I’ll Give You a Topic: The Verification Protocol is Neither. Discuss.

It’s hardly worth discussing anyway; after all, with North Korea, there’s little point in expecting what’s agreed today to stay agreed tomorrow. We’ve already abandoned the goal of disarmament, there is always another demand, it is always followed by another concession, and someone always wants us to think that this time, it’s really the last one.

Still, the State Department justifies its de-listing of North Korea as a terror sponsor by claiming that it has reached a verification protocol with North Korea.  It’s worth exploring the truth of that assertion.

If you read all twelve terse sentences in the  “agreement,” you soon realize that  (a) it’s not really an agreement, but a description of one, (b) that only four of those sentences even refer to verification, and (c) other than the sweeping and  mendacious assertion that we will insist on verifying whatever it is State still expects North Korea to do, there’s absolutely no detail about what we’re verifying.  Curiously, there’s also a separate “fact sheet” on “understandings” about the protocol, which makes you wonder whose “understandings” those really are  if  they had to be split off from the “agreement.”  The following graf, which contains all of its language of substance, is about half of the total statement.  Text in [brackets] is mine:

Based upon these discussions, U.S. and North Korean negotiators agreed on a number of important verification measures, including:

• Agreement that experts from all Six Parties may participate in verification activities, including experts from non-nuclear states;   [So eventually, we’ll be relying on the Chinese to perform the inspections, then?  Not that I expect the North Koreans will actually let the Japanese participate.]
• Agreement that the IAEA will have an important consultative and support role in verification; [Sounds like the North Koreans didn’t agree to let them in.]
• Agreement that experts will have access to all declared facilities and, based on mutual consent, to undeclared sites;   [And that’s the kicker, isn’t it?  No inspections unless the North Koreans have time to hide their stuff first.]
• Agreement on the use of scientific procedures, including sampling and forensic activities; and [But no detail whatsoever on what those procedures would be; after all, we don’t want  to put out prime fisking material  for  Henry Sokolski, Caroline Leddy, or Robert Joseph.]
• Agreement that all measures contained in the Verification Protocol will apply to the plutonium-based program and any uranium enrichment and proliferation activities.  [Note the strategic word “any,” meaning the North Koreans are still denying it, incredibly enough.]   In addition, the Monitoring Mechanism already agreed by the Six Parties to monitor compliance with Six-Party documents applies to proliferation and uranium enrichment activities.

It gets even worse.  Further down, you read that this is really only the  skeleton for a “verification protocol” still “to be finalized,” meaning that Bush lifted the terror sponsor designation despite the absence of an agreed final protocol.  State has been busy suggesting otherwise, and that’s just plain deceptive.  Not that any of us ought to be surprised at that by now, considering the source.

Even more disturbing:  this  skeletal crypto-protocol was written without input from the people whose job it is to know to verify disarmament.  North Korea’s terms, to which we acceded, generally force our verifiers to look at North Korea’s nuclear program through a soda straw with its aim fixed at the one part of their nuclear programs we already know  the most  about.

The U.S. had vowed not to remove North Korea from the terror blacklist until Kim’s government had agreed to a “strong verification regime.” But then North Korea started calling the U.S. bluff — most recently on Thursday, when it told the inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to start packing their bags — and the U.S. caved.

No verification regime is 100% certain — and searching for nuclear materials in North Korea, which has a history of lying and cheating, poses special challenges for even the most rigorous inspections. But our sources tell us the U.S. has the technical expertise to get up to 98% accuracy — providing it can do snap, on-demand inspections anywhere in the country. Instead, Pyongyang will permit the verifiers to have unfettered access only to its declared nuclear sites — all of which the IAEA has already combed over again and again.

Access to any other location will be by “mutual consent.” Inspectors will be welcome to search the Yongbyon complex and a few other known nuclear sites, such as at universities. If they want to inspect anywhere else, they’ll need Kim’s assent. If they request access, and Pyongyang agrees, it’s a sure bet the offending materials will be long gone before the inspectors arrive. This is trust but pretend to verify.

Meanwhile, the State Department didn’t trust its own verification experts to take part in the disarmament process. Late Thursday, less than two days before the agreement was announced, we asked Paula DeSutter, head of the Bureau of Verification, Compliance and Implementation, what she knew about the pending deal: “I have no clue,” she said. “I know zero, zip, nada, nothing. . . . That’s on the record. Zero, zip, nada, nothing.”

Ms. DeSutter says that no one from her bureau accompanied State Department negotiator Christopher Hill on his trip to Pyongyang two weeks ago. Nor did anyone from her bureau take part in the interagency process that evaluated the deal. “I was not consulted,” she said. The fact that the verification bureau was left out of the loop is further cause to suspect that Mr. Hill and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cared above all about declaring a diplomatic “success.” [Wall Street Journal]

Sam Dealey at U.S. News focuses most of his reaction on the politicization and cheapening of the terror sponsor list, but also points to the fatal flaws of the verification protocol:

About the only thing the U.S. gained was North Korea’s word to behave and a promise to permit snap inspections of a reactor site that holds few secrets. Meanwhile, the North’s peddling of conventional weapons systems and nuclear know-how across South Asia and the Middle East and demands that international inspectors have unfettered access to suspected nuclear worksites were taken off the table. Indeed, the deal itself was born of terrorism: North Korea pledged to continue down the road of nuclear development unless the U.S. government removed it from the list. [Sam Dealey, U.S. News]

Naturally, my favorite critique comes from the IKK’s own Andy Jackson:

So, in one swoop, Bush’s North Korea team has given the impression that the United States will appease extortion, undercut America’s allies in Northeast Asia and de-legitimized American law. And what did they get in return? In theory, North Korea has finally agreed to a verification protocol for its nuclear programs. The protocol will be formally agreed to in the next round of the Six Party talks. However, the protocol is unlikely to contain provisions for short notice inspections of suspected sites. Such provisions are standard for International Atomic Energy Agency nuclear proliferation investigations and are called for in North Korea’s case by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718. Instead, inspections will be based on “mutual agreement,” which is tantamount to giving Pyongyang a veto on when and where inspections can take place. [Andy Jackson, Korea Times]

One mild criticism:  one can never assume that North Korea will “formally” or otherwise agree to anything at some future date.  Hell, you can hardly pin down what they agreed yesterday, and that’s especially so when Chris Hill is writing the contract.

I also  tend to agree with Jackson that Obama’s North Korea policy could hardly be worse than Bush’s, but  I also expect  the Obama policy will also be a progression of the Bush-Rice-Hill policy, meaning Obama would continue to ignore the North’s WMD programs and proliferation, and make only the necessary token references to its human rights atrocities. Obama will likely try to open trade relations with the North and eventually, full diplomatic relations. Expect this to be just as great a raging success at transforming North Korea as South Korea’s ten-year experiment called the Sunshine Policy. Maybe we could call it the “we never learn” policy.

Related: And yet peace is still not at hand. Naturally, North Korea always demands at least 25% more than the latest deal. Now they’re demanding that Japan be expelled from the six-party talks. To the extend the six-party talks still mean anything at all, I don’t doubt that they’ll soon cease to exist as even a pretense.