Good news today on the foreign policy front: the US has finally started to make progress in opening up its relations with North Korea.  Don't get me wrong.  I have nothing but disdain for the government of NK. But the question is, and has always been, how best to deal with a bad situation there.  The Bush policy of isolation and pressure did not work.  And in a rare instance of learning on the part of that same Bush administration, the failed policy was changed and that has yielded today's announcement by the president. 

    I have long felt that the best way forward in US NK policy is to encourage as much economic and social openness there as possible.  This might have the effect of preserving the regime but it would also redound to the benefit of average North Koreans.  They would come to have more opportunity to eat (which in itself is a major problem there still) and live their lives with a bit less constraint.  That is clearly the story of the opening of China these past thirty years.  While politics in the PRC remain draconian, society has certainly liberalized, people have more social and cultural space and, of course, the economy has boomed.  If NK experienced half of what has happened in China it would be better for all concerned. 

    And this brings me back to the Tao Te Ching.   Among its many lessons is one in how to be powerful, as in this excerpt from passage 61:

A great nation that puts itself below a small nation
takes over the small nation,
and a small nation that puts itself below a great nation
gives itself over to the great nation.

Some lie low to take over,
and some lie low to give over.

A great nation wanting nothing more
than to unite and nurture the people
and a small nation wanting nothing more
than to join and serve the people:
they both succeed in what they want.

Great things lie low and rest content.

      We do not have to take this literally; that is, the ultimate outcome does not have to be "taking over" of the small by the large.  Rather, it is a matter of each getting what they want.  The point, then, is how the powerful should exercise their power.  Force and domination produce resistance and conflict, denying the interests of the powerful and raising unnecessary costs (see Iraq war).  Alternatively, if the powerful accommodates and engages with the less powerful, and if the powerful is willing to bear the costs of compromise, then better outcomes are possible.  It reminds me of US policy toward Europe and Japan after 1947.  The US encouraged the creation of what would eventually become the European Union and it, for many years, worked to open its economy to the exports of Germany and Japan.  In so doing, the US absorbed the costs for constructing a relatively open and productive world economy, a global structure in which the US thrived.  Openness and engagement ultimately served the interests of both the US and Europe.  Openness and engagement have similarly served the interests of both the US and China more recently.  So it is good to see some glimmer of openness and engagement between the US and NK.

     Great things lie low and rest content.