is in their interest to preserve the status quo; and in fact "double down" and retrench even more.

North Korea's nuclear capability is at the same time both a surce of revenue and a doomsday deterrent, and primarily the former. So why compromise? The leadership, be it the Kim family, or the military, have absolutely no incentive to do so. Pyongyang will at some point reopen the Six Party talks, just for the sake of creating an appearance of movement. At bottom, however, nothing will happen as long as the regime, or the military, remain in power.  

Thanks to our bloggers for their input so far on what to do about North Korea in light of Pyongyang’s continued bellicosity, threats, and mixed signals. I note that last night Pyongyang announced it would put the two American journalists captured at the Chinese border on trial on June 4. Here’s a Thursday morning summary:

Overall, I’d say most of the experts are pessimistic about the potential for breakthroughs, or even much progress, with Pyongyang regardless of whether the blogger advocates a harder line, continued engagement, or a period of benign neglect. And the experts think that if there is a short period of less active engagement, it’s probably best not to let that go on for too long. Virtually everyone is weary of the cycle of North Korean provocations followed by knee-jerk reactions from the United States. And most feel that Pyongyang has made a decision, for now, not to give up its nuclear weapons.

Joel Wit, at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, has chimed in with two posts, the essence of which is that Pyongyang is what it is and the only thing that will probably work in the long run is steady engagement, no matter how frustrating or annoying that is.

“Any steps designed to contain Pyongyang are only likely to have limited effectiveness, particularly since the North has ample ability to take effective countermeasures,” Witt wrote. “We need to press the reset button on U.S. policy and begin a long, difficult and perhaps ultimately unsuccessful uphill trek on the road to denuclearization.”

 James J. Carafano, of the Heritage foundation, said the Obama administration has looked pretty “toothless” in its response so far to North Korean threats, and he thinks it “likely” that the DPRK will test another nuclear weapon before Christmas. He advocates a tougher line, continuing with U.S missile defense development and shoring up the Proliferation Security Initiative. “There is a growing sense that Pyongyang's antics and stalling tactics are not merely negotiating ploys, but instead are designed to achieve international acceptance of North Korea as a nuclear power. North Korean officials have repeatedly indicated that is precisely their intention.”

Ron Marks at Oxford Analytica likens North Korea and the U.S. to Lucy and Charlie Brown in the Peanuts cartoon, and Charlie Brown’s naïve trust in Lucy to hold the football. “There must be a complete understanding that Lucy will always be Lucy,” he writes. “While it is easy for us to dismiss Kim and co. as a collective group of stark raving mad looneys, they are still there after 50 plus years and somehow managed to slip by us the creation of nukes and the systems to deliver them.”

Marks advocates “slow steps based on Pyongyang's self interests… There are no solutions here.  Simply processes that lower tensions and ameliorate immediate problems.”

Bonnie Glaser at CSIS says “The North Korea nuclear problem must be managed and contained, even if it can’t be resolved.” She, like Carafano and Marks advocates strengthening of the Proliferation Security Initiative and making it abundantly clear that we draw the line with Pyongyang at proliferation. “The Obama administration is right to not appear overly eager to reconvene the six party talks at present,” she wrote. “This is not the time to provide North Korea with rewards for its bad behavior just to hold another round of empty dialogue.”

Glaser also points out that some engagement with North Korea is essential if only to reassure our allies in the region that we’re not giving up. “The U.S. must remain firmly committed to denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. U.S. interests in Asia would be damaged if Japan and South Korea concluded that the U.S. was willing to tacitly accept a nuclear North Korea, even if that judgment were wrong.”

Jack Pritchard of theKorea Economic Institute, says that some of Pyongyang’s recent signals are being sent for domestic reasons. “Pyongyang’s recent actions have been rather nationalistic, designed to demonstrate a sense of strength and pride for a domestic audience uncertain about the health of the leader and the long-term survival of the regime.”

Pritchard writes that “The Obama administration would be wise to pursue a near-term policy of modified benign neglect with indirect active engagement.” Obama’s policy should be one of “restraint, not reacting to each and every North Korean bluster as we finally move to change the unfortunate decades-long dynamic of chasing after Pyongyang.”

