OxBlog

# Posted 12:27 AM by Ariel David Adesnik

WISH THEY ALL COULD BE CALIFORNIA: Kevin Drum, aka CalPundit, has the guts to say what no other critic of the administration has: that negotiating means rewarding the North Koreans for their deception.

Still, I think Kevin is rushing to the conclusion that the time for negotiations and concessions has come. He says sanctions and isolation won't work because we might have to wait decades before anything happens. All the while, the North Koreans will keep on building more bombs.

Perhaps, but as the State Department has explained, the US isn't against negotiations per se. Rather, the precondition of those negotiations will be North Korea's renunciation of its illegal arms program.

Is that sort of precondition realistic? At the moment, no. But if South Korea, China and and the UN Security Council all endorse it, the North will find itself in a tough position.

Today, the head of the South Korean Foreign Ministry's North American Department said that "If North Korea announces its willingness to scrap [its uranium-enrichment program], that can set the stage for dialogue with the United States."

As for the UN, the IAEA's "directors [will] meet on Monday in Vienna to weigh a resolution that could lead to the imposition of sanctions against North Korea by the United Nations Security Council."

As Kevin says, what matters is not whether you negotiate, but whether you negotiate well. And this first part of negotiating well is negotiating under the right conditions.

All in all, I don't think Kevin and I are that far apart on the North Korea issue anymore. As he says, "North Korea precipitated the crisis, not us, and the administration's reaction so far has been quite measured. I hope it stays that way."

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