Next Steps on the North Korean Nuclear Challenge

Tuesday, September 19th, 2006

Moderator:

Daryl G. Kimball
Executive Director, Arms Control Association

Speakers:

Representative Jim Leach (R-Iowa)

James Kelly
Senior Advisor, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Dan Poneman
Principal, Scowcroft Group

Transcript by
Federal News Service
Washington, D.C.

DARYL KIMBALL: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this afternoon’s Arms Control Association press briefing on a critically important, but often forgotten challenge: North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. I’m Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association and I’m glad that so many people have shown up today. The Arms Control Association, as many of you know, is a nonpartisan organization established in 1971 – this is our 35th anniversary – to educate the public about effective arms control and nonproliferation strategies. Our staff, our members, and our board of directors have for many years been concerned about the North Korean nuclear program and we’ve advocated for effective diplomacy designed to prevent North Korea from becoming the world’s ninth nuclear-weapon state. 

Exactly one year ago on this date, the United States, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and China agreed to a milestone joint statement stipulating goals and principles for a step-by-step, action-for-action plan to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula in a verifiable manner and move toward normalized relations with North Korea. The September Framework Agreement, a copy of which we have out on the table here, was a product of months of on-and-off negotiations through the six-party process held mainly in Beijing. At the time, it was considered the last best chance to resolve what is really the latest of a series of crises surrounding North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. 

The latest crisis began unfolding back in the fall of 2002 when the United States confronted North Korean diplomats about a covert uranium enrichment effort. Subsequently, fuel oil shipments to North Korea were terminated and North Korea decided to eject IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspectors from its nuclear complex, renew plutonium production, and announce that it was withdrawing from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). But in a year since the September 2005 Joint Statement Framework Agreement, there has been no progress on its implementation. Washington and Pyongyang remain at odds over the substance and sequencing of the deal and no follow-up talks are currently scheduled. U.S. officials, up until this week, refused to engage in direct bilateral talks and the recent North Korean ballistic missile tests, of course, have soured prospects for the resumption of talks.

I will just note that as Arms Control Association research analyst Paul Kerr reports in this month’s issue of Arms Control Today, a wide range of experts and officials are concerned that the six-party process is on the verge of collapse. Pyongyang blames the breakdown mainly on U.S. efforts to crack down on illicit North Korean financial transactions and extract concessions in the six-party talks. The United States says it must take action against money laundering and that Pyongyang’s complaints are aimed at providing a convenient excuse to avoid returning to the six-party talks. In a meeting with South Korea’s president this past week, President Bush again said his goal was to get North Korea to return to the six-party talks.        

Now, given that North Korea continues to produce plutonium for its suspected nuclear weapons program and is believed by some to be preparing for a nuclear weapons test explosion, in my view, inaction is not a realistic option. It’s also clear to me and I believe an increasing number of concerned observers that the current U.S. approach needs to be reevaluated and adjusted. Results matter more than being correct on principle. And seeing North Korea take further provocative actions that could seriously upset stability and security in all of East Asia is not something that anyone of us wants to see. 

Today, we have three very distinguished and knowledgeable people here to discuss where we go in terms of resolving this crisis. What can we do to revitalize the diplomatic process? How can we implement the September 2005 Framework Agreement? And, in the end, how can we ensure that North Korea’s fissile production capacity is halted and verifiably eliminated? 

First, we’re going to hear from Congressman James Leach of Iowa, who is chairman of the House International Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He was first elected to Congress in 1976 when I was but a twelve-year-old in Oxford, Ohio, so he has a vast amount of experience. Congressman Leach began his government service on the staff of then-Representative Donald Rumsfeld and he has spent a lot of time on these issues; worked for many years as a Foreign Service officer, including time at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. I would just add that Congressman Leach has been one of the most thoughtful and outspoken members of Congress on the North Korean issue in the last several months and years.

Next, we’re going to hear from James Kelly, who is currently senior adviser and distinguished alumni at the Center for Strategic International Studies.  Jim has held several senior government posts, most recently from 2001 through 2004 when he served as assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, where he was directly involved in talks with North Korea.

Last, but not least, we have Dan Poneman, who’s currently a principal at the Scowcroft Group. Dan is a former National Security Council staff director. He first joined the NSC in 1990 and later served as special assistant to the president and senior director for nonproliferation and export controls through the last North Korean crisis in the mid-1990s. 

After each of them speaks, we’re going to take questions from our audience – we have a large audience today. We should have over a half hour for questions and answers. With that, I would welcome Congressman Leach to the podium. 

Thank you very much for being here today and taking time off from your schedule.   

REP. JIM LEACH: Thank you and I’m honored to be with you and particularly to be with two such distinguished experts on the subject as my fellow panelists. There are few parallels in history in which the U.S. has found itself with a less appealing menu of options than with North Korea. Pyongyang’s ongoing nuclear program, its missile tests, and illicit exports have profound implications for general regional stability, the international nonproliferation regime, and the national security of this country. But as perplexing as our options are, it’s increasingly difficult to resist the conclusion that our approach toward North Korea during the past few years has been marked by a lack of strategic imagination, most acutely reflected in the stubborn aversion to bilateral diplomacy.

We’re now precisely a year beyond the joint statement of principles under which North Korea committed to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs, but we are no closer to realizing those goals. It’s regrettable that despite invitation from the North, the administration has refused to allow our top diplomats to visit Pyongyang to test the boundaries and push the implementation of the joint statement. The year-long hiatus in the six-party talks, North Korea’s continued reprocessing of their nuclear materials, and the missile firings of July 4th underscore the intransigence of the parties and the processes, as well as the substantive nature of the challenges ahead. 

Even the ostensible unity demonstrated in the UN Security Council’s unanimous adoption of Resolution 1695 on July 15th calling on parties to refrain from transferring items or financial resources in relation to the DPRK’s missile or WMD programs appears of doubtful value given China’s stated opposition to any acts that would lead to further tension. The continuation of present circumstances is particularly regrettable because time is on no one’s side. Every day of the status quo is another day for the North Korean regime to produce additional fissile material and another day that the people of North Korea fall further behind the remarkable economic and social march of the rest of Asia.

Before offering concerns about the United States’ current negotiating disposition, allow me to note areas of concurrence. Given North Korea’s track record, one cannot help but share the administration’s healthy skepticism about the DPRK’s strategic intentions. But skepticism is an attitude, not a policy. All can agree that North Korea’s well practiced at deliberately creating tensions and exploiting them for its own benefit. All can agree that negotiations should focus on substantive change of behavior rather than the mere reduction of surface tensions with polite talk. All can agree that the United States has wisely chosen to prioritize the six-party process, which showcases the frailty of the DPRK position and brings multiple stakeholders together to pursue a common international interest in North Korean denuclearization. 

But while the six-party framework makes eminently good sense, there is nothing theological or exclusive about negotiating methodology. At present, the United States is in an ironic circumstance where we have tied ourselves solely to a multilateral process in which other parties are taking the lead. Other participants have supplemented their six-party contacts with bilateral discussions outside the Beijing framework and there is general consensus abroad that the U.S. should do the same. Talking directly with Pyongyang is neither a favor nor a capitulation. In avoiding bilateral contacts, the United States does not demonstrate a lack of trust to North Korea so much as a lack of trust in its own abilities to conduct creative diplomacy in the pursuit of our national interest. 

