by CKR
Why the delay? Why not just have them tomorrow?
That’s what Jim Lehrer asked State Department Undersecretary Nicholas Burns last night about the six-party talks that North Korea said it would like to return to.
Lehrer then went on to ask a series of questions like some I’ve heard before in News Hour interviews: not particularly insightful, but maybe what Lehrer believes the audience would ask if they were in his seat. Burns went on to answer the questions with combined diplomatic caution and administration talking points.
I’ve always found those questions frustrating. Burns is operating under enough constraints that he wouldn’t be excessively informative no matter what Lehrer’s questions, but asking the right questions might do more to educate the audience.
So let me provide some alternative responses to Lehrer’s questions, starting with the one above.
JIM LEHRER: Why the delay? Why not just have them tomorrow?
It’s not just a matter of Christopher Hill jetting off to Seoul or Tokyo or Beijing, Jim. When you negotiate, you need to bring along experts in the areas of negotiation, as well as sharp translators and interpreters (not the same skills, btw). The head negotiators need to talk to the other four parties (China, Russia, Japan, South Korea) and the experts need to talk to their experts in order to put together the things they agree on and be aware of what they don’t agree on.
When international negotiations are called “talks,” as they are by the media (five letters against twenty-six; one syllable against ten), it’s easy to forget that the word is shorthand. It’s not like e-mailing Linda across town and saying, let’s talk over dinner tonight. Every sentence must be constructed carefully. It’s not even like John Kerry making a speech.
JIM LEHRER: Do you have a feeling that they will be different, it will be different this time than it has been in the past?
It’s not a matter of “feeling,” Jim, although I can understand that you’re asking for a sense of what might happen. Negotiations have to be focused on objectives, simultaneously taking into account the interests of all parties involved, including those that may extend beyond the immediately obvious.
As to whether these negotiations will be “different,” every meeting is “different.” Even if the words said are the same, the frustration level may rise, moving closer to accommodation or to breakdown. Perhaps by “different,” you mean successful, as opposed to the perception that earlier negotiations were unsuccessful.
Would you consider an agreement with North Korea successful if it required North Korea to freeze operation of its 5-megawatt reactor and plutonium-reprocessing plant at Yongbyon and construction of a 50-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon and a 200-megawatt plant at Taechon, eventually dismantling them; coming into full compliance with International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards; allowing any spent fuel to be removed from the country; rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty; and normalize relations with the United States?
That’s what the 1994 Agreed Framework did. The United States had some obligations, too, and there were lapses on both sides, as I found when I was constructing my timetable. But the way we hear the story now, as in the Burns interview, is that it was all North Korea’s fault. They provided their share of problems, but they weren’t alone.
International agreements have their ups and downs, though. That’s why you need those experts and interpreters and translators: so that you can get it all down in writing, in a way that all sides agree on the meaning. Then you can see later where things may be going wrong and what can be done about it.
JIM LEHRER: What I'm really getting at here -- and, finally, is it your feeling and Christopher Hill's feeling that these are going to be just talks for talk's sake or that there is a feeling now that there will be an agreement that will be lasting and that will, in fact, resolve this rising crisis over the nuclear proliferation issue in North Korea?
I’ll pass on the repetition of the earlier question. A single session of talks shouldn’t be expected to “resolve the crisis.” Such a thing has never happened in the history of nonproliferation or probably any international negotiations.
We’re not dealing with an episode of “24.” North Korea has serious reasons for wanting nuclear weapons. We may not agree with those reasons, but they were strong enough that North Korea has gone to the expense, in personnel, money, and international reaction, of a nuclear test. It will take some hard work to work through or around those reasons while protecting the interests of the United States, China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea. It’s not just a matter of sitting down, telling a few Texas jokes, and then shaking hands like good guys, even though that’s how President Bush tended to characterize the Moscow Treaty with Russia to decrease the numbers of nuclear weapons.
Let’s look at the START I treaty, in which the United States and the Soviet Union (enemies!) agreed to decrease their numbers of deployed nuclear weapons. Talks (negotiations!) began in June 1982. The Soviet Union walked out in December 1983. In September 1984, President Reagan proposed a slightly different set of talks to the United Nations. In March 1985, those talks began. And so on. You can read the timeline. The treaty was signed in July 1991, nine years after the talks began.
Or Brazil and Argentina, which refused to join the NPT through the 1980s because they wanted nuclear weapons as part of their military rivalry with each other. Their talks, each of which built a bit more trust and verification into their agreements, were fourteen years until both nations joined the NPT and the Latin American Nuclear Weapons Free Zone.
NICHOLAS BURNS: Jim, we are not interested in talks for talks….We have got to know that, when the North Koreans come to that table, they're going to be willing and capable of honoring the agreements that they've already made to give up their nuclear weapons, to take down their nuclear and scientific apparatus, to open themselves up to international inspection….
JIM LEHRER: But you want to know that before the talks begin.
It may make sense to say something like that to the domestic audience to convey strength, Jim, but there isn’t any way to know it for sure before the talks begin. The North Korean situation could change. Our situation could change. Certainly the Soviet Union’s changed during the START negotiations.
It may be useful to say something like that to show the other side that you don’t want to put up with messing around at the negotiations, too, but even if they agreed oh yes of course we’ll do everything just right, you would be naïve to believe it unconditionally.
The negotiations themselves build trust. First you agree on a few points and ways to verify that each side is abiding by them, then move step by careful step. Brazil and Argentina didn’t trust each other when they began negotiating. Working through the issues, exchanging inspection personnel, ramping up the agreements all led to a greater level of trust.
My timeline showed me that a number of positive steps were being taken by the Clinton administration and North Korea through the nineties. Then President Bush decided that talking with those one disagreed with wasn’t something he wanted to do and cut off that route, slow and bumpy as it was, to any agreement. That was only six years into the process. We’ve had to start it all over again with the six-party talks.
“I’m a patient man,” President Bush recently said about Iraq. Even more patience is needed when we’re asking another country to give up something that they think insures their security.