At the Table Again

Instead of testing whether Pyongyang means what it says, which requires diplomatic give-and-take rather than insisting that the North satisfy preconditions, Washington has been acting on the assumption that it is determined to arm. That assessment is a self-fulfilling prophecy, perhaps the most damaging form of intelligence failure.

As a result, Pyongyang’s response to Washington’s refusal to deal may come as no surprise. North Korea has yet to generate more plutonium by restarting its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, shut down as part of an October 2007 six-party agreement, but it could do so in 2012. It has yet to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon, but it could continue to close in on that possibility this year. It has yet to conduct additional nuclear and missile tests it needs to develop its new deliverable warhead and more reliable missiles, but, again, it could do so in 2012. The bigger surprise is that North Korea may be willing to suspend arming in talks with the United States on February 23 and—who knows?—move on to permanent dismantlement.

Pyongyang’s strategy also seems unanticipated by Washington. North Korea had long played allies China and the Soviet Union against one another, but in the late 1980s, faced with a Soviet Union in collapse and a China on a capitalist road, it reached out to lifelong enemies the United States, South Korea and Japan for the sake of its security. At the same time, it stepped up development of nuclear weapons and missiles. But it was prepared to forego such programs, and it did so in hopes of better relations with Washington. It used its weapons programs as both bait and bludgeon—as inducement for cooperation and as threat to force Washington to be its friend.

Its strategy may change now that it has resumed playing China against Russia and is preparing to make more and improved weapons. That won’t come as a surprise to Washington, either, because it has long assumed—wrongly—that the North was always determined to arm and never serious about ending enmity.

Washington often treats intelligence estimates as if they were facts. They are not facts but artifacts of an assessment process that is clouded by uncertainty. Instead of premising their actions on intelligence estimates, policy makers might learn to reduce uncertainty by diplomatic give-and-take, probing for information by making offers and seeing whether the North accepts them and keeps its commitments. Their reluctance to do so makes North Korea a long-running policy failure much more than an intelligence failure.

Leon V. Sigal is director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council in New York and author of Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea (Princeton University Press, 1999).

Image: NOS Nieuws