Diplomacy is about a respectful process even when respectful relations may not exist between parties. It is the exchange of perspectives, particularly between mutually mistrustful parties, that are so important. That is why our founders clearly contemplated that the new American republic would have diplomatic relations with undemocratic states. It is why Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, when faulted for talking to Arafat, noted, “You don’t make peace with friends.” For us to remain diplomatically reactive, as in the case of North Korea, cedes too much initiative to actors whose interests are not identical with our own, and allows the North Koreans and others to bizarrely paint us as an intransigent party.

Direct talks have other advantages given the stovepipe nature of North Korean decision-making. Our North Korean interlocutors in Beijing have little, if any, independent discretion. Thus, talking directly to senior North Korean military and party officials in Pyongyang would have the significant benefit of cutting out the middleman and engaging those who are actually making North Korea’s problematic decisions. It is realistic to measure your adversaries and understand their motivations and actions. It is realistic to meet with foreign leadership in such a way that decision-making can be advanced. It is pseudo-realism to ignore opportunities to reach mutual accommodation simply because an effort might involve taking the first step. At times there are advantages to engaging in diplomatic discussions in a multiparty framework, but these advantages are meager if an intransigent adversary refuses to participate or chooses to exact tributes of one kind or another in exchange for sending to a table of interlocutor diplomats with limited authority.

We’ve been asked today to contemplate what next step should or should not be considered in addressing the North Korean nuclear challenge. As a general matter, it’s in our interest to use the next round of talks, six-party or otherwise, to offer a clear, more detailed vision of the advantages that may accrue to Pyongyang if it abandons its march towards nuclearization. Even if we judge nuclear North Korean acceptance or perfect compliance to be unlikely, we err in letting opportunities for progress to go untested. North Korea appears to yearn for the respect a senior envoy visit implies; just because they have by their formal invitation earlier this summer evidenced this desire is no reason to shun their entreaty. Indeed, as highly as I regard Chris Hill, my instinct would be to be noncompliant, not by turning down North Korea’s initiation to him, but by trumping it with the addition of the president’s father to lead the U.S. delegation to Pyongyang. 

The goal should be to induce both a negotiating commitment and an attitudinal breakthrough. The most promising proposal could be one which provides impetus to the parties’ previous commitment in the joint statement to develop a peace treaty to bring the Korean War to a formal conclusion. The precise date and site for the holding of a formal peace conference should be put on the table. An understanding might follow the six-party talks would resume shortly after the peace conference and that if appropriate progress is made, negotiations might then commence and the possibility of establishing liaison offices and eventually embassies in our respective capitals.

Sequencing has been a critical U.S. concern as from a reverse perspective it has been for North Korea. Key figures in our executive branch apparently hold that nothing should occur until North Korea capitulates on the nuclear issue. But a peace treaty stands outside the other six-party issues to the degree that it does not involve all the parties and makes sense whatever the other results. The fact that North Korea has indicated support for such a prospect should not cause us to think that it is thus to our strategic advantage to hold a peace agreement hostage to the nuclear issue. In fact, it would help eliminate one of North Korea’s stated pretexts for its nuclear activities. 

Taking the initiative to provide the framework for a peace conference signaling an end to the Korean War would underscore our progressive intent and remind the Korean people – North and South – that the United States singularly and unequivocally supports the peaceful reunification of the Peninsula. The fact that the process suggestion would be American would shake up the negotiating dynamics, which North Korea has so far been using to serve its purposes of delay, and would perhaps give momentum to other dimensions of the joint statement. 

Analysts and opinion-leaders have recently been commenting on other possible next steps that bear consideration. As the world is increasingly aware, North Korea’s not only a rogue regime, it is a criminal one that funds itself partly by the sale of military hardware, counterfeit currency, and addictive drugs. But in setting U.S. policy priorities, it is imperative to recognize the fundamental difference between combating criminal activity and attempting to provoke regime collapse. Combating criminality is an obligation of all civilized states and efforts to stem North Korea’s counterfeiting and money laundering cannot credibly be termed as sanctions as North Korea has claimed. However, the latter goal – pushing for regime collapse by impairing licit as well as illicit commerce – would be irresponsible. There appears to be among a sector of ideologues an unrealistic assumption that regime change along the Polish or Czech models is possible and perhaps imminent.

From my limited observations in North Korea, such appears unlikely. No [Lech] Walesa or [Vaclev] Havel is in evidence. Indeed, the only alternative to Kim Jong Il’s rule would appear to be the army. A military regime could expect to be as antagonistic toward the United States as the current government and perhaps even more ideologically motivated. We should not, therefore, foreclose the possibility however remote of the evolutionary change in North Korea perhaps along the lines of the Vietnam model. We should welcome and incentivize transitions from illicit activities to licit commerce. Thus, at the same time that we pursue law enforcement activities, we should resist the temptation to impose additional U.S. sanctions that would have little direct affect, but could harm our national interest in subtle, but significant ways. 

For example, given the dearth of commerce between the U.S. and the DPRK, rolling back some of the license waivers put in place during the previous administration would likely have little effect on Pyongyang, but could potentially impair the ability of Americans to visit North Korea or to provide humanitarian assistance to the North Korean people. Furthermore, it would hand Korean officials another so-called hostile act with which to distract its populace and the world from the real impediment to progress: their own obduracy. Such distractions only serve to impede trust and coordination with their principle partner in these efforts: South Korea. Thus, any ratcheting-up of sanctions approaches should not occur without prior consultation with the allies in the region and with the Congress.  

Whatever the framework, any reasonable prospect of success for a negotiating process will require the active support of other parties, at least two of whom – South Korea and Japan – are also robust democracies. America must remain ever mindful that there are public sensibilities in the region and, despite the invectives of the North, refrain from rhetorical excesses that may provoke unnecessary fodder for distraction or evasion by North Korea. Realistic diplomacy demands an emphasis to be placed on issues rather than name-calling of leaders or countries. The Axis-of-Evil rhetoric, after all, may have been as counterproductive in South Korea as it was in North. In this, as in many circumstances, hard-nosed realism demands attention to soft-power diplomacy. I agree with those voices who insist that the United States should be principled and consistent in its approach to North Korea, but ours should be a consistency of pragmatism, not dogmatism. 

Policymakers would do well to recall the presidency of Ronald Reagan who opposed the SALT II Treaty and pursued the modernization and build-up the U.S. strategic nuclear forces during his first term before laying the groundwork for the START Treaty and forging a diplomatic partnership with Soviet Premier Gorbachev during his second. It might have seemed inconsistent to oppose arms limitation approaches (SALT) and then endorse armed reductions (START), but Reagan’s consistency lay in his objectives, not in pursuing them in only one manner. Deterrence and engagement are not mutually exclusive. Even in the face of DPRK provocations, the United States can afford to be bold in diplomacy with North Korea. The six-party process is a good framework, but it is likely to be bolstered rather than undercut if we augment it with bilateral initiatives.

I focus this afternoon on those variables that lie within our control. However, I don’t intend to detract from the reality that the most difficult strategic choices that have to be confronted in the region need to be made by Pyongyang. While decisions and attitudinal processes in Seoul, Beijing, Tokyo, and Washington are pertinent, we must continually bear in mind that the party that threatens stability in Northeast Asia is North Korea. Thus, as we move toward the next step, members of the international community must take care not to fault each other for the dilemmas created by Pyongyang’s singular intransigence. While there can be differences of judgment on approach, the politics of misdirected blame can easily get out of hand to the detriment of all the parties. Thank you.