Michael Vlahos, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, and no stranger to structural and cultural analysis, also looks at Korean domestic motivations. He sees the North’s actions as part of a larger movement toward Korean identity and unity in reaction to centuries of foreign domination. Both North and South are striving for a Korean-ness that one day will lead the peninsula to be a major power at peace with its neighbors but pushed around by none. In that light, he says the current situation isn’t so bad.

“Keep the nuclear issue diffused and quiet. The current ‘solution’ — shutting down reactor production while leaving the current stockpile untouched — is a good one. We should expect a future Korea to be a sotto voce nuclear power.

 Continue to build up South Korean military capability, especially high-end systems, like Aegis.

 Continue to make U.S. forces in the ROK, “out of sight, out of mind.” Begin a gradual draw down.

 Describe our presence in Korean terms, rather than falling back unconsciously on traditional rhetoric: “freedom’s frontline,” etc.

 Do not expect a future US-Korean relationship to resemble either the British or Japanese “special relationship,” although for us that is a tempting prospect to push.

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The United States looks at Korea through the prism of the Cold War: the filtered image we see is of a fledgling democracy standing alongside us on the “frontline of freedom.”

But that era is over, and ending with it are the longstanding roles of “good” South and evil North. Korea is undergoing a transformation — of identity. What we describe as the problematic politics of reunification are really about the changing politics of identity.

1-A New Stage of Identity. The end of the Cold war also signaled the end of foreign domination. Both North and South were freed to discover new paths and possibilities.

• More than any other factor, the Korean ethos has been shaped by foreign domination and the relentless struggle of identity: for this identity to be realized along with a political state of national independence and autonomy.

• Establishing real Korean autonomy for the first time among dominant neighbors is implicit in ROK economic growth and now, military potential (with the US as midwife).

• But always hanging over the Korean people is the memory of abuse and enslavement followed in turn by “lackey” survival. In the context of such historical persistence, what is the true Korean identity, and how can it be realized on its own terms, and by itself? It cannot be the gift of a foreign dominator, even it that gift if altruistically offered.

2-The authority claim of the North

• The current relationship between North and South is often characterized as a “competition over legitimacy.” But it is perhaps better expressed as a negotiation over the path of Korea’s future identity. It is here that the North now has something important to say.

• We see an “evil” PDRK totalitarian regime, but many in the ROK, especially the young generation, see something different. They see the society of the South as being corrupted by decadent outsider values, while in contrast the North is something of a model for having remained “pure” and upright. This trope must be viewed in terms of the abiding Korean narrative of foreign domination. Add to this the aggressive practice of dominators — whether Chinese, Japanese, or American — to push their ways. Hence, the appealing image of the North speaking to fears of cultural impurity and the shame of long foreign domination.

• But how can such an argument possibly be believed? A “crazy” god-dictator seeking nukes is a picture-perfect cartoon of madness, with an accompanying vision of millions of slave-citizens at his eternal mercy. It is real life imitating Orwell’s art: a true prison civilization. How can such a horror be contributing to the formation of future Korean national identity?

• The secret dimension is religion. We call the PDRK a cult or a theology or a religious state. What is important is that the North’s “religion” — however strange and manufactured — represents a characteristic Korean spiritual framework. It is in its way “purely” Korean. By building on core models of it successfully appeals to Koreans in search of a new national identity. Moreover, its palette offers elements of a future national identity in iconic form not present in the South.

