Hope over experience: denuclearizing the North.

• Author: Reiss, Mitchell B.
• Position: North Korea

IS THE North Korea agreement reached on February 13 of this year a bad deal? Let us recall that the State Department called this deal "only a first step", and that sounds about right. Obviously, much depends on whether North Korea will honor its part of the agreement. We've been down this road before with the Agreed Framework. Samuel Johnson's remark about second marriages comes to mind. He called them "a triumph of hope over experience." So we can be hopeful, but we should also be extremely cautious based on our previous experience with North Korea. Sometimes second marriages work out; sometimes they don't.

At this point, we still cannot be certain of North Korea's intentions. Is North Korea ready to abandon its nuclear-weapons program, return to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and permit intrusive international inspections? Does Kim Jong-il believe he stands a better chance of sustaining himself in power if he abandons nuclear weapons, receives external economic assistance and starts to integrate his country into the broader regional economy? Pyongyang has still not answered these questions.

From the American perspective, the deal's potential strengths are twofold. First, it could suspend North Korea's ability to separate more plutonium for its nuclear weapons program. Second, it could provide a diplomatic framework for turning that suspension into a permanent elimination of the North's program.

Former Clinton Administration officials have said that we could have had this deal four years ago, before the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) separated additional plutonium and tested a nuclear device. It isn't criticism; it's political commentary. Even if it's true, it is completely beside the point. We are where we are and have to figure out how best to proceed.

With regards to the current deal, there are three broad categories of criticisms. Interestingly, two of the three are found inside the Bush Administration.

It is no secret that some administration officials have opposed engaging North Korea. They are roughly divided into two camps: those who oppose engagement on ideological grounds and those who oppose it on more pragmatic grounds.

The ideological argument is that talking with Pyongyang would legitimize a fundamentally illegitimate regime, one led by "evildoers", in the president's memorable phrase. The pragmatic argument against engagement is that negotiations are a fool's errand, as the North has proven time and again that it will renege on any deal.

Both camps also argue that engagement weakens the resolve of the other members of the six-party talks to impose tough sanctions and only serves to perpetuate Kim Jong-il's regime. And both make the logically unassailable point that Washington only adopted greater negotiating flexibility after the DPRK tested a nuclear device on October 9, 2006. In essence, they maintain that this deal represents our "rewarding" Pyongyang's bad behavior. And the risk is that Pyongyang may now believe that further bad behavior will again be rewarded with further concessions at the negotiating table. Some of these points have much merit.

The third category of criticism is really "inside baseball" and arises from parsing the joint statement itself. A close reading raises some questions that will need answering as the parties move forward.

In Section II(1), North Korea pledges to shut down and seal the Yongbyon nuclear facilities and allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to monitor and verify this step "as agreed between IAEA and the DPRK." So, one question is whether the shutting down and sealing of Yongbyon will be performed during the first sixty days, what the joint statement calls the "initial phase", or whether it will depend on when North Korea and the IAEA reach agreement, which could be very much longer.

The same question over timing arises in the next paragraph, where North Korea says...