KIMBALL: Thank you, Congressman. Thank you very much. Jim, you’re next, please.

JAMES KELLY: Thanks, Daryl, and thank you, Chairman Leach, for your very interesting proposals. It will be interesting to see if these are tried. I am struck in having this opportunity to talk a group whose primary interest is in arms control. I don’t think it’s unimportant to ask whether this is an arms control issue or a regional issue of East Asia. The fact, of course, is that it is both. This is an important issue of global security relating to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in general. But it is also very importantly a regional issue and the merging of the two is of exceptional importance.

I have been out of government for more than a year and a half and been in Honolulu over the summer. I’m not particularly current on the things that are going on in the recent testimony before the chairman’s committee, so I’m going to just raise a number of possibilities that may be there and remind our audience of some of the things that have gone before. 

First of all, what is it that the DPRK wants and how do nuclear weapons contribute to that is a basic question we have to ask. I think that the general conclusion, certainly mine, is above all survival of the regime is the first goal. A secondary goal would be assistance where there are as few or no conditions as possible. 

There are other desires, I think, that enter into this as well. Security assurances would be a part of that. My experience found that to vary considerably over time ever since the fall of 2003 Bangkok meeting; very little was heard of that. Although probably more, the agreement of a year ago, or the agreed principles of a year ago, I think, remain extremely important and remain a valid issue to be on the table. 

Does North Korea, as it says, seek nuclear weapons for the purpose of deterrence? I suspect that’s probably a part of it. What are the prospects of economic reform? Well, there are some interesting developments there. Is it tangible rewards – food or fuel or cash – that they seek or is it just a recognition or respect or a wish not to be ignored? Or is it the nature of this peculiar regime to need to feel threatened? After all, there is an army-first policy that goes back really about 10 years at a time of not particularly high tensions. The military-first policy requires that the first claim on any and all resources in North Korea goes to the military forces. To justify this kind of priority, it’s necessary to have a threat. The likelihood of an American attack on North Korea has been very, very small for many, many years and I would argue is smaller really than ever at this time. So there is a tendency to exaggerate the threat in terms of internal reasons there as well. 

Skipping over a lot of other details, I think it’s very important to note that this is a very old problem and that this represents – if you choose to characterize it that way – a series of failures that go back very many years. Recent historical studies have shown that Kim Il Sung was asking the Soviets for nuclear weapons and fissionable material as early as the 1960s. The construction of the reactor, the only reactor that North Korea has, began in 1979 with the assistance of the Soviet Union. North Korea first signed the NPT in 1985 even though it took seven more years before a safeguards agreement was done.  

In 1990 – or roughly there about – was the first indication of the repossessing of spent fuel to generate plutonium – and that’s important – because, as Daryl points out, results are what are necessary here and results of a halfway agreement would certainly be easy to obtain, but what is going to be needed is a much more comprehensive effort and that means it’s going to be much more difficult. We had a nuclear agreement in 1992 with South Korea that I think probably in the end will have some significance in how this thing is resolved. Then, of course, there was high-level dialogue at that time and then things started to break up in 1992. These are the earlier events that led to the negotiations that led to the Agreed Framework of 1994, which turned out to be a useful and significant, but partial solution. Partial in that it froze the spent fuel rods from which new plutonium could be generated, but failed to deal with the old plutonium. Then, of course, there were later discussions as well.

Without going all through the history, it became apparent in 2002 that a covert uranium enrichment project had been underway for a period of years. It was not minor. It was substantial in nature. It seems to me that this is something that has to be considered in developing a solution to the North Korean nuclear program. The fact is there is the plutonium that they have had to work with since 1989 and 1990. There is the plutonium that was reprocessed from the spent fuel rods in 2003. There is the roughly one weapons worth a year of plutonium that may have been generated by that nuclear reactor since that time and may be generated in the future. Then there is the covert uranium enrichment program of which so little is known, but which potentially could dwarf [the plutonium route] in terms of providing fissionable material.

So it’s a very complicated problem that requires, as Chairman Leach made clear, a strategic choice that so far North Korea has not made. The six-party talks were the solution that we developed after three-party talks in early of 2003. The joint statement of principles of a year ago was certainly significant, but it was not a breakthrough. As we’ve seen the negotiations are moribund now. They may come to life. Some of the measures recommended may be helpful in bringing them to live or then again they may not. It may just be that the DPRK reasons that it wants to be a nuclear weapons power, that it wants to be accepted in the way that Pakistan or India have been even though the differences are quite manifest from that circumstance. 

Then, of course, we had the missile fireworks on July 4th. Many years passed that North Korea had gone without firing a missile, at least, within its own territory. This was quite a display. The Taepo Dong – the intercontinental range missile – may have failed. The Nodongs, the advanced SCUDs seemed to have been more successful. What’s particularly interesting to me is that an intermediate-range ballistic missile that was tested by Iran apparently with North Korean collaboration earlier this year was the missile, probably the most dangerous in their arsenal that was not tested on July 4th. Then, of course, we ask what is the follow-on action that may develop more attention? Is it going to be some other missile shot? Is it going to be a nuclear weapons test? This is certainly possible. We have this fairly remarkable Resolution 1695 from the Security Council on which Japan and Australia took some actions today that are going to be very important part of this.

All this is proceeding along slowly, agonizingly slowly, and Americans can never lose sight that there really are risks here. Time, as the Chairman said, is not on our side. It’s very important for our neighbors and partners to understand that there are serious dangers in this. The dread of most Americans, certainly of mine, would be the marriage of fissionable materials and Jihadist terrorists. There is no evidence that I have ever been aware of any such connections, but it’s something, a horror option, that cannot be ruled out that would totally change the framework and put other parts of the world – certainly Iran and North Korea – in very extreme danger in addition to whatever terrible damage that may have been done. 

So all concerned really do have a stake in trying to move this process along, whether that’s North Korea’s desire or not. That said, there are some very interesting opportunities that have not historically been there. The South Korean engagement that is going on, the changed attitudes – the DPRK used to be viewed in South Korea as some sort of dreaded potential enemy; now they are seen as more misguided and impoverished cousins. There are powerful incentives in any South Korean government for not magnifying the tensions that exist. That is something that is one of the differences in the six-party process that is important as well.

The economic activity in North Korea is also unprecedented and also low-key. A recent Chinese visitor told me that the RMB was all that that particular visitor needed there; that it seems to be the currency that everyone was using. This is certainly an unprecedented development that’s coming along. It could be that money from China, whether it be in small increments or large, is trying to set in motion the kind of change that has happened elsewhere in East Asia, whether this will be resisted internally or not. 

So we have the choices that are here. How do we get the statement of principles moving again? I think the important thing is to try to find some way to do that, but recognize that at the end of the day it may still be impossible. But our objectives, I think, have to be clear: that a complete resolution of the nuclear weapons problem in a verifiable way is the minimum that America should settle for. I don’t agree with the Chairman. I don’t think the position in the administration has ever been that North Korea had to do everything before the U.S. would do anything. I think the statement of principles and the various discussions before that have made it clear: actions for actions, words for words. There has to be a step by step, but coordinated response. 

The administration, I hope, is ready to work on that. It certainly was ready to work on it when I was there. There just never was the opportunity because North Korea was not interested in getting into that kind of detail. The question remains is there any combination of positive incentives, material or otherwise, that will convince North Korea that it needs to do that? 

