Wolf Spider

By Henry A. Kissinger
Wednesday, April 22, 2009

The vast diplomatic agenda that the Obama administration has adopted will test its ability to harmonize national priorities such as relations with Iran and North Korea with global and multilateral concerns. President Obama has come into office at a moment of unique opportunity. The economic crisis absorbs the energies of all the major powers; whatever their differences, all need a respite from international confrontation. Overriding challenges such as energy, the environment and proliferation concern them to a considerable degree and in an increasingly parallel way. The possibility of comprehensive solutions is unprecedented.

Obama has launched negotiations on an extraordinary range of subjects. Each has a political as well as a strategic component. Each deals with issues peculiar to itself. Each runs the risk that inherent obstacles could obscure ultimate objectives or that negotiating tactics could warp substance. But the challenges are also closely related. For example, arms control negotiations with Russia will affect Russia's role in the nonproliferation effort with Iran. The strategic dialogue with China will help shape the Korean negotiations. The negotiations will also be affected by perceptions of regional balances -- of the key participants, for Russia, this applies especially to the former Soviet space in Central Asia; for China and the United States, to the political structure of Northeast Asia and the Pacific Rim.

This reality needs to be translated into some operational concept of world order. The administration's approach seems to be pointing toward a sort of concert diplomacy, which existed for some two decades after the Napoleonic Wars, in which groupings of great powers work together to enforce international norms. In that view, American leadership results from the willingness to listen and to provide inspirational affirmations. Common action grows out of shared convictions. Power emerges from a sense of community and is exercised by an allocation of responsibilities related to a country's resources. It is a kind of world order either without a dominating power or in which the potentially dominating power leads through self-restraint.

The economic crisis favors this approach even though there are few examples of sustained operation of such a concert. Typically, members of any grouping reflect an unequal distribution of willingness to run risks, leading to an unequal willingness to allocate efforts on behalf of international order, and hence to the potential veto by the most irresolute. The Obama administration need not choose yet whether to ultimately rely on consensus or equilibrium. But it must fine-tune its national security structure to judge the environment it faces and calibrate its strategy accordingly.

The administration's task, particularly with regard to North Korea and Iran, will be to keep the far-flung negotiations led by energetic personalities heading toward an agreed goal. In the process, it must navigate between two kinds of public pressures toward diplomacy endemic in American attitudes. Both seek to transcend diplomacy's traditional give-and-take. The first reflects an aversion to negotiating with societies that do not share our values and general outlook. It rejects the effort to alter the other side's behavior through negotiations. It treats compromise as appeasement and seeks the conversion or overthrow of the adversary. Critics of this approach, who represent the second sort of pressure, emphasize psychology. They consider the opening of negotiations an inherent transformation. For them, symbolism and gestures represent substance.

Proliferation is perhaps the most immediate illustration of the relationship between world order and diplomacy. If North Korea and Iran succeed in establishing nuclear arsenals in the face of the stated opposition of all the major powers in the U.N. Security Council and outside of it, the prospects for a homogeneous international order will be severely damaged. In a world of multiplying nuclear weapons states, it would be unreasonable to expect that those arsenals will never be used or never fall into the hands of rogue organizations. A new, less universal approach to world order would be needed. The next (literally) few years will be the last opportunity to achieve an enforceable restraint. If the United States, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia cannot achieve this vis-à-vis a country with next to no impact on international trade and no resources needed by anyone, the phrase "world community" will become empty.

North Korea has recently voided all concessions it made in six years of talks. It cannot be permitted to sell the same concessions over and over again. The six-power talks should be resumed only if Pyongyang restores the circumstances to which it has already agreed, mothballing its plutonium reactor and returning international inspectors to the site. When those talks resume, the ultimate quid pro quo must be the abandonment of the Korean nuclear weapons program and the destruction of the existing stockpile in return for normalization of relations at the end of the process. Since the outcome affects all neighbors of North Korea, and since the Korean nuclear program threatens them more than it does the United States, calls to place the emphasis on bilateral Korean-U.S. talks amount to a call for isolating the United States.

Iran is, of course, a far more complex country with a greater direct impact on its region. The diplomatic process with Iran is just beginning. Its outcome will depend on whether it is possible to establish a geostrategic balance in the region in which all countries, including Iran, find security without any country dominating. To that goal, bilateral U.S.-Iranian talks are indispensable. Any negotiations with Iran will be heavily influenced by whether progress toward stability in Iraq continues or whether an emerging vacuum tempts Iranian adventurism.

I have generally found that the best negotiating approach is to put before the other side a full and honest account of one's ultimate objectives. Tactical bargaining -- moving through a series of minimum concessions -- tests endurance via peripheral issues. But it runs the risk of producing misunderstanding about ultimate purposes. Sooner or later, the fundamental issues have to be addressed. This is particularly necessary when dealing with a country with which there has been no effective contact for three decades.

By contrast, the issue of proliferation is intrinsically multilateral. Heretofore, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and now the United States have coordinated by consensus. The price they have paid is that key issues have remained unresolved and even unaddressed. Some are factual: how far Iran is from developing sufficient enriched materials for a nuclear warhead and how far it is from building a warhead for a missile; the degree to which international inspections could verify a limited enrichment program declared as peaceful; and how much warning would be available if the declaration were violated.

