The Washington Declaration reflects yet another effort by the US and South Korea to present a united front against North Korean nuclear and missile sabre rattling.
Prime Minister Kishida Fumio gave a resolute call for pursuing “realism diplomacy for a new era” in his Diet deliberations. How strategically innovative and politically effective will it prove in pursuing Tokyo’s national interests in the US–China–Japan calculus?
In the arena of international relations nation-states have been regarded as the primary actors. However, the constituent units of nation-states have also become active in forging relations with the political units which are located outside the national borders through ‘para-diplomacy’. Since the 1990s the states of Indian union have been playing a significant role in India’s foreign affairs. The Narendra Modi government in New Delhi has also established a ‘States Division’ in the Ministry of External Affairs.
The state narrative of North Korea, the story that keeps the Kims in power and the population uncomplaining, is built as much around international politics as it is domestic. In the mid-1990s, soon after the first transition of power from Kim Il-sung to Kim Jong-il, the country and the regime was in crisis. Always looking at themselves through the lens of South Korea and the need for reunification, official propaganda had been building an idea that their Southern brothers and sisters were impoverished in comparison and desperate to join with the North once again.
Kim will drive the hardest bargain possible and be willing to make only small concessions like maintaining some type of a freeze on future tests of missiles and nuclear weapons.
Removing the Kim regime’s fears about regime change and reducing the insecurity caused by North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests to the US and its allies are the essentials that must be addressed in a UN-led multinational dialogue to forge a negotiated settlement.
A rational decision maker in the White House does not have all options on the table and cannot start a war without South Korea’s consent. Diplomacy is the only option and this is as obvious as obvious can be.