So what I see as the best prospect, which we all would agree to be a very unattractive lot, is that this is not India. It is not even Pakistan. There is no reason to ever accept North Korea as a nuclear-weapon state. Pressure and persistence counts for a lot in Asia and will count on this. The alternatives in the end to the six-party talks are engaging the South Koreans, especially directly, face-to-face. That has been the goal for many of the 40 or 50 years we’ve been going on here now. We now have that. It is essential that the South Koreans be involved in this. It’s also essential that Japan be involved because there are going to need to be the kind of positive financial incentives that only they can offer.

The U.S. is going to be important in that, but China is also playing a useful role. In the end, we may want to tactically have direct talks and meetings and send high-level representatives, but I think there are not going to be many alternatives to the six-party process. Other than that, persistence and patience is what’s going to be needed because it’s the only way that’s likely to work. Thank you.

KIMBALL: Thank you very much. Dan Poneman, you’re next, please.

DAN PONEMAN: Thank you very much, Daryl, for the invitation to join you today.  I’m honored to share a panel with the Chairman and Assistant Secretary Kelly, both of whom have done so much to tackle this really daunting problem, as you’ve heard. It’s always challenging to go third on a panel like this especially when I find myself in a high degree of agreement with much of what’s been said. I’m reminded of the line imputed to Moe Udall in the Congress, which is: “Everything that can be said, has been said, but not everyone has said it.” I’ll try to avoid merely echoing comments. 

I actually called Daryl a few minutes before the start of the panel and asked him what he wanted me to talk about and he said, “The future.” So I’m going to start by talking about the past because I never do what I’m told. But I do think it’s important because as George Santayana said, “Those who don’t study history are condemned to repeat it.” So let me just very briefly talk about where we were when I started working on this problem in the 1990 timeframe and compare that to where we are now and see if in doing that comparison, we might come up with some lessons about where to go in the future. So like I promised Daryl, I will get to the point that you wanted me to reach. 

By the early 1990s, and Jim Kelly gave you some of what went into this, we the United States confronted a rampant, uncontrolled plutonium production program. Let’s just be clear about that. There had already been at that point undisclosed separation of plutonium. There had already been a construction of a large reactor. People called it a five-megawatt reactor, but that’s under the fiction that the electricity from that reactor would be used. It’s about a 20- to 25-megawatt thermal reactor, which means it’s a really good producer of plutonium.  (Audio Break.)

We at that time, the earlier Bush administration, worked very hard to contain this. There were a number of initiatives, which I will not relate, but the upshot of them was we did secure the North-South Denuclearization Declaration, which committed both North and South Korea to refrain from either plutonium reprocessing or uranium enrichment.

We ended up after an unconscionably long gap, since 1985, getting the North Koreans to accept IAEA safeguards. We got IAEA inspectors into the country. We had a bilateral meeting at the highest ever levels between then Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Arnold Kantor and his North Korean counterpart. Then, things fell apart because I think somewhat to the surprise of the North Koreans, the IAEA inspectors actually caught them cheating. This is a tape which we will rewind later in the program and it turns out that at that time North Korea had accumulated, we believe, enough plutonium for about one to two nuclear weapons. 

What to do? Now, at this time the IAEA was getting exercised that they couldn’t find the evidence they wanted for past North Korean activities. The North Korean were getting exercised that the IAEA was getting extremely nosy and the North Koreans said, “We’re out of here. March 12th, 1993, we’re leaving the Nonproliferation Treaty.” Therefore, the U.S. government was confronted with a choice of what to do? 

This is not rocket science at this point. Broad options, number one: attack. Number two: acquiesce in the acquisition of nuclear weapons by North Korea; and you can dress it up by calling it a deterrence or containment, but it’s acquiescence to the first order. Or three: negotiate. Then, as now, none of the three options were attractive. Then, as now, we asked ourselves the question: Can we trust the North Koreans? Then, as now, we answered, no. We cannot trust the North Koreans.

Then, as now, we asked, should we deign to talk directly to the North Koreans? We did have a different answer then. Subsequently, we said, this is an issue of tantamount importance to the United States of America. This is an existential issue. This is nuclear weapons. We are not going to risk giving our proxy to a third party, nor will we dilute what we’ve got to say. If we’ve got something to say, we want to say it directly, especially since this was a regime in which we will not at all be confident that our policy was being faithfully communicated to senior levels. So we negotiated. 

We came up 18 months later with an agreement. It froze the plutonium program production in place. By this time, in addition to the existing operating reactor, there were two larger reactors under construction. Had all of these reactors been completed and entered into operation, by now, there would be, I think, easily 100 or more critical masses worth of plutonium available to North Korea.

These facilities and the reprocessing facilities were sealed. They were put under continuous on-site inspection with IAEA inspectors on the scene. They had cameras emplaced at strategic locations. The North Koreans consented to allow the U.S. to recan 8,000 spent fuel rods, containing another 35 to 40 kilograms of plutonium, enough for another five or six plutonium bombs. One thing that I think is very important to clarify: this was not really a bilateral deal. There were bilateral talks, but we were in intensive indeed continuous, sometimes painful, but chronic consultations with our South Korean and Japanese treaty allies and with the Chinese. I happen to believe that the role of each and every one of these partners was critical to that outcome. 

Fast-forward to now. Here we are again. Again, we have a rampant plutonium production program. Again, now that North Korea has, in fact, exited the NPT, we’re without treaty obligations to contain, much less IAEA safeguards. The inspectors are gone. The cameras have been turned off. The seals have been broken. Instead of one to two bombs’ worth of plutonium, if you take the one to two they had plus the five to six that they had in addition separated by now, probably, from the 8,000 spent fuel roads, plus another couple from a subsequent campaign, it could be up to ten or so. I’ll leave it to experts to give you a more refined estimate, but we’re into double digits in terms of the amount of plutonium they have for weapons and now, as you’ve heard from Jim Kelly, we have a clandestine, I think, unclearly understood but worrisome uranium-enrichment program and the problem there is, although it is less understood, uranium enrichment provides material which is much easier to put into a nuclear weapon that does not need testing to have confidence that it will go off. 

Again, we face the question: what do we do? Same old options: attack, acquiesce, negotiate. Now, you’ll note I have not mentioned sanctions as an option and that is intentional because I don’t know anybody who has ever asserted that sanctions per se will cause the North Koreans to slap their palms into their foreheads and say, “I’m sorry. It was a mistake. I’m giving it all up.” Sanctions are a mechanism of leverage to induce the North Koreans to return to the negotiation track or they’re a mechanism to build up enough international consensus to sustain politically an attack. So I view sanctions as a directive option of the others. 

The attack option is no more attractive than it was a decade ago. Indeed, it’s less attractive. First of all, North Korea apparently has more nuclear capability. Second of all, our relations with our allies on whose Peninsula the war would be waged are difficult; even more difficult than they were then. You’ve had a passing of generations in power and we go could into it, but suffice it to say it is not a very attractive option. Personally, I find acquiescence equally unattractive as it was a decade ago. And so we’re left once again with a prospect of negotiation and indeed that is the administration policy. 

Now, when it comes to negotiations, we have the same questions again. Can we trust the North Koreans? Well, the answer was no before the Agreed Framework was negotiated and broken; it must be no today. Should we grant the North Koreans an audience? Should we negotiate with them? Again, I would argue for the same reasons we negotiated before, yes. I would negotiate again, especially given the lack of palatable alternatives.

