A North Korean Blockbuster?

The New York Times is running a big piece about how the Administration, despite dissention in the ranks, is considering a diplomatic solution with North Korea including a peace treaty with North Korea that would replace the deal brokered to end the Korean War in 1953.

President Bush's top advisers have recommended a broad new approach to dealing with North Korea that would include beginning negotiations on a peace treaty, even while efforts to dismantle the country's nuclear program are still under way, senior administration officials and Asian diplomats say.

Aides say Mr. Bush is very likely to approve the new approach, which has been hotly debated among different factions within the administration. But he will not do so unless North Korea returns to multinational negotiations over its nuclear program. The talks have been stalled since September.

North Koreans have long demanded a peace treaty, which would replace the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War.

For several years after he first took office, Mr. Bush vowed not to end North Korea's economic and diplomatic isolation until it entirely dismantled its nuclear program. That stance later softened, and the administration said some benefits to North Korea could begin to flow as significant dismantlement took place. Now, if the president allows talks about a peace treaty to take place on a parallel track with six-nation talks on disarmament, it will signal another major change of tactics.

The decision to consider a change may have been influenced in part by growing concerns about Iran's nuclear program. One senior Asian official who has been briefed on the administration's discussions about what to do next said, "There is a sense that they can't leave Korea out there as a model for what the Iranians hope to become — a nuclear state that can say no to outside pressure."

Getting North Korea off the table would be a huge diplomatic win for the Administration, which sorely needs positive news. The problem is that North Korea isn't exactly trustworthy on these matters - and the key to any deal with North Korea isn't Pyongnang, but Beijing. If China wants to get this deal done, North Korea will go for it. It would not only enhance China's role in East Asia, but would remove a stumbling block in Sino-American relations.

Stop the ACLU and Hot Air have more with Allah noting:

A more reasonable explanation for the peace talks is that Bush would want to neutralize NK as best he can before possibly having to move against Iran. A treaty would ensure that the NorKs won't do something crazy on the Korean peninsula if/when we're preoccupied with Tehran. It would also give Bush some political capital with which to confront the mullahs. If he can resolve the standoff with North Korea diplomatically, it leaves him less open to the charge of warmongering when the cold war with Tehran turns hot.

I'm not sure that a treaty would ensure anything - after all it's just a piece of paper. The key is not what is on the paper, but what China would do to North Korea if the North Koreans breach their part of the bargain.

One also has to understand that North Korea was a conduit of nuclear and other weapons technologies to places like Iran. Taking North Korea off the table would essentially act like turning off one of the faucets that Iran has relied upon to update and expand its own weapons programs.

It remains to be seen what kind of details will come out about the framework of any such deal. Any deal would have to include nonproliferation, open and honest accounting of nuclear and other weapons programs, nonaggression policy towards neighboring countries, and dealing with the human rights issues.