North Korea may be a seriously-flawed and, perhaps, even tyrannical regime, but it has not pummeled entire nations into dust sending millions fleeing across continents to seek refuge. It has not bombed wedding parties, hospitals, mosques etc., wreaking havoc while plunging the world deeper into chaos and despair. North Korea is far from perfect, but compared to the United States, it's looks like a paragon of virtue.
The North Korean's want peace. They want a formal end to the war and they want guarantees that the United States won't preemptively attack them. Is that too much to ask?
But the United States won't sign a treaty with the North because it is not in its interests to do so. Washington would prefer for things to stay just the way they are today. In fact, Hillary Clinton said as much in a speech she made to Goldman Sachs in 2013. Here's an excerpt:
CLINTON: "We don't want a unified Korean peninsula, because if there were one South Korea would be dominant for the obvious economic and political reasons.
"We [also] don't want the North Koreans to cause more trouble than the system can absorb. So we've got a pretty good thing going with the previous North Korean leaders [Kim Il-sung and Kim Jung-il]. And then along comes the new young leader [Kim Jung-un], and he proceeds to insult the Chinese. He refuses to accept delegations coming from them...So the new [Chinese] leadership basically calls him [Kim Jung-un] on the carpet. "Cut it out. Just stop it. Who do you think you are? You are dependent on us [the Chinese], and you know it." (WikiLeaks)
There it is in black and white. The US does not want a unified Korea. ("for obvious economic and political reasons.") The US wants to keep the country split up so it can keep the North isolated and underdeveloped, maintain the South's colonial dependence on the US, and perpetuate the occupation. That's what Washington wants. The goal is not security, but power, greed and geopolitical positioning.
From Washington's point of view, the status quo is just dandy, which is why there is no incentive to end the war, sign a treaty, wind down the occupation, or provide security guarantees for the North. As Hillary cheerily opines, "We've got a pretty good thing going on."
Indeed. The only fly in the ointment is that young Kim is now toying with nuclear weapons which seems to have caught Washington by surprise.
But how could Washington be surprised when they've known the DPRK has had a nuclear weapons program since the early 1990s? Clearly, the issue should have been seriously addressed much earlier.
Even so, Washington's elite powerbrokers have yet to settle on a remedy for this fast emerging crisis, which is why the Trump administration is running around twisting arms (Russia and China) and escalating his bombast rather than taking the rational approach and engaging the North Koreans directly in bilateral negotiations.
Has anyone even considered that option yet?
The North is eager to negotiate because the North wants peace, it's as plain as the nose on your face. The North does not want a confrontation with the US because they know what the outcome would be. Complete and total annihilation. They know that and they don't want that. Nor do they want to unilaterally disarm and end up like Gadhafi or Saddam. That's why they built nukes in the first place, to avoid the Gadhafi scenario.
At this stage of the game, the US has just two options:
1) Ignore the issue until the North develops the ballistic missile technology needed to strike the mainland USA, thus, putting American cities and civilians at risk.
2) Negotiate an end to the war, provide security guarantees, and some economic inducements (oil and light-water reactors for electricity) in exchange for denuclearization and routine weapons-and-facilities inspections.
So what's it going to be: Door Number 1 or Door Number 2?
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