Gridlock and infighting stalk collapse of Agreed Framework 2.0
You could write the epitaph for the President Bush’s North Korea policies in six words: There are worse things than gridlock. Now that Agreed Framework 2.0 has reached its failure point and not even sympathetic media can still deny it, the New York Times reports that the same old factions have formed up to battle about the fruitlessness of dealing with Kim Jong Il.
With North Korea sending signals that it may be trying to wait out Mr. Bush’s time in office before making any more concessions, administration officials are grappling with how the United States should react. The debate has fractured along familiar lines, with a handful of national security hawks in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and at the State Department arguing for a more confrontational approach with Pyongyang. [Helene Cooper, N.Y. Times]
Well, this was about as predictable as the sunrise; still, can anyone deny that I am the Nostrafriggingdamus of Korea bloggers? This time, my predictive powers were eerie enough to border on the paranormal. Not that I mean to overstate this. Anyone intelligent enough to be reading this already knows that Robert Downey, Jr. can say no to crack longer than Kim Jong Il can keep an agreement. And unlike Kim Jong Il, Downey can probably manage ten whole minutes of abstention on his way home from rehab … unless he had the foresight to stash a rock in the ashtray of his limo.
JOHN BOLTON, ARE YOU READING THIS?
Bush is now right back where he started in 2001, except that North Korea’s nuclear capability, though still primitive, has advanced to the point of demonstration. Bolton says, “It’s like groundhog day; we’ve lived through this before. (Ambassador Bolton, if you’re reading this, I’d happily waive my copyright infringement claim for an interview here.)
The State Department counsels patience as the clock runs out, but the sticking points are a wee bit elemental:
Mr. Bush said the two countries needed to resolve three sticking points: the number of warheads that North Korea has built; the amount of weapons-grade nuclear material produced by North Korea; and the need for North Korea to disclose that it has passed nuclear material to others. [N.Y. Times]
Someone remind me just what the hell they even agreed to do, if not those things. Doves are making much of the partial disablement of Yongbyon, but as I’ve pointed out here repeatedly, Yongbyon was probably a used-up wreck before this deal was even signed, and its replacement, which would take less than two years to complete, will generate 50 megawatts, not five. Wanna see it? You know you do:
Did I forget to mention the 200-megawatt reactor?
The key point being: the North Koreans aren’t disabling either of those facilities. Recall that on his return from Pyongyang last December, Hill said that he had visited, “all three sections of the facility there. That is, the fuel fabrication facility, the reactor, and then finally the reprocessing center. There is disabling activity going on at all three.” That means these three facilities only:
The big new reactors are being watched by the IAEA, but they’re not being dismantled or demolished. North Korea hasn’t accounted for the nuclear materials needed to make those facilities operable. For all we know, they’re under a pile of sand in Syria. Let’s not pretend we’re any safer. We aren’t.
Conservative opposition gained strength from four key developments: the Syria revelations; North Korea accidentally sending us a sample of the enriched uranium it denied having; the passage of the December 31st deadline; and Chris Hill getting caught in a lie after denying that North Korea had offered a false declaration last November. As a result, several very bad ideas have waned. North Korea can probably forget about being taken off the terror-sponsor list. We can probably also forget about Secretary Rice visiting Pyongyang. The probability of ferocious opposition made it impossible for Chris Hill to accept a patently false North Korean nuclear declaration in November.
In case you’re keeping score, those who oppose this deal, or whose skepticism is tantamount to opposition to it, include John Bolton, of course, plus candidates John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson; influential Republican senators John Kyl (the Minority Whip), Sam Brownback, Charles Grassley, and Jim Bunning; and independent Joe Lieberman. (… and Larry Craig.) If Bush tried to ram legislation through Congress today to either de-list North Korea, ratify a deal, or appropriate funding for one, it might not survive an up-or-down vote. I wouldn’t have said that a month ago.
LEFKOWITZ: FINDING HIS VOICE?
