The Foreign Service Journal, April 2006

74 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 6 B O O K S u as being shared by all “sons of the [Mongol and Ottoman] conquerors.” Nonetheless, he concedes that “The Turkic peoples … add up to far less than the sum of their parts.” Given their linguistic differences, oppressive and corrupt political systems, and eco- nomic and ecological burdens, that sober assessment looks likely to last. A retired FSO, Richard McKee is the executive director of Diplomatic and Consular Officers, Retired, Inc., and the DACOR Bacon House Founda- tion. These views are his own. Still a Good Deal Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis Joel S. Wit, Daniel B. Poneman and Ambassador Robert L. Gallucci, Brookings Institution Press, 2005, $22.95, paperback, 474 pages. R EVIEWED BY S TEVEN A LAN H ONLEY Even though Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis won the American Academy of Diplomacy’s 2005 Douglas Dillon Book Award, I must confess that I began reading it more as a matter of duty than pleasure. Despite the importance of its subject — the nego- tiations leading to the 1994 Agreed Framework that led Pyongyang to freeze, and pledge to dismantle, its plutonium production program — I expected to slog through a worthy but dull account, heavy-laden with jargon. Fortunately, I am delighted to report, Going Critical substantially exceeded those unfairly low expecta- tions. The three authors are among the handful of American officials who have ever negotiated with North Korea. Two of them, Joel S. Wit (now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies) and Robert Gallucci (currently dean of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service), were career civil ser- vants at State; the third, Daniel B. Poneman, served on the National Security Council staff and is now a principal in the Scowcroft Group. The book is organized chronologi- cally, with most chapters covering a few months at a time. (June 1994, a turning point in the negotiations, takes up two of the 12 chapters.) Once the authors have laid out the historical background and introduced the main figures involved in the saga, the book steadily gathers momentum. Their skill at enabling readers to keep straight the many Koreans surnamed “Kim” is particularly admirable. While some sections are slow going, I would not recommend skip- ping around; there are simply too many flashes of humor (frequently at the authors’ own expense) and insight- ful comments along the way that it would be a shame to miss. But if one does give in to that temptation, the appendix contains a comprehensive timeline of the negotiations, along with the texts of the relevant joint statements (which are surprisingly concise and readable considering the technical subject matter). The index is also thorough, and I found myself turning to it frequently. Somewhat unexpectedly, the authors’ decision to write in the third person as a single voice, rather than as individual narrators, greatly enhances their account’s readability and credi- bility. But for me, what makes Going Critical compelling reading is the authors’ forthrightness about how they and other actors on all sides missed, or were powerless to react appropriately to, the confusing diplomatic and polit- ical signals emanating not only from Pyongyang but Seoul, Washington and other capitals. This is emphatically not a book written to settle scores or promote any particular political agenda. Wit, Poneman and Gallucci are scrupulous in noting the downsides inherent in any negotiations with a regime like North Korea, including the virtual cer- tainty of cheating, and they freely acknowledge the possibility that they miscalculated some of the trade-offs along the way. Nonetheless, they strongly (and, in this reviewer’s opin- ion, persuasively) defend the fruits of their diplomatic labors. The final section, “The Land of Counterpane” (one of many clever, even literary, chapter titles and sub- heads throughout the book), surveys the events of the decade following the signing of the Agreed Framework, analyzes its breakdown and offers eight lessons. Generously, the authors call them “lessons learned.” But read- ing between the lines, it is not hard to detect their doubts that the Bush administration has absorbed them. n Steven Alan Honley, an FSO from 1985 to 1997, is the editor of the Journal. The authors strongly — and, in this reviewer’s opinion, persuasively — defend the fruits of their diplomatic labors more than a decade ago.