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PYONGYANG
WATCH
'We have nukes': The six-party
failure
By Aidan Foster-Carter
When
the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear issue
were first held in 2003, this seemed the way to
go. China's keenness to 
host them
showed a welcome proactiveness by its new leaders,
after long passivity to the nasty crisis brewing
on its borders. Also, this was a full house: both
Koreas plus all four powers - China, the United
States, Japan and Russia - bound to the Korean
Peninsula by geography or history. Hopes ran high
that this format would get somewhere.
Two
years and three rounds later, optimism is harder
to maintain. In fact, it was shattered on
Thursday. After Pyongyang's announcement for the
first time that it has nuclear weapons and is
abandoning the talks, it is time to be honest
about the many ways in which this forum has
failed.
From the first, it was unwieldy.
Former US negotiator Jack Pritchard complained
that 48 interpreters were needed. Despite US
insistence that North Korea is not just a
bilateral concern, we all know who the two
principals are. Rather than facilitating direct
dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang, this
sextet has in practice allowed both to avoid it.
Second, we risked mistaking process for
progress. In what one might call "mission shrink"
- the opposite of mission creep - the policy goal
retreated to merely trying to drag the North
Korean horse to water, regardless of whether it
would drink if it ever got there. So if a
long-delayed fourth round of talks is announced in
spite of Thursday's development, hold the
champagne. Pyongyang has played this
will-they-won't-they game for decades: one step
forward, two steps back.
Third, there was
bad faith all around. The six-party charade
created an illusion of motion, which suited
everyone. The administration of US President
George W Bush could pretend it was engaging North
Korea, when in fact it is internally divided - and
preoccupied elsewhere. Not until last June was
secretary of state Colin Powell allowed to offer a
detailed plan: too late, with the US elections
due. There is no sign that Bush II will be any
readier to focus seriously (not just rhetorically)
on Korea.
Fourth, for the other parties,
the six-party talks were a fig leaf. China, Russia
and the new South Korea form a post-Cold War axis
of carrot. Like the three monkeys of fable, they
see, hear and speak no evil of North Korean leader
Kim Jong-il. Tact is one thing, but Panglossian
complacency another. Does this troika really
believe their own smiley assurances that
everything will turn out fine? (Only Japan,
pursuing its own abductions agenda - North Korea
abducted its citizens - wields a balanced mix of
stick and carrot.)
Fifth, fetishizing the
six-party (non-)process is a dangerous diversion.
The ways North Korea is a threat have long been
legion. Two nuclear programs - both now out of
control, thanks to Bush's bungling - are just for
starters. Add in chemical and biological weapons,
missile development and proliferation (addressed
by former president Bill Clinton - Bush broke this
off), huge conventional and special forces; not to
mention counterfeiting, trafficking, refugees, and
human-rights abuses. Just to list this dire litany
is to despair of ever resolving it all - unless
Kim Jong-il emulates Libya's Colonel Muammar
Gaddafi and strikes the mother of all grand
bargains.
Even if he may want to, none is
on offer. But the Dear Leader has trouble at home
too. Six-party fixations have also distracted us
from internal North Korean politics: a murky area,
but one where hidden eruptions begin to ruffle the
bland theatrical veneer. Last year Kim purged his
brother-in-law and ex-right-hand man Chang
Song-taek. Three sons vie to be dauphin, with
rumors of murder plots (in Vienna, even). This
struggle may be over policy - hawks versus doves -
or simply power. Either way, stability can no
longer be taken for granted.
The
grassroots are restive too. A Seoul
non-governmental organization (NGO) lately
released the first-ever video of dissidents in the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Sunshine
cheerleaders rubbished this, but the real question
is: What took them so long? Half-baked reforms
have seen inflation soar and rations slashed. Yet
if the state no longer provides, the old social
contract is dead. Ever more North Koreans will
start to ask the Janet Jackson question of their
rulers: What have you done for me, lately?
It is crucial to see the big picture and
take the long view. The key North Korea question
is how and when - not whether - this ghastly
failed regime will cease to be. Just possibly it
might manage to morph into something more
sensible, like China and Vietnam. But that looks a
long shot. It is only prudent to guard against and
plan for much bumpier landings.
Here, the
sagging six-party process just might have a use
after all. As Professor Francis Fukuyama has
argued, the other five could reconstitute
themselves as a permanent regional security body,
which Northeast Asia has sorely lacked hitherto.
Item 1 on the agenda, urgently, is to agree who
will or will not intervene if North Korea blows,
or collapses into chaos.
That will be a
moment of peril. A century ago, Korea's three
neighbors fought two wars for control of a dying
kingdom. A terrible war also followed the
superpowers' partition of the peninsula in 1945.
Now, as another Korean dynasty looks moribund, it
is vital that all concerned cooperate to prevent a
tough transition becoming a third cataclysm. That
is the real issue in Korea now; not just nukes,
still less the fate of a hexagonal table in
Beijing.
Aidan Foster-Carter is
honorary senior research fellow in sociology and
modern Korea at Leeds University, England. He has
followed North Korean affairs for 35 years.
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