after Bush talked to them, and negotiated with them, exactly the “false comfort of appeasement” he slammed Obama for when Obama suggesting we should talk to Iran also.

Negotiations always take place against the background of the “walkaway” or BATNA. Most management students will recall:

BATNA is a term coined by Roger Fisher and William Ury in their 1981 bestseller, Getting to Yes … It stands for “best alternative to a negotiated agreement.” … In the simplest terms, if the proposed agreement is better than your BATNA, then you should accept it. If the agreement is not better than your BATNA, then you should reopen negotiations. If you cannot improve the agreement, then you should at least consider withdrawing from the negotiations and pursuing your alternative (though the costs of doing that must be considered as well).

Setting the BATNA is an integral part of the negotiating process. In the case of North Korea, getting them to “Yes” and getting them to stop cheating wasn’t a merely function of talking to them, but more properly a function setting what happens to the North Korean if they don’t say “Yes”. We all know for example, that the effect of the words “hands up” depends not upon the utterance of the words but on whether a .45 caliber automatic or a waterpistol is leveled at you. What is needed to make a criminal give up is not a speech coach but something made by Mssrs Colt or Smith and Wesson.

The idea that negotiating is an alternative to confrontation makes a false distinction between the two. However, the more valid question is whether the Clinton Agreed Framework of 1994 was already a “Yes”. It’s proponents would say it was. Others will point out that the Agreed Framework never got this far nor did it address the alleged secret uranium enrichment program of Pyongyang. In a way it did, and declared any such enrichment a violation. In which case you have to say that Pyongyang broke the Agreed Framework.

Others will claim that the North Korean infringement of the Agreed Framework was minor, that the quantity of centrifuges would not permit any major breakout and therefore their violation was technical and not substantial. We’re still not at the end of the Six Party talks process. Clearly large parts of the North Korean nuclear establishment have been demolished. That means their production line is gone. Not just stopped, but really dismantled. There remains the fuel rods and fissile material that already exist, and of course, coming clean about that uranium enrichment allegation.

So the “negotiations” aren’t finished yet. But their outcome will depend not upon the mellifluousness or sophistication of the actual diplomats but on the BATNA. What North Korea can expect to happen to them if they don’t say “yes”. And it is in the construction of that BATNA that GWB may have an edge of Clinton and probably Barack Obama.