Let me just dwell on those two issues because they are very, very important, I think, to figure out a safe path forward. Even though we cannot trust the North Koreans, one of the things that we did before that was a useful way to mitigate the risk of negotiating with a party in whose compliance you cannot confide is you meter out the benefits you confer in relationship to the benefits you are receiving. Now, in the case of the Agreed Framework, they were going to get at the end of the long road a couple of light water reactors. But we measured out when they would get certain things: critical nuclear components to when they satisfy the international community, coming into full compliance of the IAEA safeguards, allowing special inspections, and so on and so forth.   

We won every day that the North Koreans were frozen. We won every day that they didn’t separate more plutonium. We got benefits every single day and we inched along toward a nuclear reactor. Now, I don’t know if you could still look at the KEDO web site, but you’ll find two holes in the ground. In other words, they did not get the reactors and, if I had to do the math again, the amount that the U.S. paid in terms of heavy fuel oil payments for avoiding the production of 100 bombs’ worth of plutonium by the North Koreans is the price that I would pay again. One lesson is meter out your benefits in proportion to the benefits you’re receiving on your side. 

The other thing is just think of a bad loan. If you default on a loan, the bank just doesn’t usually just walk away. They usually fold their broken obligation into a larger renewed obligation and you try to enforce it. By analogy, what I would do is say, “Okay, you broke the Agreed Framework. Now it’s not good enough to freeze your plutonium program, let’s add the uranium program into the deal. By the way, standard safeguards aren’t enough. Now, you need to join the IAEA again and take additional protocols inspections too.” That’s the concept.

The problem with the granting of an audience, and I don’t want to get into the back and forth on six-party, five-, four-, three- and two-party talks per se, but the problem that we’ve gotten into, the predicament is that we’ve effectively ceded the pace of the negotiations to the North Koreans. They have achieved – (audio break) – and stalemate. 

Since, as I think both of our speakers correctly noted, time is no longer working in our favor, it should not be a source of tremendous surprise that the North Koreans aren’t running to the negotiating table. Why? Because every day, tactically speaking, they are a little bit better off. In the long run, I think we probably all agree that this regime cannot satisfy the political, economic, or social aspirations of its people, but every day they get a little bit more nuclear capability, every day they drive the price of any deal that ever gets cut a little higher, and every day we’re less safe because we’re facing a more militarily-capable and a higher-priced negotiating partner.

I would judge this as a national security matter to be unacceptable. Where do we go from here? I think the September 19th principles that we’re marking this event from last year are an outstanding place to start. It’s short, but it covers all the bases and in the interest of time I will not repeat them. But I invite you to look at them and I think it covers what we need in terms of a non-nuclear peninsula. Our objective should be not a specific negotiating format; our objective should be a non-nuclear peninsula on the verification by the IAEA in a stable Northeast Asia. 

If the September 19th principles are a good starting point, what else do we need? We need to break the stalemate. I’m always reading. I’m now reading this book by Doris Kearns about Abraham Lincoln and the beginning of the Civil War. In 1861, the Confederate States of America needed to be left alone: they were trading cotton, they had their peculiar institution. They needed to be left alone so that they could gain their independence and survive as an independent nation. Lincoln needed the conflict. Lincoln had to get in the way of the Confederacy living its life and its future in isolated peace. If Fort Sumter hadn’t been besieged by the Confederates, Lincoln would have had to figure out some other way. By the same token, we need to force the issue. That’s my view. 

How do we force the issue? Well, here again, I think, the novelty is not always a virtue in these things. I would take my hat off to the administration on what they did over the last year and a half in Iran. They worked with the Europeans, they worked with the Russians. They came up with a basic deal that said the U.S. would support the diplomacy that provided and offered a series of benefits, security and financial and otherwise, to the Iranians in exchange for Iranian compliance with international expectations on its nonproliferation conduct, and the U.S. insisted that if it went along with the Europeans on that approach that should that approach fail, that the Europeans and now the so-called P5 plus one would join the U.S. in supporting the role of sanctions.

I would suggest trying the same thing here. Let’s go to the other partners in the six-party talks and on the basis of the September 19th principles, flesh those out in a meaningful way in which the U.S. is a full-fledged participant on the understanding that this would then be presented to the North Koreans and, as was done with the Iranians, present it with a deadline by which time the North Koreans would need to respond. If they responded, we would engage accordingly. If they did not, we would go to the Security Council. The bottom line, I think, is we need to force North Korea to make a choice. 

Now, some people have said North Korea has already made its choice: they are irrevocably committed to maintain nuclear weapons. I have two thoughts about this.  Number one, I’m skeptical about anyone who says they know what North Korea thinks. Number two, although it’s not exactly a pluralistic democracy, it’s not exactly a pure autocracy and a monolith. I will just note in general my experience is with respect to North Korea is sort of like what they say about decisions in Washington, which is, the people who know aren’t talking, the people who talk don’t know. 

I do, however, have something between an intuition and a hypothesis worth testing and, in fact, it echoes one of the remarks that Jim Kelly made, which is as much as Kim Jong Il and his regime want nuclear weapons, I have a hunch they want to survive as a regime more. Now, as long as they don’t have to choose, they won’t. As long as they don’t have to choose, they’ll keep their nuclear weapons program and they’ll keep their regime. 

Our job, it seems to me, is to force them to avoid or to not have available to them that easy option of both their nuclear weapons program and peace. (Inaudible)…of possession as they’d say in the law, in their regime and that’s why I think it’s critically important for us to join with the other parts of the six-party talks to present a clear upside if they comply with the September 19th principles and begin to execute them, and a clear and palpable downside. I’m not calling for any regime change in the classic sense from the last few years of threatening invasion, but I think a clear downside of increasing pressure and isolation that would now under the deal that I propose we cut with the rest of the P5, include cooperation from China and cooperation from South Korea, should North Korea reject that attractive offer.                     

This kind of approach is not guaranteed to work. But it might work and if it does work, we’ll all be far, far safer. If it does not work, it seems to me, this approach is that calculated to be most likely to produce a cleavage that when it happens divides North Korea from the rest of the world and the other permutation. Therefore, it would leave us best positioned to pursue the next step, which would be a more dangerous step, but if we have the wisdom and fortitude to join together in this kind of approach, it’s one that I think we could manage successfully. Thank you.

KIMBALL: Thank you very much. We’ll move to your questions, please. Thank you very much, Dan.  I think you did, indeed, add to what the two previous speakers said and I think they also provided us with a lot to think about here. If you could identify yourself and keep your question to a question, please. Tell us who you want to direct your question to. Barry Schweid? 

QUESTION: Barry Schweid, Associated Press. Mr. Leach, could you please distinguish between your proposal and what Chris Hill has been saying for weeks that his bags are packed, he’s prepared to have extended talks with the North Koreans? I know about the aversion to a Clinton one-on-one diplomacy and why these folks want to do things differently. They’ve come a long way now. Hill says he’ll talk to them for an extended period. You say send [George H. W. Bush] along, other than that, what’s the difference between what you’re offering and what Hill is offering?

LEACH: Well, Secretary Hill is a preeminent representative of the country at this time. We have had direct talks with the North Koreans in Beijing, but by direct talks with North Koreans we mean with the interlocutors that they have sent who are not principal decision-makers in the North Korean government. So the question is, do you advance a respectful process with people and parties that you might not have full respect for? I think the case for doing that is compelling. I also think that if you think it through at issue are attitudinal breakthroughs as well as strategic breakthroughs. Let me give an example that might sound totally unrelated, but that I think has a little bit of merit.

