Hard and Human Security: North Korea and Iran?

I met my former dissertation adviser at a conference in Baltimore earlier this month, and shared with him my research ideas related to North Korea. He was OK about the use of network analysis, but troubled by a study focusing on just one country. He sees a fixation on one country as a bad career move. Instead, I should make NK one case of a larger theoretical problem. Iran immediately popped to mind.

Iran and NK are both nuclear proliferaters with dubious human rights practices where the US focuses almost exclusively on the former and treads lightly on the latter. However, Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi has made a pointed case that supporting democracy (i.e. the opposition) and human rights (those arrested or beaten after the June election unrest) can result in both moral and tactical benefits.

But paying so much more attention to Iran's nuclear ambitions than to its trampling of democracy and freedom is a mistake both tactical and moral. The Post writes:

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "is at the lowest level of popularity one can imagine," Ms. Ebadi said. "If the West focuses exclusively on the nuclear issue, Ahmadinejad can tell his people that the West is against Iran's national interest and rally people to his cause. But if the West presses also on its human rights record, he will find himself in a position where his popular base is getting weaker and weaker by the day."

Ms. Ebadi suggested that the nature of Iran's regime is more crucial to U.S. security than any specific deals on nuclear energy. Iran's people are not as wedded to the nuclear program as the regime wants outsiders to believe. A democratic government would be unlikely to build a nuclear bomb, she said, and even if it did, the weapon would not be a threat in the hands of a government that would not view America or Israel as enemies. By contrast, she argued, even a seemingly ironclad nuclear agreement with Mr. Ahmadinejad might be of little value: "Imagine if the government actually promised to stop its nuclear program tomorrow. Would you trust this government not to start another secret nuclear program somewhere else?"

Hmmm...we could ask this same question about trust in signing an agreement w/Kim Jong Il. Unfortunately, in NK there is no visible opposition to work with. We only have the regime to work with. However, as with all governments, hard-liners and moderates do exist within the regime. If there's a way to identify and sway moderates, and perhaps open the country to the outside, could a more credible nuclear deal be struck?