We’ve known for a few weeks, since it hit the Washington Post, that there was considerable opposition to this deal among the Administration’s nonproliferation experts. Now we even have public opposition from one of the Administration’s serving officials, and from a guy I’d left for dead long ago. Listen to this:
In a public departure from administration policy, Jay Lefkowitz, a conservative lawyer who is Mr. Bush’s envoy on North Korean human rights, said this week the North would likely “remain in its present nuclear status” when the next president took over in January 2009. “North Korea is not serious about disarming in a timely manner,” Mr. Lefkowitz told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “We should consider a new approach to North Korea. [N.Y. Times]
“It is increasingly clear that North Korea will remain in its present nuclear status when the administration leaves office in one year,” he told a forum in Washington. Using unusually sharp words, he said North Korea “has not kept its word,” was “not serious about disarming in a timely manner” and “its conduct does not appear to be that of a government that is willing to come in from the cold.” Lefkowitz also accused Pyongyang of being a “serial proliferator” and using its nuclear arms to “extort” foreign aid, saying there was no guarantee that US military and nuclear strength could prevent it from passing on nuclear arms or technology to Islamists or their backers. [AFP]
I’m happy someone say this, and I’m kicking myself for the fact that I couldn’t be at AEI to hear it in person. Lefkowitz didn’t just criticize his bosses, either:
Jay Lefkowitz […] also lambasted China and South Korea for not exerting enough pressure on Pyongyang while the six-way discussions have been seeking for years to denuclearize the North. [Kyodo News]
Maybe Lefkowitz said this because there’s enough division that he can get away with it again. Maybe he already knew that Nicholas Burns was on his way out. I had even wondered if the Administration was using Lefkowitz to send a message to the North Koreans that our patience is thin. After all, his attack was not a direct comment on North Korea’s human rights record, it struck at North Korea’s bad faith in disarmament. The White House noticed the same thing, and obviously didn’t want anyone in Beijing speculating the same way I had:
“Let me make it very clear: He is the envoy for issues related to human rights in North Korea,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters Friday. “He is not, however, somebody who speaks authoritatively about the six-party talks. His comments certainly don’t represent the views of the administration. [AP; h/t DPRK Forum]
Procedurally and bureaucratically, Lefkowitz probably crossed the line, but substantively, not only were his words factually correct, but after all, it’s the six-party agreement that sidelined his job out of existence. Most of the news sources covering this story omitted the fact that Lefkowitz did tie his comments directly to human rights:
Lefkowitz said the United States needs to rethink its approach to North Korea to one that links concerns about security with North Korea’s poor human rights record, making improvement on both fronts a condition of better relations with the United States. Dubbed “constructive engagement,” such an approach would ensure human rights “cannot be discarded in any future rush to “get to yes” in an agreement, he said.
“The way the North Korean government treats its own people is inhumane and therefore deeply offensive to us,” Lefkowitz said. “It should also offend free people around the world. Clearly we want to see an improvement in this, just as we want to see an abatement of the threats to our security created by the regime.”
The six-party talks do not address North Korea’s human rights record but, Lefkowitz said, “there is a valid question of whether this continues to make sense.” He said the United States should also consider expanding its bilateral contacts with North Korea to discuss such issues, but should also consider “other leverage” against the nation if it doesn’t improve, including restricting the regime’s access to United States and international financial systems. [CNN; h/t Richardson]
The question is just who the White House thinks it’s still kidding. They stopped caring about human rights years ago. Maybe Lefkowitz’s mistake was to believe that he still has a job. He has other options at his disposal, of course; he doesn’t have to take this insult quietly. Lefkowitz was most recently mentioned here when Christopher Hitchens wondered whatever happened to him. Today, at least reporters are quoting him again — they love contradiction, especially of Bush — and the things he’s saying are undeniably true.
Really, I just feel great sympathy for anyone who brings a conscience into the U.S. Department of State. At least now I know Lefkowitz isn’t the problem. He stuck his neck out to say the right thing. Good for him.
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Monday Greetings Joshua Stanton. If in your piece for today you seem very positive in finding a confluence of the planets, it is only natural given your lonely, principled campaign of the first importance. In it all doubtless the ghost of William Lloyd Garrison readily sympathizes with your many disappointments and rare delights.
It is noteworthy that you find a disheartening absence of concern for the people of northern Korea in the statements concerning Korea by the presidential candidate Fred Thompson. To be sure, the oldest tradition of American foreign policy is to abjure any quest for “foreign monsters†to destroy, but instead to cold-heartedly avail ourselves of Eurasian contradictions to pursue and enhance the USA national interest, however it may be conceived. But is it ever so simple?
Unlike Garrison, Abraham Lincoln was no abolitionist. He plainly said that his cause was the American union, and would promote or deny emancipation in conformance to that national interest. However, his red line, and that of most of America outside of the South on the one hand, and New England on the other, was that slavery must not travel outside of where it had been already established at the time of the founding of the Republic. As the psychology of the “fire-eaters†of the South became the guiding animus of the South in the 1850s, that red line would be crossed, and civil war became unavoidable. When after a year of severe armed conflict the effort necessary to win it became manifest to the people of the North, the “national interest†was not adequate to spiritually gird the North for the long terrible fight. Save for a shrinking Copperhead minority, all now became abolitionists. It was a holy war on behalf of the freedmen.
So also with Korea. In the plain national interest, any administration with its head screwed on straight must seek the comprehensive steps with regard to the Kim family regime’s nuclear program that you have discussed at length. However, as you know so well, the head Hennessey imbiber in Pyongyang will ably play any game to avoid losing his vital primary means of coercion in the world beyond is realm, and with much success when the priorities of his adversaries are elsewhere. However, the inherent contradictions of his regime will only breed successive crises, each harder to manage than the last, until he crosses some undeniable red line in the USA national interest. As it becomes more painful to resolve the crisis in terms of a purely national USA interest, then the USA national interest will ally with the evident spiritual interest in liberation for the people of northern Korea. It will be amazing how the placid ocean of indifference of today’s world becomes an irresistible force sweeping away the tyranny and all of its accoutrements. And then Mr. Joshua Stanton will be confounded by all of those who will tell him that they had always steadfastly opposed the evil. Such is life!
