What’s Still Missing from Obama’s North Korea Policy
Suddenly, editors at prominent liberal publications feel safe letting stories about North Korea’s atrocities see page one, and scholars at prominent liberal think tanks feel safe raising human rights. The topic is no longer subsumed uncomfortably beneath the misbegotten hope that ignoring atrocities unequaled in these times would allow us to negotiate and verify the disarmament of a nation that remained blanketed in secrecy and terror.
(Proponents of this premise, which crowned us with the glory of Agreed Frameworks I and II, like to call themselves “realists,” without meaning to parody or be self-effacing. Ironically, self-described realists are awfully smug these days, despite the absence of any justification for this, given how badly they got North Korea wrong.)
Roberta Cohen of Brookings, and also of HRNK, writes in the Washington Post to call for human rights to go back on the negotiating agenda with North Korea:
The fear of raising human rights issues has been based largely on the belief that doing so would distract from efforts to disable North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. But past negotiations focused narrowly on nuclear weapons have not produced sustainable outcomes, and they are unlikely to do so in the future unless they are grounded in a broader and more solid framework. Discussions about access to North Korea and the freer movement of people, information and ideas across its borders are needed to reinforce nuclear verification and inspections. The nature of the North Korean regime has bearing on its conduct at home and abroad. [Robert Cohen, WaPo]
And for all that is improved about Barack Obama’s response to North Korea, the absence of human rights in his negotiating agenda is a glaring shortcoming. Several days ago, she expressed similar thoughts at the Huffington Post.
My answer to liberals is, first, “welcome,” though it’s hard to explain their absence from this cause and their sudden appearance (but not to the point of questioning its sincerity). After all, it was left to a small band of conservatives to attack President Bush for betraying the North Korean people and Kim Jong Il’s other victims for the last several years.
My question for liberals who are legitimately concerned about human rights atrocities is what solution they propose. I approach this question with considerable skepticism, having concluded some time ago that North Korea won’t be a just society without a more equal distribution of food, yes, but more fundamentally, small arms, ammunition, rocket propelled grenades, and command-detonated mines (and training in how and when to use them). Ms. Cohen’s piece, remains opposed to collapsing this repellent regime and supporting the kind of gradualist appoach that has failed, and failed, and failed again. But what power do we have to negotiate at all effectively unless the regime knows that we’re willing, as a consequence of its reflexive recalcitrance and cheating, to asphyxiate it of funds and empower its people to build a nation in which they do not rule?
Cohen makes some good suggestions for where to start with our demands for our negotiatiating a too-marginally and too-gradually less hellish North Korea. Might I suggest that the human rights violation that is causing more suffering than any other is the regime’s discriminatory deprivation of food to large segments of its population? I see no single immediate goal that would do more to serve the interests of America and of the people of North Korea than to insist on unrestricted transparency in the distribution of food aid. Obtain that, and plant foreign-run feeding stations throughout North Korea, and the regime will lose three of the most important tools it needs to sustain itself as a hell on Earth and a danger to us: xenophobia, secrecy, and the use of food as a weapon against those it deems expendable. Demand and get this, and the solution to every other problem we have with North Korea will follow.
Related: Some more background on Bob King, the man Obama plans to make the new Special Envoy on human rights. I’ll just follow that with a depressing anecdote: a reader and friend recently forwarded me a transcript of a State Department daily press briefing in which the spokesman had no idea what the Special Envoy’s function was, or who Jay Lefkowitz was. That speaks badly of both administrations.
For no specific set of reasons I can lay out in coherent fashion — I think part of what is behind this is liberal (assumed) knowledge that Obama isn’t likely to draw a line in the sand with Pyongyang and confront the regime through toughened military and/or economic pressure to the point things actually happen.
In short, I believe they allow themselves to talk about human rights because they now believe it is safe to do so.
Under the “cowboy” Bush, ginning up public awareness and pressure concerning NK could, to them, “play into Bush’s hand”, and they’d rather remain silent on issues they are supposed to champion than possibly help a Bush become more assertive.
For example, in one of the handful of documentaries on North Korea that came out the last few years, one of those PBS and Wide Angle hosted, a Korea expert was given sound bite at the very start of the show – in the teaser introducing the episode just before a commercial break – the guy said something like, “President Bush would be well-advised to note North Korea is not Iraq…”
No
s$%#poo…It isn’t? Gee golly…Tibet and Darfur and such can become a rallying cry on the left — because they know the US government doesn’t believe we have enough national interest in sending troops over to settle things down or go toe-to-toe with China in the UN and on the world scene.
Now that Bush is gone, I believe they in part think NK has become a safe area to agitate about.
I also believe a likely factor in why Bush flipped on NK policy the last two years is that the “fear of the unknown” crowd won him over concerning the need to avoid forcing NK to collapse.
I think the tendency of many liberals to have ignored the human rights issue while Bush was in office, was to avoid giving him ammunition for hawkishness. Now it can be addressed because one of their own is in power. Funny thing is, Obama so far seems to be acting somewhat hawkish on the issue, as Bush was until he turned tail and gave into negotiations, which accomplished absolutely nothing. Let’s hope that Obama doesn’t make the same mistake and give yet more goodies to the North Korean regime for nothing at all in return.
Still, Obama’s strategy (or lack thereof) bothers me – why doesn’t he take advantage of his standing in the world to break the unconscionable silence re: DPRK’s unparalleled atrocities, the key to opening up the DPRK. Definitely, a “tear down this wall” moment would be a welcome “change” to his silence.
Irene,
I’d have to guess one reason is his position on “non-interference” in the goings on inside other nations.
He is already taking heat for how quickly and how much his administration has spoken out on the situation in Honduras. That stems from the primary message his administration gave in its early world tours when talking about “resetting” American foreign policy and how to deal with a nation like Iran – or how he responded initially to the violence in Iran following the election…
…for him to lead a charge against the Korean government’s action against its own people might take a fundamental reversal in his inner-core beliefs concerning the US government in the greater world.
I don’t think he considers being the leader of the American government as being the leader of the free world. The indications are that he has long considered such thinking as backward and “cowboyish”.
I don’t know if it’s fair to say it was just the “liberals” who were not talking about human rights with regards to North Korea.
In general I would agree that conservatives have spoken out more about human rights than liberals and I never understood why liberals conceded that area.
However for the last eight years under Bush I know many people were demanding that human rights be included in the negotiations with North Korea but they never were.
Personally I have more hope for Obama’s administration to accomplish things because they recognize both how evil the North Korean regime is but also the need for diplomacy.
I also want to point out that during the campaign Obama was the first presidential candidate to sign a petition in support of human rights in North Korea. I wish I had the URL for it. I am sure you do. 🙂
Thanks for your blog, it’s incredibly informative.
Frank,
Liberal media outlets and Congressmen have been notably silent on human rights in North Korea.
WSJ, IMHO, has been the only consistent source on human rights. WaPo is just starting to pick up. NYT…not so much.
Every single piece of legislation that addresses North Korean human rights has been authored and co-sponsored by conservative Congressmen. Public statements, speeches on the Senate floor, attendance at sex trafficking events – all Republican representatives and senators.
You’re right that Bush did “betray” human rights by only supporting it rhetorically.
I’m not sure what your source is when it comes to Obama…I’m pretty sure it was the McCain campaign that addressed human rights in North Korea. I do not recall the Obama campaign ever signing a petition in support of NKHR…maybe you’re thinking of the Richardson campaign…