Iran in the Mirror of North Korea

Last week, the United States Senate achieved something that has not been seen for years: a bipartisan agreement. However, it does not seek to address any of the countless domestic problems that dwindle when faced with the lack of coordination between both parties. On the contrary, the law that was approved through the parties’ consensus during the first round of discussions (and which has now been passed to the Lower House), only aims to limit the government’s negotiating capabilities with respect to Tehran’s nuclear program. According to this law, any agreement that the White House reaches with Iran, within the negotiating framework that the latter country upholds with the UN Security Council permanent members (plus Germany and the European Union), will have to be reviewed and approved by Congress. Given the prevailing maximalist stances within Congress, this equates to thwarting the materialization of reaching any possible agreement with Iran in the negotiation process, which is to be concluded in June this year. Diplomacy becomes stifled when we forget that every negotiation is, by definition, incompatible with the imposition of one party’s wishes over the other’s (which can only be achieved through a victorious war). It would be worthwhile for Congress to recall what its country achieved in the case of North Korea by denying them any space for diplomacy.

North Korea’s nuclear program was about to cause the Clinton administration to bomb the country’s atomic facilities. However, a cost-benefit analysis highlighted how unfounded it would be to take this route, leading the White House to sign an agreement with the Pyongyang government in 1994. Based on the same agreement, North Korea committed to discontinuing its uranium enrichment program and Washington committed to facilitating the establishment of two light-water electricity-generating nuclear reactors. At the same time, both committed to normalizing their political and diplomatic relations.

There were breaches on both sides and in 2002, when the United States confronted the North Koreans about continuing the uranium enrichment program, they claimed that Washington also was not honoring its part of the treaty. Pyongyang, nevertheless, committed to discontinuing the enrichment program, once the U.S. afforded explicit guarantees to not attack them and to normalize relations. Let us not forget that at the end of the Korean War, both parties only signed an armistice but never signed a formal cessation of hostilities. Theoretically, they are still at war.

Brandishing its usual arrogance, the Bush administration, while in power, chose to resort to severity, demanding the immediate and unconditional cessation of the uranium enrichment program. This happened in the same year the Bush administration had turned preventative action into the central concept of its military doctrine and associated North Korea with the so-called “Axis of Evil.” This also occurred a year following the announcement of the development of a missile defense system to protect the United States from ‘”rogue nations” like North Korea.

Of course, cornering a government beset with chronic paranoia was not the best of incentives. Especially without the ability to subdue it. As such, in 2003, the Pentagon presented the president with the option of bombing the nuclear facilities but, as was the situation with Clinton, the option was rejected on the grounds of irrelevance. By virtue of this, Bush agreed to engage in six-party talks, which included Pyongyang and Washington. Nevertheless, this was far from the face-to-face negotiations that North Korea sought, desperate to find reconciliation with the United States.

According to Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington: “Suppose that instead of calling North Korea a part of an ‘Axis of Evil,’ the president had maintained contact with North Korea’s President Kim Jong Il, and assured him delivery of the promised electricity-generating equipment he so much needs. Suppose we had offered to negotiate a peace treaty to finally end the Korean War, and had offered diplomatic recognition to North Korea as we promised, and hadn’t made such a big deal out of deploying a National Missile Defense system to defend against ‘rogue nations like North Korea.’ Would we have a Korea crisis on our hands?” (ROGUE NATION, New York, 2003) What is certain is that today, Pyongyang has 20 nuclear warheads in addition to long-distance land and submarine missile capabilities.

The logic that Obama demonstrated in light of the negotiations with Tehran contrasts with the arrogant intransigence of his predecessor. His good judgment enables him to see the exorbitant cost that the military alternative would incur. Let us hope that the country’s Congress does not stand in the way of diplomacy.