Page 225 - Trilateral Korea Japan U.S. Cooperation

“Three Versus Three” Versus Fifteen Bilaterals

Many security specialists, including a number of contributors
to this volume, have decried the existence today of a “three
versus three” Cold War-like alignment in Northeast Asia. This
is certainly true in the macro-sense. Readers will note that not
a single author in this volume suggested a resumption of the
moribund Six-Party Talks; nor will I. The Six-Party Talks had,
for a short but significant period beginning with the George W.
Bush administration, “managed” the North Korea problem. I
say managed because, at the end of the day, the Talks did not
succeed in making things appreciably better. However, for an
extended period at least, they seemed to prevent them from
getting worse.

The Six-Party Talks were a good idea at the time, since
North Korea saw some value in dialogue (even if just to try
to exploit the others) and both Russia and China saw the
value of keeping Pyongyang in check. At least five of the six
initially accepted the common CVID goal: that is Complete,
Verifiable, Irreversible Denuclearization. Even Pyongyang
claimed to accept “Korean Peninsula denuclearization” as the
ultimate goal, even if its definition differed from the others –
to North Korea, this included removing U.S. forces (including
America’s nuclear umbrella) from the Peninsula as well, a
definition Beijing and Moscow readily accepted. Pyongyang
also had a different definition of “verifiable” and disagreements
over intrusive inspections were a major contributor to the
eventual downfall of the Talks.

In today’s three versus three environment, the common goal

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