While the administration seeks to persuade Iran to enter into dialogue (and there must be some point when reiterated requests turn on themselves), it should energetically seek to resolve the factual disputes among our prospective negotiating partners described above. That is the only way to sustain multilateral diplomacy. If no agreement can be reached on these issues, the long-sought negotiations will end in stalemate and wind up, through the veto by the least resolute, legitimizing an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

The administration has launched the country on an important diplomatic enterprise. It now needs to fulfill its vision with a diplomatic plan.

© 2009 Tribune Media Services Inc.

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무슨 글을 올릴까 하다가 한참 싸이월드 대문 이미지로 걸어두었던 위의 그림에 대한 글을 올리기로 했습니다.

위 사진은 Newsweek 2009년 3월호에 실렸던 것입니다.

(출처 : http://www.newsweek.com/id/189260)

기사 부제는 "핵폭탄을 테러리스트의 손에서 안전하게 할 유일한 방법은 핵 법의학의 새로운 과학적 접근이다(The only thing that can keep nuclear bombs out of the hands of terrorists is a brand-new science of nuclear forensics)라는 것입니다. 한마디로, 불량국가들이 핵물질을 신고하도록 해서, 특성을 알고 있자는 것입니다. 이것은 지문을 보유하는 효과가 있습니다. 범죄가 발생하면, 현장에서 채취한 지문은 결정적인 증거가 됩니다. 마찬가지로, 핵테러리즘 시 핵물질 특성은 테러지원국 혐의 부여의 결정적인 증거가 됩니다.

최근 오바마 행정부가 북한에 엄격한 접근을 보여서 사람들이 어리둥절 하고 있습니다. 보스워스나 자누지는 포용정책이 다른 정책대안들보다 낫다고 지속적으로 주장하고 있기 때문에 오바마 대통령이 강조하는 엄격함은 일견 모순적입니다.

하지만, Newsweek 기사가 보여주는 미국의 의제를 감안한다면, 오바마의 이야기들은 쉽게 이해가 됩니다. 미국 본토 안보에 있어서 최대의 과제는 핵테러를 방지하는 것입니다. 뉴욕에 핵무기를 통한 테러가 이루어진다면, 미국의 금융시스템이 붕괴될 수 있을 뿐더러, 어마어마한 인명피해가 발생할 수 있기 때문입니다. 상상만으로도 끔찍한 일입니다.

미국 본토에 대한 핵테러시 핵물질 누출국가는 발각될 것이라는 점을 분명하게 하기 위해 오바마 대통령은 비핵화 협상에서 엄격함을 강조하는 것입니다. 북한의 경우에도 철저한 핵물질 신고를 받아놓으려고 합니다. 오바마 행정부는 부시행정부처럼 선과 악의 이분법으로 세계를 이해하지 않습니다만, 비확산 정책에서 법적 접근은 유효합니다. 범인은 반드시 처벌받는다는 것입니다. 다만 오바마는 부시처럼 심증만 가지고 처들어가지는 않고 물증을 제시하겠다는 것이지요.

북한이 미국과의 협상에서 보여온 행태는 약속을 지키는 척만 하는 Pretending의 측면이 강합니다. 미국에게 북한은 믿을만한 상대가 절대 아닙니다. 브루스 커밍스는 ‘2000년 10월을 기억하라’며 오바마 행정부는 올브라이트 국무장관이 평양을 방문했던 화해무드를 이어받아야 한다고 보았습니다. 그러나 미국의 외교-정보공동체의 시각에서 보이는 2000년 10월은 약간 다를 것입니다. 북한의 Pretending의 극치가 드러난 시점인 것입니다. 미국을 방문한 조명록 조선인민군 차수가 반테러공동성명을 발표하고도, 북측이 2000년 안티파다의 책임을 이스라엘에 돌리고 헤즈볼라 등의 중동 테러단체를 지지했던 때로 기억될 것입니다. 북한은 미국의 실질적 요구인 반미테러 단체를 반대하는 것에는 정작 따르지 않았던 것입니다.

(그 이유는 북한이 수십 년 동안 맺어온 중근동국가들과의 친선관계를 희생하고 싶어하지 않았기 때문이지요.)

미국은 북한이 향후 Pretending을 불가능하게 하는 핵신고를 거부한다면, 봉쇄정책적 접근까지도 취할 수 있다고 보입니다. 핵테러리즘의 가능성을 핵지문 채취로 방지하지 못한다면, 믿기 힘든 상대에 대한 차선책은 철저한 봉쇄인 것입니다. 북한이 아까워도 버릴 것은 버리면서 Pretending의 가능성을 포기고, 철저하게 핵물질을 신고해야만, 미국 내의 비둘기파가 옹호하는 포괄적 접근, 메가 딜이 이루어질 수 있을 것입니다.

관건은 북한이 6자회담의 비핵화 신고서에 '지문'을 찍을 각오가 되어 있냐는 것이라는 것입니다.