CIAO DATE: 10/07
The National Interest
Hope Over Experience
Mitchell B. Reiss
Abstract
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.