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Lessons from North Korea for the Iran Nuclear Deal

(Foreign Policy) Joel Wit - As a State Department official, I spent a decade negotiating and implementing a denuclearization agreement with North Korea, the 1994 Agreed Framework, a landmark deal that collapsed in 2002. The U.S. negotiator on the Iran deal, Wendy Sherman, was also involved in the Clinton administration's dealings with North Korea. There are important lessons to be learned from our past difficulties with Pyongyang. First, the U.S. should avoid the "problem solved" mentality that inevitably follows landmark agreements. Once the 1994 accord was concluded, senior U.S. government officials paid a lot less attention to North Korea. Second, without a thawing of bilateral political relations, nuclear deals ultimately fail. The two go hand in hand since countries build nuclear weapons in part to respond to a perceived security threat. Continuing periodic tensions on issues unrelated to the nuclear agreement undermined implementation. The same danger exists with Iran given its history of bad relations with Washington and Israel, as well as a raft of differences on other issues, such as support for terrorist groups. Third, plan for disputes and cheating. When North Korea withdrew from the agreement and restarted its nuclear program, the administration had no alternative but to seek new nuclear negotiations. The lessons here for the Iran accords are clear. First, build in mechanisms for dispute resolution, through both existing diplomatic channels and a compliance commission created specifically for that purpose. Second, formulate a plan of political, economic, and even military steps that can be taken if problem-solving fails. The writer is a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
2013-11-29 00:00:00
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