John Delury calls for a diplomatic effort in response to North Korea’s latest nuclear test:
The test does not fundamentally change the situation on the Korean peninsula, though it is another acceleration. What is still missing is diplomacy. It is up to the Trump administration whether they want to flip this into an opportunity to belatedly start talking directly to Pyongyang, or just continue down the beaten track of shows of force, more UN sanctions, and secondary sanctions [bold mine-DL]. More of the same stuff that has been done for the last eight years.
Delury is a North Korea expert at Yonsei University in Seoul, and everything he says here seems eminently sensible. The U.S. and the region are in the current predicament because a decade ago Washington wanted to pursue coercive measures rather than live with an agreement that was working. Continuing to reject diplomacy as the best available alternative traps all parties in a cycle of threats and counter-threats whose eventual outcome could be disastrous.
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