Next Up: Nuclear Talks With North Korea?

Beyond the sound and fury of the Iran nuclear talks lies a big follow-up question: What, if anything, does President Obama propose to do during his final stretch in office about the growing nuclear threat of North Korea?

Just this April, The Wall Street Journal reported that according to China’s estimates, “North Korea may already have 20 warheads, as well as the capability of producing enough weapons-grade uranium to double its arsenal by next year.”

As far as Obama has displayed any policy toward North Korea to date, it has consisted chiefly of his administration’s amorphous “strategic patience,” which some have dubbed “strategic neglect.” This has entailed a hodge-podge of toothless scoldings, scattered sanctions and U.S. backing for ineffective United Nations Security Council Resolutions, marking such occasions as North Korea’s 2009 and 2013 nuclear tests.

As part of Obama’s broader policy of “engagement,” his administration has also been offering for years to sit down with North Korea at the nuclear bargaining table, provided North Korea shows some commitment to behave as a credible negotiating partner.

So far, that’s gone pretty much nowhere. There was brief excitement over the Feb. 29. 2012 “Leap Day” deal, in which the U.S. offered North Korea aid in exchange for a moratorium on missile and nuclear tests. That came shortly after North Korea’s current tyrant King Jong Un inherited power upon the death of his father, Kim Jong Il. Obama administration officials hoped Kim Jong Un might turn out to be more tractable than his forebears. He didn’t. The Leap Day deal fell apart two weeks after it was announced, when North Korea went ahead with a long-range missile test.

Mostly, Obama has focused on Iran, while letting North Korea’s nuclear ventures take their course. The best that can be said for this approach is that at least Obama has refrained from dignifying Pyongyang with a fresh round of Six-Party nuclear talks (the other five parties in this currently dormant process being China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and North Korea). So, let us credit Obama that he has not actively bolstered the Pyongyang regime by lavishing on it the kind of payoffs that North Korea extorted for nuclear deals under President Clinton (the 1994 Agreed Framework) and President Bush (the 2007 Six-Party nuclear deal). In both those deals, North Korea took whatever it could get, cheated, reneged and carried on developing nuclear weapons.

But as the Iran talks grind toward the twice-extended deadline of June 30th, there are signs that Obama may be setting the stage for a more active approach to North Korea. Unfortunately, if he carries through, his most likely course would be to try to double down on the experience of the Iran negotiations by opening nuclear talks with North Korea.

There are various reasons why Obama might thus bestir himself toward the end of his second term. Perhaps North Korea’s expanding nuclear arsenal — with its potential for sales to other rogue states or terrorist groups such as ISIS or Al Qaeda — is becoming too big a worry even for the acolytes of strategic patience. Perhaps the U.S. negotiators at the Iran talks are uncomfortably aware that no matter what constraints they try to impose on Iran’s domestic nuclear program, North Korea, a longtime proliferator to the Middle East and ally of Iran, could provide Tehran with a secret nuclear weapons back shop, complete with test facilities. Or perhaps, in the spirit of engaging with rogue regimes, Obama hopes to round out the twilight of his presidency with a trifecta of rapprochements: Iran, Cuba and North Korea.

But what are the signs? Start with the crescendo of public warnings since last October, coming from U.S. military officials, about North Korea’s ability to target the U.S. with a nuclear strike.

These warnings are a big change from what Obama himself said just over two years ago, dismissing any such threat. Back in early 2013, worries about North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile prowess were high in the news. North Korea had recently carried out its third nuclear test, following a successful long-range missile test (which Pyongyang called a satellite launch). On top of that, in a congressional hearing on April 11, 2013, Rep. Lamborn (R., Colo.) had tipped out information that the Defense Intelligence Agency assessed with “moderate confidence” that North Korea already had nuclear weapons that could be delivered, though unreliably, on ballistic missiles.

Four days after that bombshell, Obama gave a televised interview to NBC News, Obama was asked if North Korea was capable of building nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. He said no. “Based on our current intelligence, we do not think they have that capacity,” he told NBC.

