The goings-on in and around North Korea and its nuclear ambitions takes us back to our old friend Negotiation.

See eg this early piece I wrote in April last year about Power and Purpose:

Part of getting what you want is projecting a sense of Power and Purpose, so that when a negotiation starts others feel cowed by your self-confidence. You establish up-front a psychological initiative. You evince inexorable success.

It helps to be Powerful to start off with. US diplomats enter a room armed with self-belief, to the point sometimes of sheer obnoxiousness. But there is only one USA. The rest of us have to make do with more modest means. 

The Russians too are outstanding negotiators, but in a different sense. They are taught negotiating technique in a way which is quite foreign to British and European methods.

Russian diplomats’ First Rule of Negotiating is simple and profound: "Never move position, even when you agree with someone, without trying to extract something first."

This attitude gives them all sorts of advantages. Above all they usually convey the impression (a) that they are tough, and (b) that they move only on their terms. Plus they come over as (c) ready to take considerable pain in defending their principles, while (d) being ready, nay keen, to hit you harder (and if possible below the belt) than you hit them.

Which is why Russian diplomats are rarely kidnapped or humiliated. Even the dimmest terrorist out there knows that if he does something bad to the Russians, they will not hesitate to something Very Bad, and preferably very personal, to him – and his family.

I can’t find a copy of the cartoon itself for you, but James Thurber in 1938 drew a lady brightly asking "Who is this Hitler and what does he want?"

Same now with North Korea. Who are they and what do they want?

Here is a folksy analysis on the BBC by an academic expert in that part of the world, which asserts that "everyone is fed up" with North Korean posturing:

The view that North Korea is a rational actor – if only we are patient and avoid upsetting them – looks, let’s face it, increasingly threadbare.

Measuring someone else’s rationality is always tricky. By most people’s standards it may be irrational to collect shoelaces, but if someone decides to do just that then ensuing obsessive moves in that direction have at least some internal logic for the collector.

North Korea’s ‘rationality’ makes sense to them, if not to us. Once the regime started to run out of road once the Cold War ended and other Asian neighbours started to get richer without too much pluralism, the cabal who control North Korea seem to have decided (maybe accurately) that their regime could not withstand much liberalisation.

So, instead, they opted to play for time and cause trouble. Something might turn up.

Given that what the North Korean regime wants is to be Difficult for the Sake of Being Difficult, they are a formidable negotiating adversary:

President Barack Obama’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said North Korea’s rhetoric will only bring the nation further isolation. “Threats won’t get North Korea the attention it craves,” he said.

Is this true? No.

North Korea seems to getting lots of attention precisely because it is making threats.

There are layers of negotiation going on here:

  • North v South Korea: one day the country will unify – but on whose terms?
  • USA v China/Russia: the Chinese and Russians despise North Korea, but anything which makes the USA look less than effective is OK by them. They will be keen to see the Americans getting more annoyed with North Korea, suspecting that in practice Washington dares do little without their support, for which their price is rising nicely.
  • USA v North Korea: behind the scenes all sorts of tough games must be going on to try to disrupt flows of technology into – and out from – North Korea. Sooner or later that can be done only by some sort of blockade, maintained by the threat of force. And who is bluffing whom here?

A classic. See also Iran.

One big loser is the argument that negotiating in good faith with people like this eg via the UN is the best way forward. All that happens is you risk being strung along and made to look weak. 

But, hey, you can warn in stern terms about writing a very strong letter saying "Cooperate – or else…"

Which prompts the reply …