Niksch, Larry A

Excerpt
Diplomacy toward North Korea has begun a new cycle of talks and meetings aimed at resuming the six party nuclear negotiations that have proceeded sporadically since 2003. The actual prospects for renewed talks are uncertain for a number of reasons, including different pre-conditions laid down by North Korea and the United States and South Korea. Still, there is pressure to resume negotiations, particularly a view held in the U.S. State Department that a resumption of negotiations will lessen the possibility that North Korea would resort to more singular military provocations against South Korea as it did twice in 2010. China, too, continues to pressure the United States to agree to negotiations. Thus, nuclear talks could start again by the end of 2011 or sooner.
Renewed negotiations will spawn optimistic statements from media organs and from some North Korea experts in South Korea and the United States. Even these, however, likely will avoid predictions that the negotiations will produce an agreement or agreements that would set forth a path toward full denuclearization of North Korean nuclear programs and weapons. Anyone will a sense of realism understands that the gap in negotiation positions between North Korea and the United States and South Korea is wide, and North Korea’s hardened negotiating positions since early 2009 have made them wider.
Negotiating positions are not the only reason for the low prospects of renewed negotiations. A more fundamental reason, ignored by most pundits, is that North Korea is close to achieving a fundamental military-strategic goal of its nuclear and missile programs: developing nuclear warheads that it would mount on its missiles. Nuclear warheads initially would be mounted on North Korean Nodong and Scud missiles. Later, Pyongyang possibly could mount them on the intermediate range Musudan missile and a longer range missile that it is attempting to develop that could reach U.S. territory, at lease Alaska and Hawaii.
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