• What does this mean? What the PDRK calls Juche may be an original blend of core tropes in the Korean ethos, but it has very familiar cultural antecedents:

• Purity: more than ethnic nationalism, in part also a response to relentless foreign domination and forced submission — especially Japan.[1]
• Resistance:like the Tonghak revolution, and other symbolic stories of the relentless current of struggle, and both binds and gives shape to identity
• People’s needs: Chundo-gyo itself, flowing from Tonghak ideology, and just such an authentically syncretistic Korean religion is a sort of model
• Ancestor worship: the broader continuity of Confucian tradition is obviously carried forward in the cult of the Kims
• The collective whole: To belong is to be at one with the “River of Korea” (Saram). PDRK theology — however extreme it may appear to us — is at some level in harmony still with an ethos where the word for “person” suggests a state of spiritual oneness with the nation (danil han minjok — the “unitary nation”)[2]

3-Reunification as Narrative (Passage of Becoming)

• The North would not be able to play this potentially significant role without three developments. First, the end of the Cold War, freeing South Korea from the politics of a frontline client state. Second, the rise of ROK as a potential great power, creating rising expectations of a truly independent and powerful Korea for the first time. Three, North Korea was transformed in the mind of the South — because the threat of the PDRK no longer flowed from its strength, but rather its weakness. The North could now represent different things to the South.

• Thus the place occupied by the North in the South’s imagination was encouraged to change — and did so in unexpected ways. Because the North was now small and weak, it meant that the South could take the initiative: the Korean future was in its hands. But it also meant that what the North represented could be looked at from a positive perspective, in terms of the useful things it might offer to the prospect of a reunified Korea clearly dominated by the South. 

• Subtly too this has meant a change for North Korean strategy. Paradoxically its new status as weak sister combines with its new and potentially positive contribution to an emerging new stage of national identity. The North now has a path to reunification on attractive, but subsidiary, terms. If it can no longer hope to bargain as even a titular equal, for the first time it brings something to the table that many in the South find valuable. Thus the nuclear element is not simply a status lever in the negotiation, but also part of the North’s ultimate contribution to a powerful and independent future Korea.

• This is the basic dynamic of the negotiation over reunification, where reunification has become a primarily symbolic instrument: to ratify Korea on the stage of the former dominant powers, but also Korea to itself on the stage of national identity. Thus the process of reunification needs to be orchestrated to achieve these goals. It cannot become a hasty, messy, and embarrassing event. In the centrality of symbolic politics the emergence of a new Korean identity can be compared to the original German unification. It is intended to differ however from the Bismarckian approach in part because of Korean historical traditions. The last thing Koreans want is to appear aggressive in a world of dominant powers. Thus it is best for reunification to become a natural, generational process, controlled by Koreans and achieved without violence.

• To Koreans themselves, however, the process must serve its own identity needs, meaning, reunification should take the form of a continually reinforcing narrative. The shared experience of reunification, in which all Koreas participate, will effectively serve as the passage of national identity from what was — subjugation, submission — to what will be — self-directed autonomy.

• The experience might best be approached as a reintegration of the “River of Korea” — in which the Saram of all Koreans is reestablished. Achieving this also equates naturally into a kind of spiritual renewal as well, for which there is great longing among Koreans. The significance of the relationship between the two Korean societies, and the dynamic that is now engaged, if the significance of national identity being both realized and reintegrated.

• The United States should recognize the power and the delicacy of such a profound cultural process, and also understand that we remain in the middle of it. We should be mindful thus that our situation vis-à-vis Korea has also been quietly transformed. We can do only so much to assist, but we can easily get in the way. To do so would at this point take the form of an unwanted reminder of the very legacy of foreign domination that an emerging Korean identity seeks to forever overthrow.

• Here are some suggestions then for US policy during this new era:

• Keep the nuclear issue diffused and quiet. The current “solution” — shutting down reactor production while leaving the current stockpile untouched — is a good one. We should expect a future Korea to be a sotto voce nuclear power.
• Continue to build up Korean military capability, especially high-end systems, like Aegis.
• Continue to make US forces in the ROK, “out of sight, out of mind.” Begin a gradual draw down.
• Describe our presence in Korean terms, rather than falling back unconsciously on traditional rhetoric: “freedom’s frontline,” etc.
• Do not expect a future US-Korean relationship to resemble either the British or Japanese “special relationship,” although for us that is a tempting prospect to push.

