Repent, The End is Nigh
In the New Ledger today, you’ll see the something none of you (or I) would have expected a year ago — me, defending Barack Obama’s North Korea policy against conservative critics.
This might cost me Thanksgiving dinner with the Boltons.
There is, of course, one important exception in my defense, and that exception leads us to a fundamental question about Obama’s policy: what, exactly, is its ultimate goal?
Would Mr Bolton really object? If you’re right about Obama and if Bolton isn’t a partisan hack (and I’m inclined to say he isn’t), would he object?
Know your lines, and don’t bump into the furniture?
I’ve got my fingers crossed in hope, too. While I’d like to credit Obama for his wisdom, which he does seem to have, one thing he’s got going for him in this case is the trial and error of the last two administrations and, most recently, things like Bush’s unleashing of cash in Banco Delta Asia, removal from state sponsors of terrorism list, and so on. Maybe one day we’ll see that as a credit to Bush, that the U.S. did the right thing and “gave peace a chance” and all that so that when Obama stepped in we didn’t have to go through the same process all over again, that the U.S. had learned its lesson, and was better able to convince allies, six party partners, UNSC, etc, that while sitting down and talking to NK is always a good thing, if just out or principle, loosening sanctions for the sake of creating the right mood for talks is not the way to go about it, and so on.
On the foreign policy front one of the things I like most about the Obama Administration is what seems to be an ability to do more than one thing at a time, and perhaps the discipline and realism that has kept it from wishfully ignoring places like NK and Israel (and her neighbors). Too many presidents have hoped they could ignore those, only to either be dragged in in the waning months of their terms or suddenly remembering them, as if they suddenly, in the course of finding a plot for their respective presidential libraries, they remembered they needed some more foreign policy accomplishments. I think Clinton publicly gave that kind of advice to Bush – “don’t think you can not have to deal with Israel/Palestine,” or sumsuch, but that’s because he’d learned that lesson himself. Then I think (“think,” again) that someone in the Bush admin said they weren’t going to get pulled into that problem like Clinton. Both men either dragged their feet or let themselves be dragged around on NK only to attempt to get something done at the very last moment. Like you, I’m cautiously hopeful. Obviously I like Obama’s politics for the most part but when it comes to NK, it’s hard to trust any group of American politicians to keep their eyes on the ball when up against a country like NK, where the leadership really doesn’t have much else to do with its day-to-day time other than think about the Americans or about issues that relate to them one way or another. Meanwhile, everyone in any U.S. cabinet always has so much more on his plate, and any American who thinks about NK all day mans a lonely “Korea desk” of some sort. On the other hand maybe this will lead NK to underestimate the new administration. I wish I could personally thank KJI for deciding to call attention to himself early on in the Obama Administration rather than starting two years from now. I, too, hope the Obama Administration will have learned from previous mistakes and be different, but whatever the case, at least the narrative of the relationship between NK and Obama got started early.
I can’t give Bush that much credit. I did back him as he withstood several years of abuse by the “do something” / “talk for the sake of talking” crowd and the media on his NK policy, but then he flipped, and it wasn’t just trying a new route: We’d known since the early to mid-1990s what to expect. Many here at this very site lambasted the Bush change at the time. If bloggers could see how it was doomed, surely Bush’s people should have been able to too….