China, South Korea Migrate Toward North Korean Position on Nukes
I just knew this would happen.
If you haven’t seen my analysis of why North Korea’s recent statements are in direct conflict with the terms to which it agreed at the last session of six-party talks, you can read it here. To summarize it, the North agreed to rejoin the NPT “at and early date,” which would require it to let in inspectors, reveal its uranium enrichment program, and hand over its nuclear weapons. The other parties agreed to “consider” LWRs “at an appropriate time.” Article III of the NPT specifically forbids any signatory nation for providing North Korea with nuclear materials until it’s NPT compliant, yet North Korea now defies the fundamental logic of the agreed terms to demand LWRs up front.
Today, we hear that former anti-Reunification Minister and bribe bag-man Lim Dong-Won is calling for the U.S. to build the LWRs that should not even be a matter of discussion until the North makes at least some significant step toward NPT compliance. And in a case of the triumph of politics over logic, South Korea and China are now migrating toward meeting North Korea halfway, by finding ambiguity that isn’t there:
“It is a matter of course that the issue of when to support a light water reactor [to North Korea], was expressed in an ambiguous manner,” Mr. Dai said. He went on to say that North Korea and the United States had not changed their basic positions during the talks. Mr. Dai also called North Korea’s Kim Jong-il “a person whom you can sit down and deal with face-to-face.” Mr. Dai added, “Mr. Kim knows all the names of the Chinese working-level officials from the foreign minister posted to the Korean Peninsula.”
China and South Korea are the two parties that have been the most forceful in pressing the United States to stick with these talks and accede to North Korea’s demands. Indeed, the substance of their positions and the red-carpet treatment afforded the visiting South Korean officials suggest less daylight than ever between the two countries’ positions. What is the United States to make of all of this, other than the additional evidence of South Korea’s migration into the Chinese orbit?
The lesson is this: that no matter how many parties are present at the table, and no matter how clearly violative of agreed terms, the others nations barring Japan will always interpret U.S. obligations as firm and North Korean obligations as negotiable. In other words, North Korea’s obligations are too meaningless to be of any benefit to the United States.