Blatant Self-Promotion

I don't normally do this (wait... yes I do), but yesterday I was interviewed by the Daily News for today's story on local reactions to North Korea. I can't find an electronic copy of the story, but my two lines (w00t!) appear at the bottom of "Local reaction to N Korea test low key" on page 3. I'll type a copy here once I get my hands on it!

Update: I've sent letters to the editor to both The Daily News and The National Post. While I enjoyed The Daily News' editorial, it makes a few errors, putting too much emphasis on the role of China in getting the Six-Party Talks ... talking... again. The current Six-Party impasse in fact stems from U.S. sanctions on a non-nuclear issue -- the ball is in the U.S.'s court to get North Korea back to the negotiating table, and back to the September 2005 agreement that held so much promise.

The Post's editorial is a little bit more ridiculous. Check it out here. In effect, the editorial advocates abandoning negotiations and concentrating on regime change. While this isn't a bad idea in principle, the editors at the Post have completely underestimated South Korea's unwillingness to push North Korea into a hard-landing collapse. No amount of sanctions will topple Kim Jong-Il's regime, especially if either South Korea or China are reluctant to go ahead with a harder line. Here's my letter:

The National Post's October 10 editorial ("Kim Jong-Il's explosive
mistake") does a fine job of highlighting the various problems presented
by attacking and/or ignoring North Korea's burgeoning nuclear programme.
Unfortunately, it leaves much to be desired in terms of diplomatic
solutions. While a concerted, international plan for regime change in
North Korea sounds like a novel idea, it may not be so novel in practice.
Kim Jong-Il's regime has proven resilient to international sanctions, no
matter how "crippling" their nature. In fact, increasingly aggressive
behaviour from external aggressors only further legitimizes the country's
unyielding belief in Juche, a siege-mentality of sorts that stresses
international isolation, economic autarky, and Kim Jong-Il's own cult of
personality. Sanctioning and threatening North Korea with sticks will only
compel the nation to develop its nuclear technologies faster, as it has
done in the past.

A carrots-for-compliance, sticks-for-noncompliance approach has a better
track record. The 1994 Agreed Framework successfully limited North Korea's
nuclear programme for nearly a decade. And it fell apart not because North
Korea had any latent desire to cheat, but because a similarly noncompliant
U.S gave the DPRK room to do so.

(By 2003, when evidence of North Korea's alleged uranium programme was
presented, almost every promise made to North Korea by the U.S. had been
delayed, cancelled, or forgotten. And evidence of North Korea's HEU
programme has yet to surface anywhere, with many corroborating agencies in
the East Asian region now recanting their claims.)

North Korea may indeed be a cheater for life. It would make little sense
for the regime to give up its nuclear arms, the only real hand it can play
at the international table.

But concentrating only on regime change, as your editorial suggests, would
be at best futile, at worst dangerous. If North Korea is to be gradually
opened up to the world, short-term cooperation with North Korea on the
nuclear issue will be necessary, cheating or no cheating. If North Korea
is to undergo a 'hard-landing' in which it collapses, South Korea and
China will have to be convinced that it is in their best interests to ruin
the North Korean economic system. If by some miracle this works, we can
rest assured that North Korea will attempt to stay afloat by selling its
nuclear technologies, WMDs and missiles to anyone who will buy. And, in
his dying hour, Kim Jong-Il may very well push every red button he has.

Christopher LaRoche, BJH, MA
Researcher,
Dalhousie University