It’s Time for Jay Lefkowitz to Resign
I recently wrote a piece for publication on North Korea’s finances, the rumors of the then-prospective deal with North Korea, and how to increase the pressure so that we could get a truly verifiable dismantlement of their nuclear program and a real and fundamental movement toward transparency. If no favorable agreement could be achieved, our financial strategy showed real promise in collapsing the regime’s palace economy, and maybe even the regime itself, something for which my aspiration is no secret. I had the piece all ready to go, but recent events overcame it. It may still be published, with the co-authorship of a friend, but it’s clearly based on the discarded illusion that this administration was interested in those same goals. I’d wager that Nicholas Eberstadt (OFK interview here) and I were both writing that same weekend, and I suspect Eberstadt is in the process of discarding the same illusions.
Yet inexplicably, the Bush team continues to overlook a spectacular opportunity to deliver freedom to tens of thousands of North Koreans, to pressure the country from within for fundamental change and to lay the groundwork for a peaceful, reunified Korean Peninsula. By fostering an underground railroad to rescue North Korean refugees living in China, the United States could do all these things at once.
On humanitarian grounds alone, the case for action on behalf of the wretched North Koreans in hiding north of their country’s border along the Yalu River is compelling. While the exact numbers are unknown, this refugee emergency may be second only to Darfur: the International Crisis Group speaks of scores of thousands of refugees, and recently uncovered Chinese official documents indicate hundreds of thousands. [NYT]
The word that Eberstadt may have cause to rethink here is “inexplicable.” And when Washington has just cut the knees out from under Japan, who can still believe that it will be willing to apply the pressure of our good offices to China’s barbaric and unlawful treatment of North Korea’s refugees, or the comfort women on whom its men prey?
The critical missing piece for getting this underground railroad up and running is safe passage through China. But because the South Korean government fears antagonizing the North and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is too timid to face down Beijing, China’s opposition to this rescue mission has gone unchallenged. Only the United States is in a position to help overcome Beijing’s recalcitrance.
The Chinese government’s cost-benefit calculus regarding these refugees would change drastically if Washington weighed in as their advocate. If the United States (along with other governments) provided informal assurances that China is merely a way station for North Koreans — assuaging any official fears about a permanent foreign refugee population — it may well be possible to convince Beijing to cooperate in the relocation mission (or at least to look the other way as it takes place).
Clearly, Eberstadt and I were laboring under at least one of the same illusions: that this Administration is serious about helping North Korean refugees. I’m beyond blaming rogue elements in the State Department, and probably should have been, in retrospect, a year ago. The President is the decider. He has decided not to comply with a law he signed. Commenter Sonagi flatters me by saying that with my background in law, I could give Eberstadt’s piece more of a grounding in law or get it wider exposure (than the New York Times? She really flatters me there). But this is not a question of law. The law is clear. It’s a question of will. The will is not there. It was lost in a belated campaign for the approval of those who despise this President unconditionally.
Those of us who want a better North Korea policy instead of the drift we’ve had for the last seven years had better focus our attention where Kim Jong Il is putting his — on the next administration. Some probably still hope that this deal will not last anyway, and that it will give way to something more clear-eyed, but that defies a fundamental rule of American politics: presidents, and especially unpopular ones, do not shift their policies in bold directions while they’re packing their furniture and picking sites for their presidential libraries. On the other hand, a policy shift of such exceptionally short-sighted cowardice was a surprise. It was a dash of cold water to those of us who took this President’s words at face value.
(Personally, I take comfort in knowing how much worse it all would have been under Gore or Kerry, and in the knowledge that McCain was my own preference in 2000. That’s the down side of democracy. You seldom get your favorite. You only get the lesser of two evils, and it’s the greater of the two evils from which you usually draw your inspiration. And of course, the world is bigger than Korea, and no candidate who advocates surrender to terrorism will ever get my vote. Appeasement, of course, is where surrender meets preemption. And North Korea’s way of negotiating sometimes crosses the line into terrorism.)