[1] Yi Kwang-su, a key figure during colonial rule, claimed that "hyeoltong" (bloodline), "seonggyeok" (personality), and "munhwa" (culture) are three fundamental elements of a nation and that "Koreans are without a doubt a unitary nation (danil han minjok) in blood and culture." Gi-Wook Shin, Director at Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, “Korea’s ethnic nationalism is a source of both pride and prejudice,” The Korea Herald, August 2, 2006

http://aparc.stanford.edu/news/koreas_ethnic_nationalism_is_a_source_of_both_pride_and_prejudice_according_to_giwook_shin_20060802/

[2] A Korean guest stressed this connection to me personally. 

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I wanted to make a few points in response to some of the other blogs on North Korea. The first and main point is that while pursuing containment of Pyongyang is absolutely essential--and that includes trying to secure the support of other players in this process as well as taking actual steps to secure our security interests--we have to recognize two realities. First, any steps designed to contain Pyongyang are only likely to have limited effectiveness, particularly since the North has ample ability to take effective countermeasures. That is certainly true for so-called "financical sanctions" against the North which many Bush Administration officials now claim inflicted real pain on Pyongyang. In fact, the North has ample ways to work around such measures if it is determined to do so. And, in the case of the Bush restrictions imposed in the fall of 2005, one could argue they led to the North's outburst of missile tests and its first nuclear test in fall 2006. So we may have won a skirmish but lost the battle.

Second, there is a tendency when talking about containment of North Korea to round up the usual suspects, in this case the Proliferation Security Initiative. I notice this is true of a number of Asia hands who seem to portrary PSI as some sort of easy solution. In fact, since I come from both the non-proliferation community and am sort of an Asia hand, I can say that PSI has very severe limitations and is not going to be very effective in stopping North Korean proliferation activities. That isnt to say that we should seek to bolster it. But lets not kid ourselves. The North Koreans have decades of experience smuggling nuclear technology into their country which can easily be used to smuggle it out. So my overall point is fine, lets step up containment measures but lets not kid ourselves. They arent a solution or a strategy. The same can be said when people harp on getting China to put more pressure on Pyongyang or strengthening consultations with our allies. All necessary but not sufficient.

At the end of the day, all roads lead back to Rome, or in this case Pyongyang. I agree that the North has made a decision not to give up its nuclear weapons. Moreover, I believe it made that decision in the 2005-2006 time frame, not recently because of internal political developments as some of my fellow North Korea hands have said recently. Thats just silly and reflects not reading everything the North has said and done over the past 3 years. And their disappointment is heightened by the fact that these same people were strong supporters of the "baby steps" approach taken by Ambassador Christopher Hill, the chief US negotiator, to try to build momentum with Pyongyang. Those steps have obviously evaporated because they were built on political quicksand.

Having said all that, I do believe that the North's decisions are not caste in concrete and that an active US effort to engage and dissuade Pyongyang might still turn this one around although it will take alot of time and effort to even have that chance. I am not sure the Obama administration has the will power or determination to take that effort but time will tell. Otherwise, Pyongyang will definitely go its merry way regardless of any containment measures. And that could mean all sorts of steps that will blow a hole in the international non-proliferation regime and prevent any forward progress in building peace and stability in Northeast Asia.

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One of Our Policies is Missing

Last month, North Korea made real progress in both its ballistic weapons program and its saber-rattling diplomacy, even though the missile it fired failed to put a payload in orbit. In 2006, their missile flew 43 seconds. This one flew over 15 minutes and 2,500 miles. That means that the separation of three stages performed well enough and that the first two stages achieved their performance levels. That by any measure is substantial progress. By publicly ignoring the strides forward made by North Korea and barely responding to the fact that Pyongyang brushed-off White House objections to the launch--the US looked pretty toothless.

Furthermore, by not standing firm with the North Koreans, Pyongyang has, as it has done in the past, only gotten more belligerent and demanding. Since they got more indifference from the White House than concessions, however, they will probably just up the ante. They most likely will test another nuclear weapon before Christmas.

