Perhaps some good news on the diplomatic front with today’s announcement of an agreement on North Korea’s nuclear program.  I have argued in the past that something like this – essentially buying off NK’s threat – was the best way forward.  Indeed, I would go further and encourage the US to give NK what it wants: security guarantees and aid.  This would keep an odious regime in power but it would also reduce its capacity to make more nukes and threaten regional stability. 

    It is important to keep in mind, however, that an agreement like this does not signal an end of negotiations and politics.  North Korea will certainly wrangle at every step; it will try to wrest more gains from each action it takes, regardless of the letter of the agreement.  Yet this sort of predictable behavior should not be taken as an excuse for the US to back away from the deal.  In reality, there is really no other alternative for the US.  NK has shown its capacity and intention to build nukes; it has apparently done so.  It is in the interest of the US to limit or reduce the nuclear threat NK poses.  There is no credible military option.  If the US were to attack, it would be risking a terrible retaliation against South Korea.  It has taken Bush and company six years – during which NK built more weapons and increased the threat against the US, Japan, and SK – to come to understand that tough guy tactics will not work in this case.  Let’s hope the lesson is well learned.

    The agreement will be open to conservative critique, as has already been provided by John Bolton.  But such critique is ultimately hollow because there is no real alternative.  What was accomplished by six years of stalling?  Only more nukes.  Of course it is uncomfortable to have to pay off a thug like Kim Jong-Il.  But the Sun Tzu-Tao Te Ching perspective reminds us that we can prevail without fighting. 

     From Sun Tzu we learn that some battles should not be fought, some roads should not be taken.  He was not a pacifist.  Rather, he encouraged a broad, strategic perspective.  What is the ultimate goal of US policy toward NK?  To reduce the threat that it poses.  If economic measures are the most effective and, ultimately, least costly means to that end, then why take the military road?  Some might say that the US should be aiming for "regime change" in NK.  But if Iraq has taught us anything it is how difficult regime change is.  Best to focus on key interests and work more subtly for larger transformations.

     The Tao Te Ching tells us "a great nation that puts itself below a small nation takes over the small nation"  (Passage 61).   The US is vastly more powerful than NK.  And power is most powerful when it is not used (how’s that for a Taoist twist).  That is, if the US were to frontally assault NK, it could well end up with less power for itself and without the goal that it seeks.  Better to draw NK into a broader relationship, where it becomes dependent on US power; then, NK would have much to lose if it drew away from the US and that would give Washington more leverage.

     And this is what the frustrated hawks still don’t understand: you can gain your long term strategic goal without having to fight for it.