November/December 2003, Volume 59, No. 6, pp. 19-25
Negotiating with the North By Leon V. Sigal
China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia are all doing their part. Now the United States needs to get down to business.
After three years of doing what he could to repudiate his predecessor's Korea policy, President George W. Bush now finds himself on the same precarious perch where President Bill Clinton stood in 1994 and again in late 1998. North Korea is developing nuclear arms and missile technology, but Bush is doing nothing effective to stop it. He is hoping that North Korea will collapse so he won't have to deal with it as it is, but as he wishes it to be. In the meantime, he's planning air strikes while trying to line up support for an economic embargo and naval blockade-a strategy that only alienates allies South Korea and Japan and antagonizes China. And he has been slow to grasp what his allies in Asia know-that pressure without negotiations won't work with North Korea.
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2003/nd03/nd03sigal.html