Sicherheit in Nordostasien

A New Approach to Security in Northeast Asia: Breaking the Gridlock

Morton H. Halperin

American policy should continue to be directed at seeking to persuade the government of the DPRK to give up its nuclear weapons and its capacity to produce weapons grade fissionable material. This goal may not be attainable either because the DPRK leadership is no longer willing, if it ever was, to give up this option, or because its prize for doing so is more than the United States or other nations is prepared to pay. However, the costs of accepting a DPRK operational nuclear capability are very high and we should not accept this outcome without at least one more sustained effort to find a solution.

It seems clear that the approach that the United States has tried thus far in Democratic and Republican administrations has reached a dead end. The approach had three elements. First, an effort was made to negotiate a common understanding of the end point of the process which included a de-nuclearized peninsula and an end to hostile intent. This understanding was embodied in a general political statement between the US and the DPRK (Joint Statement of June 11, 1993) or the ROK and the DPRK. It was not legally binding and had no enforcement mechanisms nor a blueprint for how to reach the set of changes specified in the understanding.

Based on these guiding principles there was an effort to negotiate a set of specific steps that each side would take on a quid-pro-quo basis. A very broad agreement was negotiated during the Clinton Administration (Agreed Framework, October 1994) and a narrower one was negotiated during the Obama administration on February 29, 2012.

Since August 2003, a third element was added to the package, namely the six party talks. The assumption was that formalizing the role of Russia and Japan along with the two Koreas and China and the United States could facilitate the reaching and enforcement of an agreement.