Six-party talks are finally set to resume on North Korea’s nuclear program on July 25th in Beijing. Looks like it took some verbal backstepping on behalf of the US, but in the end it was worth it (and it’s also known as “diplomacy”, not exactly a bad word and preferable to nuclear-armed combat):
The top envoys to the negotiations from the United States and North Korea — U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill and North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan — met Saturday in the Chinese capital, KCNA said.
“The U.S. side clarified its official stand to recognize (North Korea) as a sovereign state, not to invade it and hold bilateral talks within the framework of the six-party talks,” KCNA reported.
North Korea has long demanded that Washington apologize for remarks by Rice labeling it as one of the world’s “outposts of tyranny.” North Korea said Saturday it took Hill’s comments at the Beijing meeting as “a retraction” of that earlier remark and decided to return to the nuclear talks.
Hopefully something will actually be accomplished with this, because the alternative is not at all a happy scenario for anyone in the US or in the region. I’ve read and heard suggestions that one of the only ways to deal with North Korea, outside of resuming talks, is to either place US nuclear weaponry in South Korea and Japan, or simply allow those two countries to finally go nuclear (both ideas are put forth in the latest edition of The Atlantic by way of its North Korea wargame, for instance.) That stems from the fact that the US currently doesn’t have enough conventional forces to mount an invasion, and even if it did the location of nuclear sites is an unknown, the North Korean army is formidable, and it’s highly probable that a nuke would be utilized by Kim Jong Il in such a scenario. However, US-backed nuclear proliferation in the region is not the answer; if Rice’s “outpost of tyranny” comments were enough to ruffle feathers and push talks back this far, just imagine what strategically placing nuclear warheads in the region would do. Not only would North Korea be pushed further toward the deep end, China wouldn’t exactly be pleased, either, as it’s already feeling extremely squeezed by the US military presence in the region by way of its naval supremacy. While it’s easy to decry talking with a madman like Kim Jong Il, the costs of not talking to him far outweigh whatever comes out of attempted diplomacy.
Cross-posted to Digital Dissent