3 Cheers on the Pyongyang Deal? Maybe Not

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=7947
"by Ted Galen Carpenter

Ted Galen Carpenter is the vice president for defense and foreign policy studies and the co-author of The Korean Conundrum: America's Troubled Relations with North and South Korea" (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2004).

Americans and Asians alike are expressing relief that an agreement on North Korea's nuclear program has emerged from the latest round of six-party talks. The agreement is certainly better than the alternatives of drift or confrontation. Nevertheless, in view of North Korea's track record, our applause should be muted...

...But the devil is in the details, and the agreement could easily break down over numerous issues in the coming months. Several matters remain disturbingly vague.

Although Pyongyang is obligated to account for the plutonium that it extracted from the Yongbyon reactor since 2002, the agreement apparently does not specify what happens to any nuclear weapons that North Korea already may have built.

That is not a trivial matter, given the evidence that Pyongyang may possess as many as 12 or 13 weapons. We certainly do not want a situation in which North Korea has merely agreed to shut down a nuclear program (and be rewarded handsomely for doing so) because it already has a credible arsenal...

...Another loose end is North Korea's alleged uranium enrichment program...

...Most sobering of all, we must remember that North Korea has broken every agreement it has ever signed on the nuclear issue."

I think this is a sign that North Korea, through the ability to abandon reason and behave as a selfish 4 year old child would, can hold a disproportionate amount of dominance within international relations, among the world's modern foreign policy standards. I think that years ago the notion of a weaker semi-rogue state clamoring for bigger countries to give it some oil as if it held the world hostage, would be met with hysterical laughter or violent interdiction. While it's assumed that the North Korean people would likely suffer far more than it's leaders if it were subject to severe embargoes, is there a way to prevent that from happening? Is there any other alternative (not including force), for the more powerful countries to exert their will upon the small troublemakers?