Years ago, we made a decision to allow Americans to travel to Cuba. It ended up that that totally and utterly changed the attitudes of Cuban people toward the United States. Now, Cuba today has a people that are more pro-American than any country in Latin America, a government that’s more anti-American than any government in Latin America. From a short visit to North Korea, I was very impressed with how anti-American the North Korean people are as a people. This is a country that’s been brainwashed. 

I think putting a presence of United States of America in North Korea in terms of representation would be of significant nature and it is a very different circumstance than dealing exclusively within the six-party framework of having side talks with the North Koreans and having talks in other capitals with the North Koreans, having talks with North Korea’s only UN delegate. It’s just a totally different attitudinal circumstance and I think there are things that could be said that would be heard in North Korea in ways that are not said and not heard in the current situation. Let me say that I don’t think what I’m saying is outside the context with what many professionals in the United States government are thinking. I recognize that we have many desires to put forth a very firm approach. I think you can be firm in what you say and how you say it in many different kinds of circumstances. I think this is the kind of initiative that makes sense at this time.

QUESTION: Thank you very much for your wonderful presentation. My name is Wooksik Cheong. I’m a visiting scholar with George Washington University. I have a question and recommendation to Representative Leach. Let me develop on your wonderful proposal. I think the most creative way to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue is that maybe President Bush meets Chairman Kim Jong Il. What you think about this? Another question is about your plan. As far as I know, you have tried to visit Pyongyang several times, but it didn’t succeed. Do you plan to go to Pyongyang? 

Another question for Mr. Kelly. May I ask you about your visit to Pyongyang in October, 2002? (Inaudible) The State Department says that the United States government has clear evidence of North Korean uranium enrichment program. Can you answer this? What kind of evidence does the United States government have? Thank you very much.

LEACH: First, I apologize. I want to answer directly all your questions, but I didn’t directly understand each of them and I’m sorry. But I think one of your central ones was should Kim Jong Il meet with President Bush? I think at a point in time that would be possible. I don’t think we’re at that stage today. Personally, I would have no objection to inviting Kim Jong Il to America. I don’t know if perhaps Washington D.C.’s an appropriate place, but I think it would be terrific if Jim Kelly were to host him in Hawaii.

KELLY: Graceland, maybe.  (Laughter.)

LEACH: Well, Graceland is a wonderful destination. When you read and talk to the Chinese about the impact of Kim Jong Il’s visit to China – actually several of his visits – and particularly to places in China outside of Beijing, one is left with the feeling that Kim Jong Il had an opportunity to see certain kinds of advancements in Asia that were quite impressive, and also to witness a governments without regime change that were making progress. That’s positive. 

I think at an appropriate point in time to visit a part of America might be a very interesting thing. In fact, for Kim Jong Il to be invited to deliver a speech or to visit a major state university in the Midwest or the West Coast, I think would be a highly positive kind of thing, and maybe at a later stage involving the president. But I don’t think we’re at the point of reaching agreement with North Korea that putting the two heads of state exactly together would be appropriate today. They might be in one, two, three, or five years from now. But I am a representative of part of a country that has a virtual naïve belief in exchanges and visitations as being helpful. I think that a major delegation of North Korea to the United States outside the political environment might be particularly helpful at this time.

KIMBALL: Alright. Jim Kelly, I think the other question was with respect to the uranium enrichment program: what do we know about it? To what extent is there any evidence? If you could tell us what you can tell us.

KELLY: I think the first part of the question was about October 2002 and the answer is it had two functions. The first was to report to the North Koreans that we were aware of their covert uranium enrichment program and that that was a serious matter and that we hoped they would quietly dismantle it because it would get in the way of the broad array of topics that we were prepared and had been prepared for some 15 months to discuss with them across a whole variety of areas. 

On uranium enrichment, intelligence information came up at that time that was quite conclusive and it was retroactive in nature. It was clear that at the time when Vice Marshall Jo Myong Rok was visiting Washington D.C. in 2000, I think, that for a couple of years, North Korea had had available to them centrifuges in very substantial numbers – way over a thousand – with associated equipment that would be necessary to run a covert centrifuge facility for highly enriching uranium.

KIMBALL: Okay, Mr. Ota.

QUESTION: Thank you very much. Each of the presentations was pretty, pretty productive for our coverage in the future. Thank you very much. 

I have a question about the especially striking comment by Chairman Leach. You emphasized – I just want to quote what you said, “It is imperative to recognize the fundamental difference between combating criminal activities and attempting to propagate regime change.” Do you have any suspicion or skepticism that throughout this administration there are some who are pursuing a regime change? That’s my first question. Mr. Kelly, you are welcome to answer this question if you want and also I will ask you your view on this from outside the government from Mr. Poneman – same questions to you. 

I also have one more specific question to Secretary Kelly. You said it is quite interesting to see that North Korea didn’t test the mid-range missile which was tested by Iran at the beginning of this year. Could you tell me what’s your analysis, what the motivation of the North Koreans was not to do that? Thank you very much.

LEACH: First, on the question of regime change, I would not say that that was a policy of the United States government. It might be the preferred view of some commentators on North Korea, but it’s not the policy of the United States government. When I was in North Korea a year and a half or so ago, I stressed that the United States basically, since World War II, has been at war with two countries in Asia: with Vietnam, three, four decades ago and North Korea, five decades ago. 

Interestingly, now the one country in Asia that we are having significantly improved relationships with is Vietnam. Vietnam is undergoing enormous progressive change without significant regime change and that is the model that the North Koreans ought to look at very seriously. The United States has not pressed regime change with Vietnam, but we’ve moved in very important ways to strengthen ties – economic and social, as well as political. There is no reason whatsoever why we cannot do similar things with North Korea. It would be wondrous for the North Korean people and in the long term very stabilizing for the North Korean government and so that is the preferred model.

KELLY: I think it’s important that Mr. Ota at this stage of the game asks about the regime change policy, which has not at any time been official policy of the U.S. government. The fact is, though, that there have been statements by irresponsible people, by others who are just not part of the picture that very much confuse this notion. I’m ready to accept that a very broad perception was that the policy was regime change. We made it clear to the North Koreans in the direct meetings and the six-party meetings that that wasn’t so, but confusion may have been part of it. But I can’t answer it any better than Chairman Leach did.

On the test of missiles, I have no idea why they didn’t test the missile. I do think that it’s of concern that missile collaboration between Iran and North Korea is apparently quite close. But I’m out of government so my source on that is a Jane’s Defence Weekly thing from last January so I really don’t have any knowledge of it.

PONEMAN: I’d make one brief comment. Not being burdened by having recently been in government, I will defer to Secretary Kelly on the question of regime change. But I would just note that I do not see any inherent conflict between having, you know, an aggressive protection of your currency against counterfeiting and vigorous enforcement of anti-money-laundering rules and regulations as inherently inconsistent with carrying out other kinds of negotiations. I am reminded actually my very first day at the NSC, the North Korean issue was already on the plate and the guy from the East Asia Directorate said to me, “The one thing you have to understand about the North Koreans is that the North Koreans do not respond to pressure, but without pressure they do not respond.” 

The trick has always been, in a case in which our policy toolkit is pretty empty, how to find those ways to tweak and untweak the situation vis-à-vis the North Koreans in a way that optimize the chance they will come to – not only come to the table, but then negotiate in good faith. I would view our whole policy toolkit in that context.

KIMBALL: We’ve got a question up front here. Thank you.