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, in which all Americans can remember a man who proposed we should judge only the content of a man’s character. This pastor began his struggle to bring down Jim Crow in the early 1950s in a national environment indifferent or hostile to him. So today also a steadfast pastor struggles with almost suffocating indifference among Americans and Koreans alike to the plight of the people in thrall to the Kim family regime. Who cares about Camp 22 or any of the rest of the archipelago of infamy north of the Imjin? But even with his immense pastoral responsibilities for a congregation of thousands of families, he resolutely pursues freedom for people in northern Korea through his leadership of the Korean Church Coalition and its manifold efforts including its current “Let My People Go†campaign to oblige the PRC government to permit the hundreds of thousands of northern Korean refugees in China passage to freedom. God bless Senior Pastor Peter Inshik Sohn, and sustain him, and all who labor for those in thrall, to the day of victory.
Great insights Mr. Miller.
Here is how I picture the most probable outcome:
I don’t see Kim’s clan crossing some line in which US national interests become unavoidable and the wheels start churning to do something and other pile on — at least not like I think you are describing it.
I see the end of the current status quo coming in the form of a major bloodletting when the contradictions inherent in the regime lead to the implosion of the North. I also expect, though this is just one of the possibilities, that that implosion will come with a violent strike outward – of what strength, I have no idea, because it could be of any kind, from a brief border skirmish of limited scope cut short by on organized armed coup in Pyongyang and generals at the DMZ who refuse to follow orders, or it could be a couple of hours of artillery rain down on Seoul that cause a massacre not seen since the conventional war days of Korean War itself, all for CNN cameramen to catch, or it could very well be a junior CNN cameraman in Taejon filming a mushroom cloud rising above what was Seoul……take your pick……all are possible and reasonable guesses……
Whatever happens, it will be over in one day probably, maybe a week, maybe a few weeks if the implosions stays an implosion and North Korean military units duke it out only amongst themselves in warlord fashion rather than simply letting the regime die and waiting to see what happens…..
……..but only then, after the bloodletting is finished, will the pied pipers of American self-interests come in demanding to know why
theynobody had understood that a collapse of North Korea was inevitable and “done something” to prevent the bloodshed from happening……..Why someone had not prepared for the different possibilities and come up with the solution to handling a collapse so that “few people” (North Koreans, South Koreans, Americans stationed in South Korea, or possibly even Japanese hit by long range missiles) would die in the implosion?As the concentration camps open and the North Koreans become free to tell of the horrors of the last 50+ years, none of the pied pipers will remember that it was in “America’s best interests” to keep the North alive to avoid any chances of implosion/explosion. Hell, they can’t even admit to themselves, at least from what I’ve read, that that is what they have really been piping for for the past 7 years or so.
No. One the horrors of the collapse are mixed with the horrors of what North Korea has already long done to its people are being well documented, everyone will be talking about how a “solution” could have been found and thus should have been found and pointing fingers at those who didn’t get it done.
This will be especially true if the implosion/explosion comes within the next 10 years, because they can lump everything on the Bush administration’s head. It will be good cover for the historians to justify burying the “soul-searching inquiry” not done on how Afghanistan could have been left churning out jihadists throughout the 1990s…..
In short, the United States will never begin gearing for plans in its real national interests concerning North Korea.
We will go along with the status quo until the outcome we refuse to admit is inevitable comes about in whatever level of destruction it finally comes about.
Stateside Greetings to usinkorea. Much appreciate your clearly well-considered brainstorming the possibilities attending the inevitable end of the Kim family regime. You well recognize that those most willful in their present ignorance are also likely to be those loudest in searching for scapegoats when their dark willfulness comes home to roost. Again, such is the inherent unfairness of temporal life.
Even so, recognizing that it only takes one-quarter turn of the screw to vary the end from one scenario to another quite different, it is well to be mentally and morally prepared if you are so near to the epicenter of events so as not to be put irremediably off balance by sudden possibly catastrophic developments on the Korean peninsula. For networks of our most thoughtful people in U.S. Forces Korea and in the Republic of Korea Armed Forces to have considered in advance the range of dynamics that might come into play is to be at least half-way prepared to deal with them. May the Lord Above strengthen and guide them in every way!
May He also make strong and wise all who would assist in the gargantuan long-term task of spiritual and material succor that must take place (mostly in the northern part of Korea, I trust) when the Kim family regime is finally history.
Many thanks for your service in Korea, and that of all who serve along side you.