© KCNA / Reuters
Back in February, shortly after North Korea launched a satellite into space, I wrote an
article for Sputnik in which I lamented the total absence of Western diplomatic engagement with North Korea.
I pointed out that endless angry rhetoric and sanctions extending back to the Korean war of the 1950s have completely failed to achieve their stated purposes: the North Korean regime is still there, it has not changed or moderated itself or its policies in any way, and so far from its ending its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, those are racing ahead.
I also pointed out that any idea that North Korea would now willingly abandon the nuclear weapons technology it has acquired after so much effort is simply delusional. Having worked for decades to achieve a nuclear weapons capability in the teeth of Western hostility and Western sanctions, it is not going to give it up.
Insisting that North Korea part with its nuclear weapons technology, and making that a condition for any engagement with North Korea, is simply a guarantee that no such engagement will take place.
The latest
nuclear test in North Korea - the most powerful yet - merely provides further confirmation of all of this.
Since the West refuses to talk to North Korea, or come to any sort of agreement with it which does not involve North Korea's total capitulation to Western demands, the North Koreans have no incentive to change their behaviour or to rein in their nuclear weapons programme. To be clear, whilst there is no possibility of the North Koreans now giving up the nuclear weapons capability they already have, there might be a possibility that in return for some meaningful concessions from the West - for example involving an easing of sanctions or some sort of confidence building measures on the North Korean peninsula of the sort that worked well in Europe during the Cold War - they might be prepared to place some limits on it.
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