QUESTION: Avis Bohlen, Georgetown University. I have a sort of rhetorical question and a real question. My rhetorical question, which is just to express my agreement with Chairman Leach about the importance of dialogue and contacts, is I wonder what has happened to our historical memory in this country when we think of the importance that these exchanges and contacts and dialogue played during the Cold War. You suggested a trip to the heartland; remember Nikita Khrushchev and all those things. I don’t know what has happened to us as a country that we’re now so afraid of these things, which brought only benefit to us for 40 years. 

My real question is to Dan Poneman and that is how would you, had you still been in office when the discovery of the uranium enrichment program was made, have handled it? As we know, the Bush administration used it as a pretext to scuttle the whole Agreed Framework. Was there an alternative?

PONEMAN: First of all, as of when I left in 1996, I had not seen any evidence of this and from what we’ve just heard from Secretary Kelly I think it hadn’t happened then. You had to call them on it. You had to call them on it. I don’t challenge that at all and, indeed, when the Agreed Framework was first signed, we set up units within the government dedicated to watching compliance because we knew that we had to worry about this. Indeed, you know, it was all out in the public and the Congress was deeply involved. We caught them right away cheating on the heavy fuel oil. We called them on it. We got monitors and meters put in to that end. So number one, you had to call them on it.

But the second thing is what I would have resisted, frankly, is for want of a better phrase, throwing the baby out with the bath water because, again, my view is that every day with no fresh North Korean plutonium is a good day. So I would have taken this sort of banker approach which is to say, “Hey, we caught you. Now, you’ve got to make it right.” Making it right never means simply restoring the status quo ante because there is no deterrent not to just cheat again on the theory that, hey, the worst that can happen is get caught, have your hands slammed and go right back to it. 

I would have tried to use that – it’s easier to say from outside than inside –to leverage the North Koreans into a broader obligation that picked up the enriched uranium piece, by the way, which is called for in the North-South Denuclearization Declaration, and to use that as a leverage furthermore to get them to expect more intrusive anytime, anywhere kind of inspections. Whether they would have gone for that, I don’t know. They presumably would not have gone for that unless we were for our part prepared to offer something additional, too.

In that respect, I would refer to Chairman Leach because I too have had the view that we seldom lose as Americans when we increase our engagement with other people even or maybe even especially people we don’t have strong relations with. For example, I believe in the early aftermath of the Agreed Framework, when frankly there were political constraints on how far we could go in the rapprochement, that the Agreed Framework actually set forth what we might engage in with North Korea. I would have been very open to more telecom links, more trade, and more cooperation because at the end of the day I believe those are the things that are going to bring a better regime to North Korea and one, frankly, more compliant to our national security interests.

So what I would have done is, A, call them on it, B, try to expand the obligations to include the enriched uranium piece under safeguards, and C, I would do that in the context of having been willing to broaden our deal – to use a phrase that I think was discussed that time to some degree – big for big; a big deal that would have comprehended both sides of the equation.

KIMBALL: As the moderator, let me follow that up with a question that picks up on this issue of the plutonium reprocessing thing. Dan, in your remarks, you noted that the North Koreans are in an increasingly good tactical position because they are producing more plutonium. If the negotiations could be resumed in some way or another – six-party, five-party, two-party, whatever – what would each of you briefly say would be your first priority with respect to U.S. and allies’ interests to achieve in that action for action, step-by-step process with the end goal of complete and verifiable dismantlement in mind? What would it be? 

My thought has been for some time that one of the first things should be getting North Korea to freeze current activities – plutonium activities – in exchange for the United States and other allies resuming their heavy fuel oil shipments, which was essentially the status quo as of September-October 2002. What would your suggestion be to Chris Hill or whatever the team as to what you want to achieve in that first step of that step by step process? Jim Kelly, Dan, your reactions, please?

KELLY: Well, what I would say is the proposal that was tabled in the third session of the six-party talks in June 2003 did involve a proposal for a halt or freeze in the plutonium effort, but the stress was that it was to be temporary. If we’d ever gotten to any negotiations, which have never happened, whether this was to be a very short two-month or a longer six-month or perhaps even longer than that time. What I think we wanted to avoid and I would still counsel avoiding is a freeze that turns into a permanent freeze that essentially legitimizes the covert uranium enrichment program, which at least has a potential of providing more and more dangerous fissionable material. I have, frankly, had the impression since the beginning on this that they would gladly resell us the plutonium for a free pass on the uranium enrichment. I think we’d have to be very careful about that.

PONEMAN:  Daryl, I always believe in going after what you know and we know now that they have 10-ish or more bombs’ worth of plutonium so I think the national security imperative has got to be to get that material back under safeguards, under monitoring as rapidly as possible. So I’d put that number one. Number two, they’re cooking more plutonium every day. I’d want to stop and seal that. Number three, I would go after the enrichment. Again, it’s always very easy to say what you’d go after without saying what you’d give up for each phase.

KIMBALL: Right.

PONEMAN:  I agree with the principle that you need to keep enough back that you don’t walk into the trap that Jim Kelly just cited of basically giving up your ace in the hole in exchange for something that’s really only an interim measure in terms of your objectives. 

KIMBALL: Thank you. We’ve got several questions. Yes, the person in the back in the brown. Thank you, if you could wait for the microphone. Thank you.

QUESTION: Thank you. I’m Martha McCullen (sp) from the U.S.-China Commission, and this question is directed to any speaker who’d like to answer, but it’s based on Mr. Poneman’s comments of bringing in partners into this process of denuclearizing the peninsula and I was just going to ask how do you see a cooperation with China and what can the U.S. do to strengthen China’s cooperation on this issue?

PONEMAN: First of all, I think everyone in this room would agree that the role of China in resolving in any satisfactory resolution to the North Korean problem is critical. I think it’s important to remember that as I understand it from conversations I had in my day with our Chinese counterparts, there is a significant, but not absolute degree of coherence between Chinese objectives and U.S. objectives. I believed it when they told us then that the Chinese really did not want to see nuclear weapons in the Korean Peninsula. I believed it when they said they wanted to see a stable and secure peninsula. However, the emphasis and priority that the Chinese placed upon the security and stability I think was more deeply felt there than the concern on the nuclear weapons side, whereas on our side we were more concerned about the nuclear weapons. When you look at the respective situations, this is not entirely surprising. 

What I would do would be to go to the Chinese and try to take that which unites us and use that, again taking a page out of what we’ve done, for example, with the Russian and the Europeans in Iran, to put together a position in which you can optimize for both outcomes and especially since, I think the North Koreans view the United States as a potential source of serious instability. I think we actually have some leverage and to the extent that we could go to the Chinese and say, “Look, you don’t want to see either nuclear weapons or instability in the regime, but if we don’t do something about it now, you’re going to see both and with a much more acute and difficult to resolve situation than we now face.” 

I think there’s a discussion, a conversation we can have with the leaders in Beijing that could get us onto the same page in terms of coming up now with enough of a package promising an upside if they comply that would avoid higher risk outcome of instability in the long run. I think that’s something that’s got to go through, you know, critical and intense discussion between the United States and China before obviously we could present it to North Korea. But given that China has much more influence than we ever will with North Korea, I do view that as a critical next step. 

QUESTION: Hyeong Jung Park, assistant fellow at Brookings Institution. My question is directed to Mr. Poneman. There are some worries that North Korea might test nuclear weapons. How do you see the possibility and what would be the American reaction?

