North Korea's decision to rejoin the six-nation talks about the future of its nuclear weapons program has been rightly greeted with caution. It will cost the Pyongyang regime nothing to get back to the table and restart the talks it abandoned almost exactly a year ago. The price, had it refused to begin talking again, might, on the other hand, have been considerable.
Returning to the negotiations indeed probably tips the complex diplomatic balance in North Korea’s favor. China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States have all been insisting that the talks resume. The resumption therefore will make it hard for any of them to get up and walk away, even if, as seems highly likely, it again becomes apparent that the bargaining is leading nowhere. The North Koreans meanwhile will have a degree of cover under which to continue their work of building themselves a nuclear weapon that works properly.
They have made the calculation that the bigger the threat they can pose, the stronger will be their bargaining power and the greater their ultimate reward from the international community. Unfortunately this analysis almost certainly also embraces the conclusion that the minute North Korea truly abandons its nuclear armaments program, it will be totally without leverage. Pyongyang would have no future deterrent against all the current and threatened sanctions — such as the suspension of Chinese oil and electricity supplies.
The regime of Kim Jong-Il knows full well that it has few friends in the international community and its nuclear test has clearly infuriated its best ally, China. It probably suspects that its enemies are no longer prepared to tolerate its continued existence. Its maverick behavior, regular dissimulation and consistent subterfuge have made it simply too unreliable a party to any lasting deal. In other words, Pyongyang will view its return to the negotiating table as the only way it can survive. The minute it signs an agreement to give up its nuclear ambitions, its days are numbered.
Maybe there are other WMD plans that the North Koreas are developing which they might hope would replace a lost nuclear deterrent. The calculation may be that the country can reap the rewards of abandoning its atomic bomb and still remain secure from the outside attack that dominates its thinking.
How China would react if Pyongyang replaced one deadly threat with another is still hard to gauge. As it betters its political and economic position in the world, it no longer needs a quarrelsome ally on its southern border. Beijing may well already have worked out that it has more to gain from uniting the two Koreas and asserting its regional power than sustaining such an unreliable and objectionable regime. If so, is it merely awaiting an opportunity to get rid of the Kim regime?
The one positive development likely from North Korea’s return to talks is that South Korea is to review its decision on half a million tons of suspended food aid. North Korea’s captive and regimented population will thus not have to cope with starvation along with all their many other hardships and woes.