The following year, in Oct. 2014, his administration began to change that public tune. At a Pentagon press conference, in answer to a reporter’s question, the commander of U.S. Forces in Korea, General Curtis Scaparrotti, said that “personally,” he believed North Korea had acquired the capability to miniaturize a nuclear warhead and mount it on a long-range missile. In other words, North Korea had acquired the expertise — though still apparently untested — to threaten the U.S. with a nuclear strike.

This was alarming news, but it was not an official U.S. government assessment. It came  couched as Scaparrotti’s personal opinion. Though, given that he kept his job, it seems likely that before he inserted that particular opinion into a Pentagon press conference, he got a green light from on high.

Then, this April, at another Pentagon press conference, came confirmation from the head of the U.S. Northern Command, Admiral William Gortney, that U.S. officialdom believes North Korea has the ability to make nuclear missiles, though apparently still untested. Gortney did not deliver this information as a personal opinion, but as an official appraisal. Referring to the road-mobile KN-08 ballistic missiles paraded by North Korea in 2012, Gortney said: “Yes. Our assessment is that they have the ability to put it on — a nuclear weapon on a KN-08 and shoot it at the homeland.”

It’s not clear what really changed between Obama’s denial in 2013, Scaparrotti’s personal opinion in 2014 and Gortney’s official confirmation in 2015. Perhaps North Korea made a big advance, and U.S. officials only recently found out. Perhaps the Obama administration decided it was finally time to share with the public some of the alarming information it already had.

Whatever the back story, the obvious implication — put out there by the administration itself — is that strategic patience is not containing North Korea’s runaway nuclear program. Presumably, Obama must protect a worried public by doing something more.

Which brings us to the administration’s copious stream of invitations to North Korea to come back to the nuclear bargaining table. It’s part of Obama’s policy that the door to engagement is always open. Kerry has been reminding North Korea of that for years, but lately he seems especially keen on the project. Last October, when North Korea released an American citizen it had effectively been holding hostage in prison, Kerry said, “we hope that the dynamics can develop in the next few weeks, months perhaps, where we could get back to talks.” Last month, while visiting Beijing, Kerry said he hopes an Iran nuclear deal could have a “positive influence” on North Korea.

Also last month, the Associated Press reported that “after three years of diplomatic deadlock, the Obama administration says it is open to holding preliminary talks with North Korea to probe its intentions and assess the prospects of ridding the country of nuclear weapons.” Quoting an anonymous senior U.S. official, the AP reported that the U.S. is willing to be flexible on format if that’s what it takes for “serious dialogue.” Last week, the U.S. envoy to the Six-Party Talks, Sung Kim, was conferring in Seoul with his counterparts from South Korea and Japan, telling The New York Times, “We agreed on the importance of enhancing pressure and sanctions on North Korea even as we keep all diplomatic options on the table.”

Actually, while the options may be open, U.S. sanctions policy toward North Korea has appeared distinctly conciliatory lately, if only by omission. Last December, Obama blamed North Korea for a massive cyber attack on Sony Pictures and its Hollywood movie “The Interview.” On Jan. 2, 2015, Obama signed an executive order outlining sweeping authority to impose U.S. sanctions on any found to be a government official of North Korea, a member of its ruling Workers’ Party, or any entity or individual controlled by either. That same day, the U.S. added 10 mid-level North Korean officials to its sanctions blacklist. And there it stopped. In the five months since, no one and nothing else has been added.

The real solution — almost certainly the only solution — to the growing nuclear threat of North Korea does not lie in bringing Pyongyang’s envoys back to the nuclear bargaining table, but in bringing down the Pyongyang regime. That would require shunning and undermining Kim, not extending a hand. Clinton and Bush both tried diplomacy, and failed. The odds for Obama are far worse. On his own watch, North Korea has amassed  more nuclear wares to bargain with, carried out a second and third nuclear test, and prepared to detonate a fourth. Totalitarian North Korea aspires not to barter away its arsenal, but to be recognized as a nuclear state. In that calculus, the more weapons and threats Pyongyang can bring — periodically — to the table, the better the haul of concessions it can extort. Don’t be surprised if sometime in coming months, North Korea celebrates Kerry’s next invitation to talk by setting off its next nuclear test.

Ms. Rosett is journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and heads its Investigative Reporting Project. Find her on Twitter: @CRosett