In the meantime, this Administration has offered rhetorical support for treating the North Korean people humanely, and has designated one of its minor officials to say exactly the opposite of what the rest of the Administration quietly does. Jay Lefkowitz has said the right things, and done so as recently as this month, but the things he says bear no relation to the actions of the Administration he has served. There can be no more purpose for Lefkowitz to offer more of those words but to fool as many of us as will still be fooled. It’s been widely believed by human right advocates that Lefkowitz’s office was filled with State Department careerists of a more corporate mentality, who have carefully monitored and controlled his actions. I do not have personal knowledge of this, but I did personally observe the “minders” sent to watch over John Bolton. A failure to assign minders to Lefkowitz would seem an uncharacteristically incautious lapse. You can’t ascribe this to simple factionalism any longer. It’s disingenuousness. And if Jay Lefkowitz has the self-respect not to be an agent of it, and the wisdom to know that that’s all he is, he should resign now. He should do so without any public whining or sniveling, but as a dignified man’s simple and quiet statement that he refuses to be used to use others.
Clarification, 2/22: If it wasn’t clear enough in the last paragraph, let me make it clearer: I don’t think Jay Lefkowitz is personally Machiavellian or devious. That’s not my default position for most people. Although I don’t know Lefkowitz well, everything I do know suggests that he means well, even if he didn’t come into the position full-time, with a particularly high stature in the field, or with a particularly strong background on the situation in North Korea (which is no barrier; the one thing no one questions is his intellect). Unfortunately, Lefkowitz simply lacks the power to give any effect to the ideas he expresses, and as such, he ends up obscuring the Administration’s actual policies more than he expresses, reflects, or affects them. In retrospect, I suspect that this was probably someone’s plan from day one.
I don’t question Lefkowitz’s sincerity. I question the sincerity of the Administration that employs him as a probably unwitting and well-meaning instrument of a human rights bait-and-switch. Although plenty of us have wanted to view Lefkowitz as speaking for the Administration, in retrospect, I think we’ve been victims of wishful thinking. Note, for example, how little the South Korean government and Yonhap barely seem to concern themselves with what Lefkowitz says. That could be because they’ve reached the same conclusions I have.
i gotta tell you josh, if we lose jay, we lose state. his office is one of the last bastions of any advocates for nk freedom or nk refugees.
they’re fighting a hell of a lot harder than it looks like from the outside, with a hell of lot more people than makes me comfortable.
the list of people to ask for resignations from should be longer, and not include jay, i think.
I think we have lost State, and I think the illusion that we have not lost State has allowed this Administration to quiet us while mollifying everyone else. If we don’t show our strength now, it doesn’t matter if we have any. We’ve been sold out.
It’s over.
I think we all gave it a ‘good try’.
… but it’s time to allow the remaining ‘hostages’ in North Korea to be murdered in peace; allow Seoul to concern itself with that which is important to Seoul … and stopping the murdering by Pyongyang was, in retrospect, never that high on their ‘things we really need to do’ list; and for the rest of us to just go on back to the house. We have simply outlived our usefulness here.
I feel badly for Tokyo because, through it all, they walked the tallest.
… I finally understand how the Czechs felt in 1938, 1948 … and in 1968 after it dawned on them that it ‘happened’ to them yet again.
Michael, Richardson dropped off a bunch of the books you gave us, and I just wanted to say thank you very much. Those should keep both my wife and myself going for a good while.
I heard Newt Gingrich is going to run for president and that he is showing 3rd level strength without having started to run yet.
That struck my interest.
Mostly for a twisted reason that I am so disgusted with the media and politics (which are one in the same these days), because if Hillary and Gingrich are the front runners, it will be wall to wall to wall to wall bloodbaths each month as the campaigns heat up.
