HONOLULU -- The announcement that United States and North Korea had agreed to multilateral talks with China in Beijing on Wednesday was most welcome after six months of escalating tensions. Conventional wisdom is that America's success in Iraq was the primary factor in bringing Pyongyang to the bargaining table with Washington and Beijing after months of insisting that only bilateral talks with the U.S. were acceptable. But this fails to tell the whole story.
In reality, North Korea began showing some flexibility and moderation in its behavior in early March, when its vertical escalation -- increasingly provocative actions ranging from the expulsion of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to the restart of its nuclear reactor to its withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and its missile tests and attempt to force down a U.S. reconnaissance plane -- was replaced with more horizontal escalation, i.e., continued harsh rhetoric without any further ratcheting up.
Several actions, in addition to the then-pending Iraq war, likely contributed to this change in North Korean behavior. One was the deployment, in early March, of B-1 and B-52 bombers to Guam "for contingencies purposes" and the movement of F-117 stealth aircraft and an aircraft carrier battle group to the Korean Peninsula. This can be described as "baseball bat in the corner" diplomacy. If one approaches North Korea waving a bat, Pyongyang's likely response is to turn even more combative. Speaking softly while carrying a big stick seems equally ineffective. But speaking firmly while the bat sits visibly in the corner appears to have gotten Pyongyang's attention.