Susan Shirk Comments on the North Korean-U.S. Agreement
Have We Seen This Movie Before?
03/01/2012
Mark McDonald,
IHT Rendezvous Blog, New York Times
It’s a fair question: Is North Korea acting in good faith, offering a monitored shutdown of a nuclear facility in exchange for a quarter-million tons of food aid? Or is this a kind of diplomatic “Groundhog Day,” fated to end once again with the Americans duped and angry over more North Korean perfidy?
The announcement of another food-for-shutdown deal, as reported by my colleagues Steven Lee Myers and Choe Sang-hun, took plenty of analysts and diplomats by surprise. As the tea leaves began to settle on Thursday, some saw great promise in the rapprochement. Others saw more manipulation and treachery ahead.
“This has the makings of a significant event — that is, significant for North Korea,’’ said Sung-yoon Lee, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. He suggested that Kim Jong-un, the new North Korean capo, will portray this deal to his people “as ‘food tribute’ from Obama.’’
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Susan Shirk is director of the University of California system-wide Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and Ho Miu Lam professor of China and Pacific Relations at IR/PS.
In 1993, she founded, and continues to lead, the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD), an unofficial “track-two” forum for discussions of security issues among defense and foreign ministry officials and academics from the United States, Japan, China, Russia, and the Koreas.
