North Korea’s cries for attention

Almost every day, it seems, North Korea throws up another threat or accusation designed to infuriate the West. One day it threatens war with the South, the next it arrests two American journalists and charges them with espionage. It launches a ballistic missile, engendering worldwide opprobrium. Most recently it warned that it would test another nuclear weapon.

By now everyone who follows this hermit state recognizes the pattern. North Korea is saying: Pay attention to me. Pay me!

This time it doesn’t look as if anyone is going to pay up. Recent history shows that it will accomplish little.

The prevailing wisdom right now is that when dealing with North Korea, “it’s impossible to get results on full denuclearization," said Michael Green, the White House’s North Korea specialist during the Bush administration. "But we can try to contain the problem and lay the groundwork for some future administration” in Pyongyang.

History argues in favor of Green’s point of view.

The Clinton administration alternately threatened and cajoled Pyongyang. Near the end of his second term, then-President Bill Clinton ordered a broad easing of economic sanctions to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear program. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright said that decision would start Washington and Pyongyang down "a road that holds out the possibility of long-term stability and even eventual reconciliation on the Korean peninsula."

That did not happen.

At first, then-President George W. Bush tried the opposite approach: Don’t talk to North Korea, don’t listen to them. Let the nation whither and die, and then perhaps one day President Kim Jong Il’s government will collapse.

That didn’t work either. Soon enough, Bush learned that North Korea had been hard at work on nuclear weapons for several years. But toward the end of his term, Bush tried negotiation and compromise — he even “paid” the regime, with cash and fuel. So now look where we are.

“Nothing works,” Green averred.

But Green also pointed out that many of North Korea’s threats are hollow. Its nuclear enrichment equipment is old and unreliable. When in use, it frequently breaks down. Its military is untrained and ill-equipped. The country is so poor that pilots are allowed to fly only a few hours a year. None of its recent missile tests have worked as planned. A missile tested in 2006 blew up less than a minute after launch. Even its underground nuclear test that year was judged to have fizzled.

No one in the West feels directly threatened by North Korea’s nuclear weapons. Kim knows full well that a nuclear attack would lead to the annihilation of his nation. But nuclear proliferation remains a serious concern. After all, North Korea was accused of helping Syria create a nuclear program of some sort — until Israel bombed the site. But then, if North Korea’s nuclear research at home is decrepit and incompetent, how worried should anyone be about the projects it sets up in other states?

Given all that, “it appears that the Obama administration just wants to park this somewhere,” Green said. After the latest threat, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said simply: Washington will not be “blackmailed” by North Korea. Her spokesman, Robert Wood, called relations with North Korea “static. There hasn’t been any movement. You know, we aren’t seeing progress here.”

We also aren’t seeing the United States making much of an effort, either. Clinton appointed a part-time special envoy to the region, Stephen Bosworth, an academic who says he has no plans to give up his day job and will work on the North Korea problem only a few days a month. What’s more, Clinton appointed someone else, a senior foreign service officer, to be the U.S. representative to the six-party disarmament talks, if they ever resume. How useful can Bosworth be when the North Koreans know they will be facing someone else over the negotiating table?

President Barack Obama, during a news conference last week, listed North Korea among the problems on his desk. But we haven’t heard him or anyone in his administration articulate a strategy. In fact, Wood seemed to be trying to foist the problem onto someone else.

“Those who have influence with the North,” he said, should “use it to bring them back” to disarmament negotiations. Wood was clearly referring to China, North Korea’s erstwhile ally to the north. But then, everyone in the State Department knows that the Bush Administration begged and cajoled China for years to put pressure on Pyongyang — to no avail. They finally gave up.

Washington is not the only nation weary of North Korea. Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, visited Pyongyang late last month, and after he returned home he seemed resigned. “We don’t foresee any breakthroughs,” he said, leaving the North Korean news agency to chirp: “There is no need to hold six-party talks anymore.”

For now, at least, both of them appear to be right.

More GlobalPost dispatches on North Korea:

Opinion: Kim Jong Il’s successor is (envelope please) … Paek Se Bong!

All eyes on North Korea, for good reason

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