Siegfried S. Hecker is professor (research), Department of Management Science and Engineering, co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University, and an NAE member. Sean C. Lee is a research assistant, and Chaim Braun is a consulting professor at CISAC. They write, “the next Six-Party negotiations must balance the disincentives the parties can bring to bear on North Korea if it chooses to keep the bomb—namely further international sanctions and isolation—with incentives for greater security and economic development… Instead of remaining fixated on denuclearization, Washington should realize that, in spite of its inconsistent and often contradictory policies during the past 20 years, diplomacy has left Pyongyang with only a handful of bombs, instead of the 100 or more it might have had by now, and essentially no significant nuclear-generated electricity.”

Ruediger Frank, Professor of East Asian Economy and Society art the University of Vienna, writes, “the wording of the announcement, formal issues, the short-term problem of creating legitimacy for a yet widely unknown grandson of Kim Il-sung, and a more systematic long-term analytical perspective suggest that the Party meeting in September will likely not announce a successor for Kim Jong-il, but rather create or upgrade a collective. This might or might not include Kim Jong-un; but it is hard to imagine that such a collective will not be headed by Kim Jong-il.”