Since year’s end, much of the attention on North Korea’s nuclear program has focused on the missed deadlines for disabling the Yongbyon facility and more importantly for Pyongyang’s provision of a “complete and correct” declaration of all its nuclear programs. However, whether a declaration is forthcoming or not, it is important to note that it has now been nearly 15 months since North Korea’s Oct. 9, 2006 nuclear test and it is against this timeline that the progress in negotiations might best be evaluated.
U.S. strategy toward North Korea in the second term of the Bush administration is, at its most basic level, a rejection of the approach of the first term, during which contact with North Korea was tightly proscribed and the strategy was largely an effort to bring international pressure to bear on Pyongyang to convince it to make a “strategic” decision to abandon its nuclear ambitions before the United States would engage in any meaningful way. By contrast, the second term’s approach has been to engage North Korea directly in the context of the Six-Party Talks and, through tough negotiations, lead North Korea to make a series of “tactical” decisions that, while in themselves not satisfactory, would lead North Korea closer to the “strategic” decision sought by the U.S. Over the past year, this approach has arguably convinced North Korea to return to the Six-Party Talks, shut down its reactor at Yongbyon, allow in international inspectors, and even if slightly delayed, hopefully still “disable” the Yongbyon facility and submit a declaration in the not-too-distant future.
Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1800 K Street, NW, Washington DC, 20006 | Tel: 202-887-0200 | Fax: 202-775-3199