The United States bargaining position is clearly weaker than it was year ago.  My colleague at Heritage, Bruce Klinger who has studied this region as well as anyone has concluded, “[t]here may simply be no set of inducements that ensures North Korea abandons its nuclear weapons. There is a growing sense that Pyongyang's antics and stalling tactics are not merely negotiating ploys, but instead are designed to achieve international acceptance of North Korea as a nuclear power. North Korean officials have repeatedly indicated that is precisely their intention.”

If he is right, and I think he is, it is time to start working on a “Plan B” for what to do after the Six Party talks fail.

Part of the answer has to be stronger containment of North Korea. That means beefing-up the Proliferation Security Initiative to combat trafficking in weapons and materials and speeding-up rather than cutting back on US strategic missile defense programs.

The White House needs to get ahead of the North Korea challenge. Right now, it seems to be slipping behind.

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 The US-North Korean relationship is best described by the great American cartoonist, Charles Schulz, the creator of "Peanuts."  In the fall of every year, the egocentric and mean spirited Lucy would invite the selfless and well intentioned Charlie Brown to punt a football.  At the last second, Lucy would pull back the football and Charlie would land flat on his back.  Lucy would then suggest pithily that Charlie should not have trusted her to begin with and with a "stupid Charlie Brown" walk away.

Sadly, Lucy now has nuclear weapons and it we simply have to stop acting like Charlie Brown.  Pyongyang has the inside track on all negotiations. They have the devices and are trying to weaponize them.  Tokyo is frightened, Seoul is angry and Beijing wishes it would go away.  And the U.S. remains the essential player to balance this all out.

But, what to do.  First, there must be a complete understanding that Lucy will always be Lucy.  Pyongyang -- really Kim Chong Il -- is an absolute dictatorship whose main goal is to survive. It is completely reptilian in the terms of its existence. Its people are fodder for its goal of survival.  Its relationships with neighbors and enemies are about its survival.  

The U.S., however, provides something more than survival - we are about Pyongyang's ego.  Kim wants to be a player.  The nukes and the threats and the tantrums are for Washington and are meant to show him as an equal or better.  While it is easy for us to dismiss Kim and co. as a collective group of stark raving mad looneys, they are still there after 50 plus years and somehow managed to slip by us the creation of nukes and the systems to deliver them.

So what is Washington to do. Know thy Lucy.   First, like it or not, we are the indispensable man in the six-party talks.  It is up to us to keep them going even if it means treating Pyongyang like a normal nation.  Remember we are dealing with Lucy -- not going to change her mind but at least we can keep her calm by being an equal with her.

 Second, and this one is going to be really painful for old Charlie Brown, recognize we are going to make little if any progress on this one.  Short of a large scale military strike, Pyongyang is not moving backwards on this issue.  But it is interested in survival.  If is food they need, find a way to trade off food for something we want.  Small steps in time.  

Until Kim drops dead -- and sadly that is not likely soon -- this is our way forward.  Slow steps based on Pyongyang's self interests. There are no solutions here.  Simply processes that lower tensions and ameliorate immediate problems.  Sorry Charlie Brow.  But you are right.  Good grief!

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The North Korea nuclear problem must be managed and contained, even if it can’t be resolved. Priority should be accorded to coordinating with our allies, South Korea and Japan, and with China, which is the only country with leverage over North Korea, on the best approach to take toward Pyongyang. That is exactly what Bosworth has been doing this past week. Preventing proliferation of nuclear material should be a primary focus. PSI activities should be reinvigorated. South Korea has said it will join. China should also become a member or at least participate in selective PSI activities. Russia, which joined PSI in 2004 but hasn’t been active participant in recent years, should step up its involvement. Letting North Korea get away with transferring nuclear technology to Syria without consequences was a mistake that should not be repeated. The Obama administration should send clear signals that proliferation will not be tolerated.

The six party talks haven’t succeeded as a means of persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. But they have been a useful mechanism to multilateralize the problem and strengthen policy coordination among the other five parties. It is premature to disband the talks; Pyongyang may return to the negotiating table at some point in the future when it perceives it is in its interest to do so.

