North Korea’s fifth nuclear test has kindled a fresh round of debates around Washington, with former administration officials and academics differing over how to rein in the Kim Jong-un regime’s relentless development of weapons of mass destruction.

As Pyongyang appears to be near the “nuclear threshold,” some scholars raised the need to restart talks, citing the constraints of international sanctions in thwarting the communist state’s military ambition given its deeply isolated economy and China’s unabated support.

Others, in contrast, argue that offering any conciliatory gesture would do little to shift North Korea’s current path toward a nuclear weapons state, but only solidify its resolve. The US should work more with China to tighten the implementation of sanctions while intensifying its security partnerships with South Korea and Japan, they said. 

The latest call for dialogue came over the weekend from Jane Harman, president and chief executive of the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and James Person, coordinator of the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean history and public policy at the Wilson Center.

Talks are an “underappreciated ace” among other options, they said, pointing to the US’ sway in addressing the North’s security concerns, the limited impact of sanctions and China’s protection.

“While the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula remains the long-term goal, we propose using this US leverage to enter into talks with Pyongyang with the stated goal of negotiating a freeze of all North Korean nuclear and long-range missile tests and a return of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors,” the two scholars wrote in the Washington Post.

Yet the talks would better be one-on-one with the North rather than a return to the six-nation denuclearization forum that they said evoked “too much mistrust” in particular between Pyongyang and Beijing.

To prevent the North from reneging on its commitments as before, Washington should craft “any deal contingencies for cheating” built on its experiences in sealing a nuclear deal with Iran, they noted.

“After a freeze, the next administration must invest significant diplomatic capital in moving talks toward the eventual goal of complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement,” they said.

“If there are prospects for significant progress, we should consider the suspension of future joint military exercises with South Korea and offer North Korea the nonaggression pact it has long sought.”

The piece is in line with previous arguments such as those made by Joel Wit, a senior fellow at the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University who formerly worked at the State Department on peninsular affairs. In an op-ed piece in the New York Times last month, he proposed a new diplomatic initiative aimed at persuading Pyongyang to first stop expanding its arsenal and then eventually reduce and dismantle its weapons, to be coupled with tougher sanctions.

Washington, in return, needs to address the North’s security concerns -- by temporarily suspending or modifying its joint military exercises with South Korea in the short term and replacing the armistice with a permanent peace treaty in the long term, he said.

Such ideas, however, were met with skepticism from many former and incumbent officials and other experts.

Christopher Hill, a former US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and chief nuclear negotiator, said offering dialogue would result in a “bolder North Korea” and an unwanted acceptance of the country as a nuclear state.

Negotiations are simply a “means to an end,” and it “makes little sense” to initiate them if that end is unclear or unlikely, he maintained.

“What is needed is more cooperation with China on sanctions enforcement, as well as deep and quiet talks with the Chinese that aim to address any strategic mistrust over the eventual political arrangements on the Korean Peninsula,” Hill wrote on Project Syndicate last week.

“The US should also continue to strengthen its security relations with Japan and South Korea, including by developing and deploying anti-ballistic missile systems.”

The view was echoed by Daniel Pinkston, deputy project director for Northeast Asia for the International Crisis Group who also teaches at Troy University in the US, who also said a dialogue offer would only consolidate the regime’s nuclear pursuit.

“Why should we ‘address their insecurities’?” he wrote on Facebook in response to the Washington Post article. “Our job should be to make them as insecure as possible to demonstrate that nuclear breakout, reneging on commitments, and defiance of international law and norms do not make you more secure -- but less.”

By Shin Hyon-hee  (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)