I worry that pressure for an agreement--any agreement--will lead us to believe any explanation that North Korea offers and pretend we have solved the nuclear problem.
I want North Korea squeezed until they collapse. But our fight against jihadis makes North Korea a secondary front. If we can neutralize the North Korean nuclear threat (both direct and through proliferation), I could stomach some deal that puts off the day of collapse. So I don't want to be unwilling to take yes for an answer. But we must be hard negotiators to make sure we can clearly verify what North Korea must do, and be willing to halt aid if the agreement is violated.
So I worry when John Bolton has concern over the recent leak by an anonymous senior official (ASO):
Mr./Ms. ASO's backgrounding is really about the ongoing six-party talks, and less about what happened in 2002. In any arms-control negotiation, the need for verification is directly correlated to the propensity of the other side to lie, cheat and conceal its undesirable activities. In the present case, the greater the likelihood that North Korea will make commitments it has absolutely no intention of following, the more intrusive and pervasive should be the verification mechanism we insist on. Determining in this or any other case how invasive the verification process must be obviously depends in large part on the historical record.
North Korea's aggressive mendacity puts it near the top of the list, perhaps tied with Iran for the lead, of countries that need the most transparent, most intrusive, most pervasive verification systems. For America to agree to anything less would be to make our national security, and that of close friends and allies like Japan, dependent on North Korea's word--never a safe bet. And yet, it is precisely this extensive verification system that the North cannot accept, because the transparency we must require would threaten the very rock of domestic oppression on which the North Korean regime rests. North Korea's negotiators understand this contradiction. So do ours.
The only way around this problem is to conclude it doesn't exist, or is so minimal it can be "fixed" in negotiations. That's why Mr./Ms. ASO was busy, laying the foundation to argue that further deals with North Korea do not require much, if any, verification beyond what little the International Atomic Energy Agency can provide. If we continue this approach, what is already a bad deal will become a dangerous deal, whether we make it with North Korea directly or in the six-party talks. (As Nick Eberstadt has put it, a bad agreement with six parties is no better than a bad agreement with two parties.)
I don't want to be afraid to take a North Korean "yes" for an answer to our demand they denuclearize.
But I don't want to trust the institutional State Department to interpret what the North Koreans are saying.
This is exactly why I fundamentally mistrust deals with thug states. We, collectively, want to believe the thug state will keep their word and act is if they do. The thug state is happy to encourage our belief as long as it doesn't materially affect what they want to do anyway.
And it will take years before anybody here is brave enough to say that the thug is violating the agreement. And years more before the whistleblower is believed by our policy makers and those who really want to believe in the thug state's honesty. Our fetish over getting evidence suitable for a court of law hinders our appreciation of what is fundamentally a real world threat and not a legal issue.
We can take "yes" for an answer. But make sure it is really a yes. And make sure it is in response to our question.
Is President Bush willing to walk away from a bad agreement if it means the New York Times will be mean to him? So far I trust he will. But he won't be President in January 2009. This better be locked down by then.
