On North Korea: ‘Trust but verify’

Given North Korea’spast duplicity about its commitment to a denuclearized Korean peninsula, there is no guarantee that it will abide by its latest agreement to suspend nuclear weapons testing and uranium enrichment and permit international inspectors to return to its principal nuclear complex. Even the Obama administration, which negotiated the agreement in talks in Beijing, is publicly restraining its enthusiasm. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called the agreement “a modest first step in the right direction” but added that the U.S. has “profound concerns” about North Korean intentions. That hasn’t stopped Republicans from accusing the administration of gullibility. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said, “We have bought this bridge several times before.”

Indeed, caution is in order. But the undertakings the North Koreans have made are significant, as is the timing of the agreement — two months into the rule of Kim Jong Un (even though the negotiations preceded the death of his father, Kim Jong Il). As a State Department official put it, North Korea is beginning the process of “walking back” several provocative actions that led to the rupture of protracted six-party negotiations also involving the United States, Russia, China, Japan and South Korea. North Korea withdrew from the negotiations three years ago after the United Nations rebuked it for launching a missile in violation of a Security Council resolution. Adopting a variation of Ronald Reagan’s policy of “trust but verify,” the United States said that it would decide whether six-party talks should be resumed based on North Korea’s conduct.

It is true, as the administration’s critics note, that North Korea did not “walk back” its positions unilaterally. As part of the agreement, the U.S. will provide the North with 20,000 tons of food a month for the next year. The food will be sent in forms “appropriate for young children” — as opposed to the stocks of rice that were donated in the past but diverted by North Korea to its military. The State Department promises that the food distribution will be “comprehensively monitored and managed.”

There is something unseemly about bartering food for diplomatic concessions, but U.S. officials say it is the North Koreans who insist on the linkage because it allows them to point to benefits from their concessions. The U.S. should be willing to feed the desperately hungry with or without political dividends, but in this case compassion may also promote political progress.

Again, the operative word is “may.” Like theGeorge W. Bushadministration, the Obama administration confronts in North Korea an exasperating, elusive negotiating partner, but one whose capacity for compromise and enlightened self-interest must be tested. That is what this agreement will do.