So Much for ‘Hawk Engagement:’ Victor Cha Steps Down
The proponent of the “hawk-engagement” theory of North Korea policy looks to be the first casualty of the unraveling of Agreed Framework 2.0. The AP tries to shoehorn this into its standard anti-Iraq War meme, but it’s a strained fit for on Cha, an architect of a soft-line diplomatic approach that is clearly failing:
Cha leaves amid concerns over North Korea’s failure to comply with deadlines to eliminate its nuclear weapons programs. [AP]
Reporter Matthew Lee’s story is what you’d expect of a reporter with a lot of ideological baggage and little knowledge of North Korea policy or Cha’s view of it. Here’s an abstract of the paper that defined Cha’s views:
Victor Cha of Georgetown University explains why President George W. Bush should continue U.S. engagement with North Korea, contrary to the opinion of hard-liners in his administration who contend that engagement is a failed–and potentially dangerous–policy. Cha agrees with skeptics in the Bush administration who argue that the Clinton administration’s engagement of North Korea did not fundamentally alter the regime’s malevolent intentions. Indeed, despite a variety of economic and political incentives from the United States, South Korea, and Japan, North Korea has neither dismantled its weapons of mass destruction program nor discontinued work on developing ballistic missiles. He disagrees with the skeptics, however, that Pyongyang sees engagement as a sign of U.S. weakness. Cha proposes a policy of “containment-plus-engagement” that would use a combination of carrots and sticks to “prevent the crystallization of conditions under which the North Korean regime could calculate aggression as a ‘rational’ course of action even if a [North Korean] victory was impossible.”
The timing of Cha’s departure belies any claim that February 13th’s deal shows much promise. If anyone knows how much trouble this deal is in, it’s Cha. And if Cha saw any reasonable chance of sticking around to claim credit for a diplomatic breakthrough, barring some very compelling family crisis, he wouldn’t be going anywhere. And of course, it’s not negotiation or engagement that are the problem here. The problem is a negotiating style that sees pressure for reform and negotiation as mutally exclusive.
Is it too much to hope that he’ll be followed swiftly by Chris Hill, Nick Burns, and every other proponent of this facially ludicrous initiative? Probably. But when we’ve reached the point where the North Koreans have violated every term of the deal and added a demand that we launder their money for them, it’s time to consider new sanctions against the regime. For cosmetic purposes, we should not walk away from the talks or the process, but we should be realistic about what we can expect from them. North Korea has made its own intentions clear.
Update: Another curious fact is the recency of Cha’s visit to Pyongyang, and his role as direct messenger to the North Koreans. One has to wonder what the North Koreans told him, what he told the President, and what the President said in response. Somehow, Cha sees the current policy as something he doesn’t want to be associated with. And in fact, it’s pretty light on “hawk” and pretty heavy on “engagement.” He’d have some reason to differ with the idea that the flagrant North Korean violations of AF 2.0 should be met with this kind of impotent response.
The chief U.S. negotiator at North Korean nuclear talks said Friday he does not believe Pyongyang is stalling on a pledge to abandon its nuclear weapons, even though three weeks have passed since it missed a crucial deadline.
….
“I know it’s tough to watch the days roll by,” Hill said. “We think our best interest is in being patient.”
President Bush and other top administration officials have warned repeatedly that U.S. patience is not endless. But Hill’s comments suggest a willingness to allow Kim Jong Il’s government time to have its money in hand first, which Pyongyang insists is a condition to stopping its nuclear operations.
Hill told an audience at the Johns Hopkins University school of international studies that North Korea is not using the banking issue to avoid implementation of a nuclear agreement that was considered a breakthrough after a long period of deadlock. [AP, Foster Klug]
Klug also reports on a parting shot from Richard Lawless:
Also Friday, Richard Lawless, U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense for Asian security affairs, said a plan to have South Korea take responsibility by 2012 for commanding its military in wartime would strengthen the U.S.-South Korean alliance.
South Korea, Lawless said at Johns Hopkins, is eminently capable of defending itself, with U.S. support, in the event of an attack. He said the countries were taking their time to make sure everything goes smoothly in the transition.