PONEMAN: I will duck the second answer. I will let either of my colleagues address what we would do because I just feel too distant from my own service. My impression is that from my times dealing with the North Koreans that they’re pretty shrewd analysts of their own tactical situation, A.  B, they have relatively few trump cards and they don’t tend to be promiscuous in dealing them. C, that having been said, when they feel that they are cornered by the international community or when they miscalculate, which certainly does happen, they are prone to taking steps that can backfire and could actually be quite self-destructive. I would view testing in that light. 

I would say I can not judge especially if we have a sense that they have a sense they are in a tactically favorably situation. I think that they would be leery of taking a step that could very well forge the kind of consensus among the Five that could put much tougher pressure on them then they’ve had to face so far. Again, I leaven that with a note of caution. They were in a situation back in 1994 when everywhere they turned, including Beijing, they were getting very cold shoulders and that was when they promised to see a fire that would engulf South Korea, which of course, was a tactical escalation at that time that backfired on them. I would judge it a low, but not insignificant risk.

LEACH: I might just add the United States obviously would go into a very isolationist mode in its policy toward North Korea. But the real issue isn’t how we would respond, it’s how other parties in the region would respond. I think it could be very negative for North Korea’s interest and there are very few things that would get the Chinese government more motivated to act. At the moment, there is an ironic situation that South Korea is becoming much more engaged in China and North Korea which owe so much to China is not exactly following the Chinese model of foreign policy or interior actions. That to me is extremely interesting. But I think it’s the outside reaction from Asia that would be more significant than what the United States would do.      

KIMBALL: Thank you. We have a question here, and then we’ll take one more in the back. If you’ll wait for the microphone. Please identify yourself. Thank you. 
 
QUESTION: Hi. I’m Nina Sawyer, a student at SAIS and my question deals with what is the most likely deal that will get the North Koreans to be willing to give up their nuclear weapons? What are the range of options that the United States is willing to offer them or what the allies are willing to offer? Will it just be a reworking of the Agreed Framework where we offer fuel, light water reactors, or will we actually offer them a peace treaty or something maybe not directly related to the nuclear negotiations?

LEACH: Let me just respond very briefly because others, Jim particularly, will be more profound on this. You will get potential implication of security guarantees. The main offer is not a real specific, but is the notion that North Korea will be accepted on a reasonable basis in the community of nations, which will allow them to become part of the march of economic progress in Asia. That is a circumstance that is really underpinning all other precise actions and has to be unbelievably attractive to the North. That is the real offer that is implicit in all of this.

KIMBALL: Insofar as specifics, I think, as each of the speakers have mentioned, the September statement outlines virtually all the key issues that have been in play for all of these years. It is in some ways an Agreed Framework plus. The question is how do you move ahead with respect to implementation, with sequencing, in addition to the very important political atmosphere as Congressman Leach was talking about. I think that is what I’m hearing from the panelists here in terms of what it will take if anything will work with North Korea. 

We have a final question in the back from a distinguished gentleman, Larry Weiler. If you could come forward a little bit so that one of the microphones can reach you. 

QUESTION: Larry Weiler. Maybe it’s a generation thing, but I think back when we were starting to negotiate with the Russians and the situation in terms of our attitudes toward each other was no more antagonistic than the situation with North Korea. We tend to forget that you can negotiate with a partner even though there’s great disagreement with the partner you’re negotiating with or even within that government. Remember, when we got the hotline, the Russians insisted that there not be a public signing ceremony for the hotline, the first arms control agreement, because they would be beaten over the head by the Chinese and others within the communist world. There was great disagreement in Moscow on that. 

The nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, 90 percent of it was negotiated with the Russians refusing to have a joint draft with the United States. They had their own draft; we had ours. The point of this is that at some point we have to decide if it’s really important that if we hold the major chips, as I think we do here – there may be disagreement on that, that we’ve got to take the lead in the negotiation. I will end by asking a question: how do the panel members think that if we don’t agree to direct talks with the North Koreans that you would ever get international or domestic support for increased sanctions, let alone the steps that come after sanctions?          

KELLY: This is where arms controllers and regional people start to part company. There’s an awful lot of nostalgia for the negotiations with the Soviet Union. These were much more equals on a very different basis. The isolation of North Korea is not comparable to what was the case with the Soviet Union. There’s an enormous asymmetry here. This is a small place that is not trying to be any larger than it is now. It’s just trying to be small and maintain the survival not of a nation of 23 million people, but of a group of somewhere between 250 and 1,000 elites that run that country. (Inaudible)…convinced so far to quote the previous point that by every possible objective measure, you can assert and believe that it’s in North Korea’s interest to give up these nuclear weapons. They would be rewarded tangibly and intangibly in so many ways. But if the leadership believes that the kind of economic reforms that that would bring would bring their immediate downfall, they are going to be very reluctant to enter into that process. That’s the difficulty.

As far as sanctions are concerned, it’s not within the power of the U.S. to do the sanctions. Sanctions begin and end with China. If China supports sanctions, there will be effective sanctions. If China does not support sanctions, they will be meaningless. This is not a matter within the choice of the U.S.

PONEMAN: I’ll make three points in relation to the last couple of questions. I would just remind us all that as of 1970, the per capita GDP between North and South Korea were pretty much the same and I don’t even know what the huge difference is today –

KELLY: Thirty times.

PONEMAN: Thirty times, okay. That would suggest that kind of linear Adam Smith-like economic progress is not the driving force, the be-all-and-end-all of their policies, and it speaks to our negotiating posture. One of the things that I found North Koreans to be almost haunted by was the Ceausescu experience of a regime that started to open things up and found out that it was the beginning of the unraveling of the support once they lost the kind of complete dominance they had over information and everything else. 

I think in terms of what the deal is, we have to listen very carefully to what they say. I do rather suspect it would not be unlike what they had along the lines of the Agreed Framework, but plus, as Daryl has suggested. Now, in terms of the actual negotiations, it’s so dangerous, even though I just did it with a Confederacy of the United States, to do these historical analogies…

KIMBALL: There was a Civil War after that.

PONEMAN: Yes. I’ll dump the direct analysis between the Soviets and the North Koreans, but I would say just sort of as a matter of tautology, it’s impossible to imagine a diplomatic outcome without negotiations. I guess I would leave that at that. But I also don’t disagree with our questioner in the sense that I believe that a more coercive approach, which I hope would not be necessary, but which might be necessary, I think is effectively unavailable. Unavailable until we have shown the international community that we’ve gone the extra mile to try a reasonably negotiated outcome. That again is what drives me back to this Iranian model of coming up with a cooperative approach among the five to present to the North Koreans. Then, if that fails, I think again there’s no guarantee, but at least you have an option of a more coercive approach that might get the support of the Chinese. In closing, I would note for those who think that that’s impossible, it is my assessment shared by my co-authors of Going Critical, which is now available in paperback. In June 1994, Beijing made it clear to the North Koreans that it would not save them from the effects of UN Security Council sanction and I think, in fact, laid the groundwork for the reversal of policy that the North Koreans then pursued and that led to the Agreed Framework.

KIMBALL: We have to end it there. I want to thank each of our three panelists for their thoughtful and sensible remarks. We will have a transcription of this event on our Web site, www.armscontrol.org, in a few days. I also urge you to actually read the Arms Control Today magazines that we gave you. There is a reader survey inside. We hope that you will subscribe if you’re not a subscriber. We will be returning to this topic again and again until we don’t have to. Thank you.

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