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The U.S. State Department on Monday announced the resumption of normal diplomatic relations with Libya, 26 years after they were severed in 1980. Within 45 days, the country will be struck off the list of state sponsors of terrorism and a U.S. embassy will be established in Tripoli. The move comes after Libya renounced its mass destruction weapons program including nuclear arms in December 2003. Libya is "an important model" for other countries like North Korea and Iran, said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The steps the U.S. has just taken over Libya are exactly what Pyongyang has been demanding of Washington for over a decade since the first nuclear crisis of 1993. The North believes the security of its regime, its top priority, is best guaranteed if it normalizes ties with the U.S. Once struck off the annual U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, Pyongyang believes it will be able to revive its economy by attracting investments from Western countries including America.
Libya was once a fixture on the list of rogue states alongside North Korea and Iraq. But only two-and-a-half years after agreeing to dismantle its WMD program it has reestablished ties with the U.S. and rejoined the international community. Meanwhile, North Korea has taken the diametrically opposite path and declared itself a nuclear power. As a result, it is being squeezed by U.S. financial sanctions and the regime is clinging on by its fingernails.
Whether the North can ever become an ordinary country and contribute to stability on the Korean Peninsula will be decided by its relations with the U.S. The "North Korea model" of threatening the U.S. with nuclear arms development has proved a dismal failure. America has shown Pyongyang that the alternative -- the Libya model -- works very well.
Seoul should help Pyongyang follow that model instead of prolonging its agony by propping up the North¡¯s pig-headed pursuit of a strategy that has long ceased to yield results. It only gets in the way of the North finding a real way out.
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