Phillip Goldberg Quits as N. Korea Sanctions Coordinator

Goldberg had been highly effective in his post, and his departure is a very, very worrying sign about the direction of the administration’s policy:

A diplomatic source in Washington said Sunday Goldberg has been appointed as assistant secretary of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department. Voice of America reported that the White House informed the Senate of Goldberg’s new post last month, and a confirmation hearing will take place Thursday.

South Korean and U.S. government officials say Goldberg’s replacement reflects his personal wish to move to a new post and there were no political reasons behind the move. Goldberg was appointed at the end of June after Resolution 1874 authorized sanctions against North Korea. He traveled to China, Russia, Southeast Asia and other countries to apply pressure on North Korea and was said to have set up an effective network of international sanctions against the North. [Chosun Ilbo]

In the few months since June, the administration’s sanctions policy had, as Andrei Lankov put it, “outsmarted” the North Koreans for the first time in anyone’s memory. Some of us had begun to conclude that we were finally beginning to learn:

So, for a while, things seemingly worked in the usual way. However, by October, North Korean diplomats made an unpleasant discovery: the Americans, while smiling broadly and expressing their willingness to talk, were in no hurry to start actual negotiations, let alone shower North Korea with money.

Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, special representative for North Korea policy, is much-waited in North Korea, but he has not visited Pyongyang yet (and, in a telling gesture, did not even retire from his academic job). One can also expect that once negotiations finally begin, the North Koreans will make another unpleasant discovery: it is now far more difficult to squeeze concessions and money from the US.

There are at least two reasons for this change in mood. First, Americans are learning from their experience. This time, they have a much better understanding of both North Korean methods and the likely outcome of negotiations. [Andrei Lankov, Asia Times]

Maybe this is the one case in a dozen when a senior official’s abrupt departure really doesn’t have any deeper significance, but I wouldn’t bet on it, in part because Obama’s people never came into office wanting to squeeze the North Koreans — that was just a reaction to North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests. Goldberg’s departure now could mean that the usual gang of State Department hacks like Sung Kim and the rest of the East Asia Bureau have engineered a coup and are about to steer us back toward Agreed Framework III. The man to watch now is Undersecretary Stuart Levey in Treasury. If Levey leaves, it’s a sure thing that we’re about to shift to appeasement mode and that the last two decades have taught us nothing.

If anyone has the inside story on this, I’d appreciate an e-mail letting me know.