The Dangers of Self-Delusion
	Appeasement failed with Hitler, and it won't work with Kim Jong Il
	By Nicholas Eberstadt

Posted Monday, June 14, 2004; 20:00 HKT
How can we make sense of the seemingly never-ending spectacle that is the North Korean nuclear crisis? Let me suggest an answer: we're watching "conference diplomacy" all over again—that is to say, the approach to conflict resolution embraced by the great powers of Europe in the 1920s and '30s. The premise underlying this peculiar mode of "diplomatic engagement" was that international disputes were really just disagreements among reasonable gentlemen. If only these men could gather to talk things out, the wishful thinking ran, a peaceful settlement agreeable to all could surely be reached. Each new round of talks was hailed as a success, with the antagonists' willingness to sit at the same table held out as proof that conference diplomacy was working. But without giving away the conclusion, we can tell audiences that the tale of conference diplomacy was not a story with a happy ending.

How could an approach that solved none of Europe's security problems have been allowed to continue for years? You have to remember that the world was a frightening place back then, that the balance of power in the region had broken down and that a stable new equilibrium was not yet at hand. Ambitious dictators took advantage of this new playing field, and self-deluding Western statesmen opted for a strategy of talk and appeasement rather than facing the awful scope of the dangers gathering before their eyes.

That, of course, was then—and this is now. The analogy to the North Korean nuclear drama is imperfect. But the similarities between the two situations should give pause. The upcoming six-party talks in Beijing may be "merely" the third time that Pyongyang has sat down to discuss the current nuclear unpleasantness with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the U.S. But North Korea has, off and on, been involved in formal nuclear negotiations since the 1990 talks with Seoul, which led a year later to the North-South deal for the "denuclearization" of the Korean Peninsula.

That pact was immediately violated by Pyongyang—as was every subsequent North Korean nuclear agreement or promise. Yet the North's negotiating partners, like the bygone gentlemen of Europe's interwar years, maintain the pose that the next session will somehow be different. Fresh from last month's foray into bilateral deliberations with North Korea, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi happily announced that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il had "clearly stated" that his objective was "denuclearization," adding that "I believe North Korea wants this to happen." We've heard this before—when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain convinced himself that Adolf Hitler was "a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word."

For its part, South Korea seems intent upon re-enacting the role originally made famous by France. The French interwar appeasement policy was characterized by anxiety, opportunism and self-deception—Seoul's current North Korea policy in a nutshell. Look at last week's jubilant announcement that the South will loan the North yet another 400,000 tons of rice and that the North will consent to bilateral sea-lane and military-hot-line arrangements to avoid another naval clash like the 2002 incident in which a South Korean frigate sank and six seamen died. Apparently lost upon Seoul is that the incident was a carefully planned North Korean ambush, which better lines of communication would not have prevented.

Yet even as South Korea's novitiate government builds fantasy peace castles with Pyongyang, it also fecklessly undermines its best deterrent against North Korean aggression: namely, its alliance with the U.S. The announcement that America plans to withdraw a third of its troops from South Korea is a sign of how bad things have gotten: this wouldn't be happening if Washington viewed the government in Seoul as a reliable friend.

And what about the U.S.? In the 1930s, Washington was uninterested in the growing international crisis, preoccupied instead by such concerns as the Great Depression. So it is again today, with most of America's energy focused on Iraq, the war on terror and the presidential-election campaign. That inattentiveness has already proven costly. When the Bush Administration came to office, the U.S. had one crisis on the Korean Peninsula. Now, thanks to a downward spiral in relations with the South, it has two.

Conference diplomacy only came to an end when the escalating provocations of dictators awakened the sleepers and shredded the last remaining illusions of the appeasers. Today, the appeasers show no signs of awakening from their slumber or shedding their illusions.

Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt chair in political economy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

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