Centerfield

Bigger than Iraq?

Russian and Chinese diplomats are pessimistic about the talks starting this week with North Korea. They're probably correct in concluding that North Korea will take a tough line, and that any negotiated settlement will only take shape over the long term.

"The chances of reaching agreement in this present round of negotiations in Beijing are, unfortunately, very poor," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov was quoted by the Russian news agency Interfax as saying in Beijing.

Russia's Interfax news agency earlier quoted diplomatic sources as saying no quick breakthrough should be expected and noted the previous North Korean nuclear crisis in 1993-94 took nearly 18 months of negotiations to resolve.

This crisis has received a lot of press attention -- but probably quite a bit less than it warrants. The underlying reality is that the timing of all this is wrong. We're trying to negotiate an end to the North's nuclear program, but intelligence estimates suggest that they're actually building these weapons now. Any reasonable timeframe for the negotiations leaves them enough time to complete their current round of weapons production.

So what are we doing, exactly? Negotiating to end the program, only to find at the moment we sign the agreement that they already have 8 or 10 nuclear bombs? Do we expect them to turn over completed weapons at the end of all this?

The unworkable timing of it all means this crisis is probably quite a bit bigger than it appears. Bigger, I suspect, than what we've faced in Iraq.

Posted by William Swann at August 25, 2003 10:10 AM