The Obama administration is right to not appear overly eager to reconvene the six party talks at present. This is not the time to provide North Korea with rewards for its bad behavior just to hold another round of empty dialogue. The U.S. has already bought Yongbyon three times; undoubtedly Pyongyang is going to try to sell it again to the new U.S. administration.

Instead, the U.S. should work with its partners to strengthen enforcement of sanctions under UNSCR 1718 and increase the costs to North Korea of staying away from the negotiating table. At the same time, the P-5 and Japan should discuss now what steps will be taken in response to further North Korean missile launches and another nuclear test.

The U.S. must remain firmly committed to denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. U.S. interests in Asia would be damaged if Japan and South Korea concluded that the U.S. was willing to tacitly accept a nuclear North Korea, even if that judgment were wrong.

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Out here on the edge of wonk-dom in New York City, some of us believe that it may still be possible to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, albeit it will be much more difficult now that we have to deal with a newly confident Pyongyang and the residue of the failed Bush years. (Note here the problem isn’t as many argue that the North is going through an internal political transition but much more complicated.) As one of that distinct minority I wanted to address the arguments made advising us to adopt a policy of “benign neglect“ which implicitly assumes we can “manage” the North Korea problem until better days come along.

I think its important to distinguish between what to do in the current situation as opposed to a few months down the road when it may cool down somewhat. The administration may still be somewhat in disarray on this issue but it is not pursuing a policy of benign neglect. Ambassador Bosworth is sending signals whenever possible that the door is open for reengagement with the North on the diplomatic front. Moreover, if one reads the administration’s statements closely, it is clear that one objective here is to inject more flexibility into the diplomatic process. Its stance is not “It’s either the Six Party Talks or the highway,” but rather more nuanced talking about bilateral contacts as preparation for those talks. I suspect it is also sending the same signals to Pyongyang through private channels as well.

The administration is also adopting the right posture toward our allies—South Korea and Japan—as well as China and Russia. We are trying to work closely with all parties to build a coalition opposing the North’s actions. But it is worth noting that South Korea and Japan are getting nervous that Washington doesn’t have a plan for reengaging the North in negotiations and China is probably concerned as well. That’s one important reason why “benign neglect” can only be tactical and temporary.

In thinking about our longer-term strategy in dealing with North Korea, benign neglect is also a loser. We have to understand what the North is doing today is not, as some people believe, a “cry for attention.” It isn’t some tactical move on Pyongyang’s part to drag us back into negotiations so it can extract bennies from us. North Korea today is a very different animal from 2000 when a joint U.S.-North Korea communiqué seemed to herald the beginning of a new era and when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited the North. When viewed from Pyongyang, its foreign policy over the past 15 years has been a miserable failure. At the core of that failure was the collapse of U.S.-North Korean relations in 2002 and more recently, its efforts to build bridges to Tokyo and Seoul.  

As a result, today Pyongyang is less interested in the U.S. as a strategic partner and more interested in playing it off against China. The North is less interested in fostering international economic ties and more satisfied with the current state of its economy. With a nuclear test under its belt, the North is less interested in giving up its weapons of mass destruction and more interested in bullying Washington, South Korea, Japan, and China. And on top of all this there is the current internal situation in Pyongyang which may be having some effect on policy-making although it is far from clear. While all of this will make it harder to achieve our objectives, the idea of benign neglect creates a self-fulfilling prophesy. We will fail, so why even try?

Moreover, benign neglect as a strategy, aside from being likely to provoke severe fissures with our allies and China, seriously underestimates the North’s ability to take actions contrary to the interests of the United States, our allies, and the international community that we cannot ignore. It only invites the North to launch more tests designed to help build bigger and better missiles, to initiate greater cooperation with Iran in developing such technologies, as well as stepped up campaigns to sell them abroad, to further export nuclear technology like the suspected Syria deal, and to advance its own nuclear weapons program, in part through cooperation with Iran. And I am sure the North has other moves in its playbook designed to upset and threaten our allies. We should certainly respond as best we can to show our displeasure but we also have to recognize the reality that the tools available are limited.

