Ten hours of talks at Panmunjom. Sounds like a page out of Admiral C. Turner Joy's book How Communists Negotiate and his experience negotiating with the north Koreans as the senior UN delegate in 1951-1952. Or we could read Chuck Down's Over the Line: North Korea's Negotiating Strategy to gain a sense of what the north is doing. The ROK negotiators need patience and big bladders.
It is better to jaw-jaw than war-war so long talks should be a good thing.
Here is one scenario of how this will play out. Marathon talks will continue. Eventually the north will give the ROK negotiators a private verbal apology in return for the ROK agreeing to shut down the loud speaker broadcasts. There will be a brief joint verbal statement from the heads of each delegation that will be somewhat vague and will not include a specific apology. The ROK will cease the loudspeaker broadcasts and inform the public that the north offered its apologies during the negotiations. In response the north will deny that an apology was made and will instead say that their superior negotiating tactics combined with the strength of its military (and the fear that it brings to the South and the world) that forced the ROK to cease the loudspeaker operations (and we should remember that it was the north that sent a message to the South asking for talks). Then we will return to "normalcy" (e.g., armistice) during which we should keep in mind north Korea's four "principles" of provocation outlined by Dr. Bruce Bechtol in his latest book that I have sent out before.
"North Korea and Regional Security in the Kim Jong-un Era,""Most North Korean provocations have had four things in common:1) they are intentionally initiated at moments when they have the likelihood of garnering the greatest attention on the regional and perhaps even theworld stage;2) they initially appear to be incidents that are relatively small, easily contained, and quickly ‘resolved;’3) they involve continuously changing tactics and techniques; and4) North Korea denies responsibility for the event."
No comments:
Post a Comment