But, 2ndly, if Gingrich has a shot, which I think he might, I don’t think you will see this kind of flipflop and apparent desperation to have some positive foreign policy gains under him.
I’ve been blogging and reading and thinking a good bit since the media went ga-ga over Pelosi and the dem win in the House about how ABSOLUTELY DIFFERENT (and vile) the media reacted to Gingrich and the rep take over of the House.
This Sunday, when asked about how he is still a “polarizing force”, Gingrich said something like 139 attack ads were run against him as Speaker of the House (in something like 12 months) – but that was largely wasted money, because the media was more than willing to go at him relentlessly until he dropped out of politics.
I would normally think his chance of getting elected president is nil since the press will surely pummel him relentlessly again.
But, I have a small but growing feeling that American society is getting into the right frame of mind for a big fight.
I’ve been bemoaning the fact that the end of the Cold War saw one half of the debate on what American means to itself and the world kind of dropped out – leaving the critics (like John Kerry and so on) to win the day increasingly by default.
I have a feeling, though, even if not a strong feeling yet, that the recent election, the clear large bias of the press against Bush and especially Iraq War II, and even what seems to be Bush desperation in this nuke deal….
coupled with viewing how ugly the presidential election is going to be no matter who the reps send up (and because Hillary will be attacked pretty badly as well)….
we are going to see people who would support a Gingrich come back into the fight.
Failure (or sucess) in Iraq – and how we deal with a nuclear Iran and NK – will set the stage for the next few decades.
The place of the United States in the world post-Cold War is going to be defined in part with this next election, and which ever president ends up getting elected will have a window of opportunity to guide that definition.
My interest in Gingrich running is that – whatever people might think of him – he is intelligent, speaks his mind, and says things in a fairly straight manner that people can understand – whether they agree with him or not.
(One of Bush’s biggest handicaps has been his horrible public speaking skills. He, as president, has been severely handicaped by not being able to talk to the American people in a clear, decisive way to defend his policies. If he had those skills Tony Blair has, his administration would have been better able to counter the seige by the press. Gingrich has those skills — which is why the media hates him on a level even higher than the disdain they have for Bush).
I was still hoping for a Condi Rice vs Hillary matchup for a variety of reaons, but one being I have at least some faith in what foreign policy would be under Rice, and I have admired a few times I had caught wind of her cutting to the chance and cutting out the bullshit she found herself surrounded by.
I prefer a Gingrich vs Hillary matchup, however, because I feel more comfortable with what I think Gingrich’s foreign policy will look like.
Another thought, the debate on religion in the US has been percolating for a good long time now, but politicans are afraid to touch it.
But, it does seem it is something they are willing to open up with behind closed doors given the amount of leaks and slips that do come out.
The Edwards blogger thing is just one sign of it.
If Gingrich gets into the race and seems to have a chance to win, the election cycle that was already going to be one of the hottest/(meanest) in recent memory —– will get even that much worse.
And I think the religion in American society issue will be thrown through an open door and fully part of the discussion.
I am also saying it will not be pretty but might be necessary at this point in time in our history – and I mean beyond the religion issue…
Joshua,
I’ve always felt that books sitting on a shelf do no one any good, and … since they had served the purpose for which they were bought …
Anyway, I hope that you take to heart the listing that detailed the ones that I retained. I consider those to be absolute ‘must reads’ … and, despite the above disclaimer, I couldn’t bring myself to part with them.
If that list is no longer available, please advise and I will pass it along.
Josh, you are the first to call it and its long past due. it’s better to be fired for doing what you think is right (like Bolton) than to muddle through, and, regretfully, lefkowitz has been doing that since he got in. its time for him to resign and to send a message to the administration that the president will have to choose between those at state who want a feather in their cap before their time runs out and the North Korean people.
I know it is easy to be discouraged, but we can’t give up.
I think I’ll just take Michael’s advice.
Joshua, you mean taking a short break right? Like I said before, please don’t give up, the North Korean people need our voices.