During the negotiations leading up the 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea’s brinksmanship was effective at getting the U.S. to the table, and earning what should have been unrealistic concessions.

After delaying the next round of Six-Party Talks last month, North Korea now says talks can resume sometime in mid-September. Council on Foreign Relations’ senior fellow for Asia studies and director of the Council-sponsored Independent Task Force on North Korea Eric Heginbotham points out that the delay tactic is a part of the North’s usual negotiating strategy.

What is different is the U.S. response; not unresponsive, as some critics claim, but unimpressed. While Nicholas Eberstadt makes some good points about what the U.S. should have been doing policy-wise, I think it is more a case of ‘staying the course;’ some things are not negotiable, this time.

But of course some things are. Mr. Hall is ready to deal; if talks fail (again), the blame will lay with North Korea.

UPDATE: As an ultimatum, this is unlikely to have the desired effect:

North Korea offered a significant clarification on Tuesday of its position in the deadlocked nuclear disarmament talks, insisting that it would not dismantle its nuclear reactor - considered the country’s main source of weapons-grade plutonium - unless the United States and its allies built a nuclear power plant to replace it…

Because:

U.S. officials… have said, however, that building a nuclear power plant for North Korea is a “practical impossibility” not only because no one wants to foot the bill but also because the Communist state has a history of using a nuclear reactor to make fuel for atomic weapons.

I would add that the North also lacks an infrastructure with which to deliver the electricity that a nuclear power plant would deliver, making the claim of ‘peaceful’ use more dubious that normal North Korean claims.

If the talks ever result in a deal, my money is with a package deal where the U.S. give the DPRK conditional security guarantees that are tied to CVID (complete, verifiable, irreversible disarmament) of their nuclear programs in return for the continuation or reinstatement of the 1994 agreement (i.e., KEDO funded reactors).