{"id":53096,"date":"2020-01-23T14:38:52","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T03:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=53096"},"modified":"2020-01-23T15:33:56","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T04:33:56","slug":"the-korea-question-six-party-security-assurances-could-be-the-answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-korea-question-six-party-security-assurances-could-be-the-answer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Korea question: six-party security assurances could be the answer"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

US President Donald Trump\u2019s hope that the Korea question\u2014particularly the part about North Korea\u2019s nuclear capabilities\u2014could be resolved by the sheer force of personality has been confirmed as a fantasy. The best that can be said of his meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore in June 2018, Hanoi in February 2019 and Panmunjom in June 2019 is that they broke a lot of ice\u2014the last one, in particular, had an element of casual frivolity\u2014making it harder for either leader to make frightening threats and be taken seriously.<\/p>\n

But if the road back to browbeating and brinkmanship is a little longer than before, Pyongyang has signalled that Washington has left it with no choice but to make the journey: it has said<\/a> that it is ending its informal, unilateral moratorium on testing nuclear devices and long-range ballistic missiles unless the US offers major concessions (especially on sanctions) to unblock the dialogue between them.<\/p>\n

Where do we look for constructive things to do with this conundrum? Are there aspects of the situation that remain underexplored, stones that remain unturned? Improbable as it may seem, one candidate could be the offering of security assurances. In all previous endeavours to find a solution, Pyongyang spearheaded its negotiating position with the contention that it is the most threatened and insecure state on the planet and that\u2014as a first step\u2014the US (in particular) had to demonstrate convincingly that it had abandoned its \u2018hostile policies\u2019.<\/p>\n

The essence of the Korean story\u2014how it originated and evolved since World War II\u2014has been utterly distorted. Ironically enough, among the six key parties\u2014the two Koreas, the US, China, Russia and Japan\u2014it\u2019s the US, the perennial \u2018fall guy\u2019 on this issue, that has by far the most positive story to tell. Finding ways to get the real story out\u2014about the origins of the 1950\u20131953 war, about the lost opportunities to shape North Korean assessments and aspirations, and about how this desperately poor and isolated nation ended up circa 2017 with a stockpile of nuclear warheads and an array of sophisticated ballistic missiles\u2014should probably not, even at this late stage, be the first option. But it can\u2019t hurt to make clear that it\u2019s an option.<\/p>\n

The offering of security assurances would provide an opportunity to refresh and develop an important piece of the puzzle. Such assurances would offer every state directly associated with security on the Korean peninsula to make a substantive contribution to the sort of positive atmosphere needed to find a way into the core issue: opening up the path that leads to a peninsula that is both reliably stable and not a focus of major-power competition. In such circumstances, you would expect Korean armed forces to be unmistakably defensive in size, character and deployment. As I have argued in earlier<\/a> posts<\/a>, the weak and unequal sharing of exposure and accountability among the six major players in addressing and resolving the many facets of the Korean issue has been a fatal flaw in past efforts to find a peaceful solution.<\/p>\n

In a September 2005 joint statement<\/a> from the since-abandoned Six-Party Talks, the US \u2018affirmed that it has no nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula and has no intention to attack or invade the DPRK with nuclear or conventional weapons\u2019. Consideration could be given to getting the six states together again to see what each is prepared to offer in the way of security assurances to the other five, to provide an opportunity to negotiate reciprocal development of unilateral statements, and to explore the scope to combine these undertakings. Clearly enough, all six players would want to make their assurances conditional on the other five remaining fully compliant with the core principles of the UN Charter. Equally, however, any assurances need not be limited to hostile intentions or particular forms of military capability like nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction, but could also address the size and disposition of military forces and possibly other tools of statecraft.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also worth bearing in mind that the six states bring with them a formidable set of historical animosities that have very clearly complicated management of the Korean issue and continue to do so. The gradual drift of the US\u2013China relationship toward contestation and rivalry has accelerated sharply since 2018. Japanese militarism in the 1930s and 1940s still casts a dark shadow over Tokyo\u2019s relations with a number of countries but especially the two Koreas and China. Since 1961, China has had a formal alliance relationship with North Korea (comparable to that between the US and South Korea), but the net effect of living alongside imperial China for millennia is that neither Korea relishes the prospect of being left alone with their giant neighbour.<\/p>\n

China and Russia were allies when they jointly endorsed North Korea\u2019s invasion of the south in 1950 but fell out dramatically for some three decades (1959\u201360 to 1989), an enmity that contributed to irresponsible negligence on the part of both with respect to North Korea. Today, with China as the dominant partner, Beijing and Moscow are being meticulously careful to protect the positive relationship between them but, as in the past, rather secretive about their dealings with Pyongyang, leaving others to wonder whether they share similar aspirations for a durable settlement of the Korea question.<\/p>\n

So, who among these six players might have the courage to pit their diplomatic skills against the challenge of brokering an agreement to conduct an official Northeast Asian dialogue on security assurances?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US President Donald Trump\u2019s hope that the Korea question\u2014particularly the part about North Korea\u2019s nuclear capabilities\u2014could be resolved by the sheer force of personality has been confirmed as a fantasy. The best that can be …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":53102,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2225,86,1306,211],"class_list":["post-53096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-denuclearisation","tag-north-korea","tag-six-party-talks","tag-south-korea"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Korea question: six-party security assurances could be the answer | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-korea-question-six-party-security-assurances-could-be-the-answer\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Korea question: six-party security assurances could be the answer | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"US President Donald Trump\u2019s hope that the Korea question\u2014particularly the part about North Korea\u2019s nuclear capabilities\u2014could be resolved by the sheer force of personality has been confirmed as a fantasy. 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