The recent news from the Pentagon suggests that the ROK’s government’s relations with the Pentagon haven’t improved that much under Robert Gates. The unpleasantries of the last few days may mean that Gates has had some time to absorb just a bit of Rumsfeld’s foul mood toward the South Koreans. Klug, the AP’s main man in Washington covering the Korea issue, follows this story closely enough to be sensitive to Lawless’s unusually direct tone. It’s too bad that Lawless will be long gone by 2012. For his part, Gates might not want to shake the world that much in for the rest of his tenure.
North Korea has made these US negociators look like South Koreans the way it didn’t even pretend to honor the deal…
^ Took the words out of my mouth.
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Makes one scratch the head and wonder what is it that NK is saying to these diplomats that make them change their views? They must be spiking the drinks or something.
The timing of Victor Cha’s departure may have been due to more mundane factors such as Georgetown University’s administrative rules constraining the length of sabbatical in order to maintain professor status.
One possibility — something I thought of a couple of weeks ago — is that the US intel people believe the North is going to face collapse in the near future. This has been on my mind since the nuke test.
The short version —- the nuke test coming so soon seemed desperate and un-NK like. Months before that, the level of squeeling they did about the banking sections also seemed uncharacteristic — on the desperation side.
Their refusal to even pretend to honor this latest agreement – when many in the world were being highly critical of the Bush reversal or asking why this deal wasn’t cut years earlier – also doesn’t seem like the normal NK to me. Usually, they are pretty good at milking the world community and playing it.
One idea that could tie all these things together is that —– NK is hurting more than we (non-intel people) know.
I predicted after the speedy nuke test post-ICBM test the North would collapse before 2009.
The odd way in which NK is failing to take advantage of the reversal in the US and cutting of this new accord makes me think I am on the right track.
And that could explain why the US reversed itself in the firstplace – because I am sure there are a whole lot of policy advisers saying a collapse should be avoided.
On the timing of Cha’s leaving, I’d have to agree that if there was a remote chance the engagement policies at play right now were going to work, Cha would stick around to see them through. Then he could teach whereever he wanted…
U.S. policy regarding North Korea should be based mostly on South Korea’s efforts to cool tensions and build dialogue with North Korea. Our present policy in East Asia, however, is centered on Japan. Our China policy is secondary and essentially defensive. In this vital neighborhood, South Korea’s best future is with a peaceful North Korea or perhaps even a German style reunification. The U.S. should refocus our commitments in South Korea using our air and naval forces. We should redeploy our “trip wire” 2nd. division out of the region and we should not let Congress expand our conventional forces until this adjustment is completed.
Focusing US policy on South Korea’s Sunshine approach would end up sinking billions of US tax payer money into the bottomless pit that eventually broke the Soviet Union (and China combined).
If there was reasonable hope that North Korea would make dramatic moves to reform like Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War, such a following of South Korea’s lead could be contemplated, but the evidence is overwhelming that Pyongyang is —-
—– more than willing to maintain its currently level of economic death as long as possible, because the regime believes it can survive well-enough on what it gets already.
The US moving toward South Korea’s leadership on NK policy would simply give the regime in Pyonyang more stability – but – and this but is crucial —
without the type of dramatic reform in economic systems and human rights, NK is never going to get the kind of massive inflows of material support it enjoyed from the Soviets, and without that, it will continue to remain not far from the edge of collapse.
Perhaps when Kim Jong Il dies, since he hasn’t spent the effort to build up someone to take his place, we might be able to revisit policy options, but until then, following South Korea’s policy would be a costly mistake that will not remove us from the dangerous position we are already in —- waiting and wondering when the North will implode and whether it will strike out as it does so.
Next, I have heard a lot of people who know more about military matters than myself mention the air and sea hub idea and how it would change the tripwire —–
—-but it doesn’t make sense to me. Tripwire-lite is still a tripwire.
As long as we maintain US military units in Korea above a KMAG level, the only way our forces would not be drawn into Korean War II is if the South Korean military were able to rout the North Koreans and either end the war quickly or quickly gain mastery of the front and keep the North on its heels.
Does anybody think that is going to happen?
It might. I really don’t know. I have to believe the North’s military is severely degraded after such a long period of complete economic collapse.
But, if the North still has muscle enough to wage any kind of prolonged military action, I’d think the chances the having US air bases in South Korea would stand us a good chance of having to pump infantry troops back in.
But I’m just guessing here…