We need to press the reset button on US policy and begin a long, difficult and perhaps ultimately unsuccessful uphill trek on the road to denuclearization. The only chance we have to achieve that objective will be a “bolder is better approach” combining both process and substance. That means understanding that the North wants to be left alone so it can continue down this merry path. And it means understanding that the only way to change the North’s policy trajectory is to actively use all our tools—diplomatic and otherwise, incentives and disincentives—to deflect it from the current course.

Washington needs a diplomatic five-year plan that tries to gradually repair political relations between Washington and Pyongyang, tries to push forward more rapidly in nuclear talks and to build a broader dialogue to include other subjects such as missiles, non-proliferation, peace on the peninsula, the recovery of the remains of American missing in action during the Korean war, human security, and cultural exchanges. We should be ready to engage Pyongyang at every level up to the most senior officials if that will advance American objectives and to start dialogues with others in Pyongyang—such as the military—in addition to our usual Foreign Ministry suspects. We also need to, of course, address North Korean demands which will probably be far-reaching.

There is certainly no guarantee this approach will work. But even if we fall short, there will be potentially significant benefits. We are likely to make greater progress towards our ultimate political and security objectives. At the end of the day, that will produce better results in “managing” the North Korea threat by putting in place a stronger set of constraints based on negotiated limits and the new leverage we create through reaching agreements.  It will strengthen both our leadership position in East Asia and our ability to work more effectively in getting Chinese support for our policies. And any progress in pushing down this road will put us in a much better position to deal with the uncertainties of a post-Kim Jong Il North Korea.

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North Korea is undergoing significant internal stress related to the illness last summer of its leader, Kim Jong-il. As a result, the regime has not had the dexterity or foresight to take advantage of the transition from the Bush administration to the Obama administration. A strategic mistake. Instead, Pyongyang’s recent actions have been rather nationalistic, designed to demonstrate a sense of strength and pride for a domestic audience uncertain about the health of the leader and the long-term survival of the regime. The Obama administration, not yet having its full complement of Asia-hands in place, has reacted with remarkable calm and restraint in the face of Pyongyang’s provocative behavior.

The challenge the administration faces is finding the right balance of deliberate consultation (modified benign neglect) and active engagement that does not do harm to the multilateral nature of the eventual solution (assuming there is one) to the North Korean nuclear problem. If it were not for the demonstrated capability to proliferate (North Korean nuclear technology support to Syria), the United States could afford to let the situation “ripen” on its own. Another missile launch or nuclear detonation would only serve to further isolate Pyongyang from Beijing and would not prove too destabilizing. However, letting Pyongyang stew in its isolation juices for too long does not move us any closer to resolving our most pressing concerns and risks collateral damage to our allies, Seoul and Tokyo.

I would recommend a continued policy of restraint, not reacting to each and every North Korean bluster as we finally move to change the unfortunate decades long dynamic of chasing after Pyongyang. In this interim period of Six Party Talks inactivity (which could well prove to be permanent), the administration should continue close consultations with our partners, building pragmatic options for a more expansive agenda that includes nonproliferation, missiles, highly enriched uranium and the verifiable reversal of Pyongyang’s plutonium-based nuclear program. Ambassador Bosworth will, appropriately, reengage the North Koreans on a bilateral basis with the underlying intent to reestablish a multilateral framework, but it ought not to be too soon and it ought to be from a position of strength.

The United States also needs to work privately to support those initiatives that would assist in reducing tension on the peninsula that otherwise will increase if North Korea is left to its own devices. We need to create conditions that will enhance opportunities for success. One such idea would be for the administration to support the reciprocal visit of Pyongyang’s Symphony to the United States. North Korea was upset when this project was not realized following the highly successful visit of the New York Philharmonic to Pyongyang last year. The coordination process would be a form of confidence building and just might reduce the likelihood of North Korean missile or nuclear tests during the run up and actual visit. The time something of this nature would buy would allow the administration to build incentive and disincentive consensus of how to move forward among the critical players and perhaps break the cycle of chasing after Pyongyang.

Bottomline: The Obama administration would be wise to pursue a near-term policy of modified benign neglect with indirect active engagement.

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