Six-Party Talks On Hold Until Obama Takes Office

The nuclear crisis in Northeast Asia has reached a critical juncture as six Pacific countries wait for President-elect Barack Obama to restart the delicate negotiations aimed at closing one of the last chapters of the Cold War.

Though diplomatic efforts by the Bush administration are continuing, Asia experts agree that the North Koreans are now biding their time for Obama to take office on Jan. 20, effectively putting the Six-Party talks on hold until then. Pyongyang sees Obama’s ascendency as an opportunity to start fresh without the mutual mistrust that plagued its dealings with President Bush over the last eight years.

“The Bush administration has accomplished what it’s going to accomplish, we’re basically in waiting mode,” said former campaign adviser L. Gordon Flake, executive director of the Mansfield Foundation, a think tank that focuses on Northeast Asian issues.

Obama’s choice for the position of chief negotiator in the talks will be crucial. That official will have three tasks: continuing the process left by outgoing negotiator Christopher Hill, developing a long-term strategy to address North Korea’s final status, and repairing damaged relations with regional allies.

To that end, former Obama campaign advisers and Korea experts say the next chief negotiator must be one part statesman, one part tactician, and one part ringleader. They warn that solving the North Korean nuclear crisis will be a long, hard slog that will play out over many years.

“There is no easy solution, no magic bullet, no secret negotiating strategy that would solve this problem,” said Flake. “No one should be under any illusions that this is a problem that will be solved quickly or easily.”

Continuing Bush’s Strategy

During the campaign, Obama said he would continue the recent Bush administration strategy of pursuing incremental advances in the Six-Party talks while keeping the threat of sanctions at the ready.

“The last eight years have demonstrated the necessity of confronting the threat from North Korea through aggressive, sustained, and direct bilateral and multilateral diplomacy,” Obama said in an October statement that endorsed Bush’s removal of North Korea from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terror.

Obama also sought to reassure allies, especially Japan and South Korea, that he will address their recent feelings of neglect.

“Too often, there has been a failure to effectively engage our partners throughout this effort. We must dramatically improve coordination with our allies,” Obama said.

Most observers agree that the talks under Hill’s stewardship have yielded a mix of accomplishments and setbacks. Through his strategy of pursuing step by step, action for action moves, Hill was able to convince the North Koreans to destroy the cooling tower at their Yongbyon nuclear facility, allow the return of international nuclear inspectors, and submit verification documents to outline their nuclear activities.

But the North Koreans have mixed their concessions with alternating bouts of stalling and saber-rattling, and nuclear experts point out that their submitted verification documents were woefully incomplete. North Korea has growing internal problems as well, including severe food shortages and the ailing health of its leader, Kim Jong Il.

Obama’s choice for chief negotiator will “inherit some achievement and some problems from the previous administration,” said Kongdan Oh, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Oh warns that the Obama administration should move deliberately but without showing any anxiety that the North Koreans could exploit. The next American negotiator must take a long term view that eschews showing superficial progress for its own sake, she said.

Moving Ahead While Soothing Allies

Nonproliferation experts say the real test for the Obama administration will be whether they can move the incremental talks towards core issues that have yet to be addressed, namely the final status of North Korea and the fate of their weapons stockpiles.

“What a new administration needs to do is save what Bush has done, start to move forward, and think about a strategy that could get it to the point where we can get at North Korea’s nuclear stockpile,” said former campaign adviser Joel Wit, an adjunct fellow at Columbia University. “We’re not doing that now.”

But Asia experts warn that building consensus with allies will not be easy due to the disparate interests and personalities of the powerful countries involved.

James Lilley, a former ambassador to both China and South Korea, said the United States must balance its priority — weapons proliferation and production — with Chinese and South Korean concerns about the regime’s stability. For North Korea’s neighbors, the collapse of Kim Jong Il’s government would be a nightmare scenario.

“The one thing the North Koreans fear more than anything else is the coordination and cooperation of the U.S., South Korea and China,” said Lilly. “So far, they’ve been able to keep us separate.”

Whoever is charged with heading up North Korea policy also will have to repair recently frayed relations with America’s cornerstone regional ally, Japan. Tokyo wants to resolve the issue of Japanese citizens who were kidnapped decades ago by North Korean agents before giving Pyongyang any big concessions.

Japanese officials complain they were not properly consulted before the U.S. removed North Korea from its state sponsors of terror list. They are watching closely to see if Obama appoints a chief negotiator willing to give Japan attention and respect, said Nobuyoshi Sakajiri, a Bernard Schwartz fellow at the Asia Society.

“Due to Bush and Hill’s mishandling of Japan throughout the second term, the feeling that Japan should stop carrying water for the Americans is increasing,” said Sakajiri. “At the same time, the Japanese voice and power in the six party talks has declined.”

Short List of Possible Nominees

Observers note that the selection of a new chief negotiator will depend heavily on who is chosen to fill more senior level positions. Sources close to the transition say that they have not gotten to that level of planning.

Nevertheless, Asia experts, campaign advisors, and political observers have been forming their own informal “short list” of names that could be tapped for the job.

That list includes top Obama campaign Asia advisors Jeffrey Bader, now at the Brookings Institution, and Frank Jannuzi, an Asia expert on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. According to reports, Jannuzi recently met with North Korean negotiator Li Gun.

Some believe Bader will end up as assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs. Jannuzi also could end up in the State Department or on the National Security Council. As a Biden staffer, Jannuzi also could land in the office of Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

Leading think tank experts on Korea are also being discussed, such as Jack Pritchard, a former Bush administration special envoy to North Korea who is now president of the Korea Economic Institute.

Some observers suggest that Obama might look to academia. Among those candidates, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ashton Carter and Stephen Bosworth, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, are often mentioned.

Others argue what is needed is a senior diplomat whose previous high-ranking government roles would bring the gravitas necessary to engender broad buy-in from within the U.S. government as well as with all the partner countries.

Examples of such figures include Wendy Sherman, who served as a State Department counselor and North Korea policy coordinator under former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; or even William Perry, the former Defense secretary who was active in the Obama campaign.

All experts seem to agree that Obama should separate the job of chief negotiator from the job of assistant secretary of state for East Asia, due to the severe demands of the task ahead.

“It’s not easy, it’s not romantic, it’s basically a very tough, long, dirty job,” said Oh.