I found this opinion piece at RealClearDefense by Khang Vu on reopening negotiations with North Korea interesting. Here’s a snippet:
Détente-sceptics often criticise the approach taken by South Korean liberal presidents to the North as naively rewarding it “hundreds of millions of dollars†via the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the Mount Kumgang Resort without demanding enough in return. Kim’s summits with Trump have not brought in any significant financial gains directly from Washington, but Kim received international recognition surpassing what his grandfather and father ever achieved. All Kim did to secure the summits was to simply stop carrying out nuclear and missile tests.
By this logic, Kim will expect more or at least equal rewards from Biden for restarting diplomacy. North Korea has been frank. It wants the United States to stop its “hostile policies,†which includes lifting international sanctions, before talks can begin. Biden’s “calibrated†approach, however, emphasises limited reward at the outset and slowly increases it as the process goes on, to hedge against North Korea’s cheating.
Moreover, since the use or threat of sanctions is central to Biden’s North Korea policy, dropping all of them before diplomacy begins deprives Washington of its leverage at the table. So while the U.S. seeks talks, the sanctions remain.
It all amounts to a dilemma. Upping the rewards for dialogue might increase chance of diplomatic success. But it also gives North Korea an incentive to drag its feet, then ask for more in future. Cheap rewards are safer, but may not jumpstart talks.
It should never be ignored that there are actually four parties negotiating over North Korea with wildly diverging, even opposing goals: North Korea, South Korea, China, and the U. S. We have by far the least stake in the situation. Indeed, I don’t understand why we should have an urgent interest in North Korea at all. IMO we would be much better served by “strategic patience” than by frantic activism, just considering the two extreme poles.
One of the problems is that South Korea has too many fantasists who long for reunification. The reality is that the South cannot afford reunification. German reunification cost $2 trillion euro and Korean reunification is projected to cost twice or more that sum and South Korea’s economy is a fifth the size of Germany’s. And the Chinese very much do not want a reunified Korea.
Trump had an agreement with Kim for a phased removal of sanctions coupled with a phased shutdown of the North’s nuclear armory. Pompeo and Bolton very visibly vetoed that deal, a gross public insubordination that went unremarked in the American press (but not overseas).
So there is a path to denuclearization of the North. We’ve actually started on it once. Now Kim will likely ask for quite a bit more than just removal of sanctions, staged or not. Last time Russia and China offered to connect both South and North to the BRI/OBOR. It would seem that Japan and South Korea as well as Russia and China would want to stabilize the North. Some sort of multinational investment scheme might work.
North Korea is a buffer zone to China, as the Baltic States are to Russia.
Pakistan having nuclear weapons is a much greater threat to the world, and the eventual war between India & Pakistan will be nuclear.
N. Korea is like the crazy man walking down the street talking to himself. He may go off and try to kill you, but the gangsters on the corner are probably more dangerous.