Paul Stares argues that multilateral security assurances might induce Pyongyang to agree to the dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear program:
The diplomatic vehicle for such security assurances would be a United Nations-sponsored initiative to formally end the Korean War and dismantle the present armistice arrangements. As part of a peace treaty, the principal signatories — the United States, China and the two Koreas — would commit themselves to establishing normal diplomatic relations, recognizing the territorial integrity of both Koreas and, most important, ensuring a nuclear-free peninsula.
[snip]
Complementary agreements involving conventional arms control, economic assistance, access to international financial institutions and humanitarian aid could also be discussed, but not as prerequisites for replacing the Korean armistice with a permanent peace settlement.
The argument is an op-ed in the New York Times, “To Ban the Bomb, Sign the Peace.”
Paul represents his side well, I would like to know how he wants to convince those in the US (and there are plenty) who feel doing this would simply validate and prop up an evil regime in NK.
Exactly. How would we justify to the US public, and world at large, that we were going to prop up a regime that keeps hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens in gulags that make Stalin’s look like Disneyland?
A security assurance isn’t the same thing as “propping up” anything. However, the US has been propping up such regimes for a long time.