Please, Kurt Campbell, save Korea (and us) from the Trumpocalypse

For conservative North Korea watchers who are rightly depressed about the intellectual and moral death of the Republican Party, let me palliate your depression with a few observations. First, parties come and go. What matters is that democracy endures. Any casual observer of South Korean politics knows that democracies can outlive the dissolution of parties just fine. 

Second, what matters to Korea policy is coalitions, not parties. On the Hill, there isn’t much of a partisan divide on North Korea policy at all these days. Democrats and Republicans are in equally hawkish moods. Just look at how they voted. Republicans have never been less united, but on North Korea policy, Congress has never been more united behind stronger pressure to force Pyongyang to disarm or perish. 

Third, Victor Cha’s sober and plausible analysis of Hillary Clinton’s North Korea policy is nothing to be particularly depressed about. Finally, take heart from the words of a man who is likely to play an important role President Clinton’s North Korea policy.

In the opening speech of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies’s 2016 Plenum, Campbell – who also works closely with presidential candidate Hilary Clinton – refuted the notion that North Korea is one of the most sanctioned countries in the world.

“I would argue that in fact there are many countries that are more heavily sanctioned than North Korea. There are a number of steps we could take that would send a much clearer message about (their) activities to gain hard currency.”

The current chairman and CEO of the Asia Group added that implementing further sanctions would also likely involve going after institutions that conduct at least some of their operations in China.

Campbell pointed to the difficulties that many negotiators had experienced when dealing with North Korea over the last 20 years, but also said the door should never be closed on negotiating.

“I would be of the view of that the U.S, South Korea, Japan and Russia should leave the door open for talks. It’s in our best interests to solve these issues diplomatically.” [NK News]

I don’t disagree with any of that. Not even the last part.

Along with sanctions, the international community should step up efforts in other areas to pressure Pyongyang to renounce its nuclear ambitions, such as supporting its refugees, a former senior U.S. official said Tuesday.

During his remarks at a foreign policy forum in Seoul, Kurt Campbell, former assistant secretary of state for Asia, also expressed his support for a five-party dialogue format involving South Korea, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia to discuss Pyongyang’s denuclearization.

“We have to step up our efforts in other areas. What we have done in the U.S. to support North Korean refugees could be substantially increased. I think our ability to send more information into North Korea could be dialed up substantially,” he said during a dinner session of the Asan Plenum 2016, an annual forum hosted by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.

“I think more work can be done on preparing for uncertainty for friends surrounding North Korea, and I would be much clearer with Chinese interlocutors about what our expectations with respect to North Korea are going forward,” he added. [Yonhap]

Even Wendy Sherman, of Agreed Framework infamy, is now trying to sound hawkish, although I suspect that in Sherman’s case, this is election-year posturing. At a recent conference, Sherman called for the U.S. and its allies to plan for regime collapse in North Korea, something that Sherman would not have said publicly a few years ago, out of deference to the delicate sensitivities of His Porcine Majesty, and the others who share his Safe Space in Pyongyang. NK News’s Jiwon Song (previous link) misreads Sherman’s call as a call for a plan to cause the collapse of North Korea’s regime. Far be it for me to object to this notion, but Sherman is merely saying that we should plan for what may now be inevitable. Then, Song “balances” this imaginative interpretation by finding a South Korean expert who is even farther left than Sherman. This sort of “balance” belongs in the Hankyoreh or in an opinion piece, not in a news article.

I predict the greater problem will come when Pyongyang tempts us to lift sanctions for a quick deal. For all the hope one draws from Campbell’s comments, I fully expect the next administration, like this one, to continue to be hobbled by internal debates among those who want to apply pressure and let it work, and those who want to cut a deal as quickly as … as The New York Times editors would have them cut one. Here we are, just three months after the same editors endorsed H.R. 757, and now they’re saying this:

While sanctions are important and China, more than any other country, has the power to make North Korea feel their effects, sanctions alone are not enough to mitigate the threat. Backing an inexperienced and reckless leader like Mr. Kim into a corner is risky and might lead to even more dangerous responses, like aiming a weapon at South Korea or Japan, with potentially catastrophic results.

At some point, the United States, along with China, South Korea, Japan and Russia, will have to find a way to revive negotiations aimed at curbing North Korea’s nuclear program. The Obama administration earlier this year had secret contacts with the North that foundered over a disagreement on whether to focus on denuclearization (America’s priority) or on replacing the current Korean War armistice with a formal peace treaty (North Korea’s priority). But the idea of talking with the North is politically unpopular in America, and this is an election year. [Editorial, New York Times]

The Times then quotes Bob Carlin, who has advocated do-nothing freeze deals at every turn, and who has an awful track record for reading peace overtures that aren’t there into cryptic North Korean statements.

Note well, NYT: Congress passed the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act (CISADA) in 2010. It took three years, and another sanctions law to close the CISADA’s loopholes, until your newspaper reported that sanctions had created “a hard-currency shortage that is bringing the country’s economy to its knees.” It took two more years until (for better or for worse) John Kerry inked his grand bargain. The editors of the Times show no sign of having thought through what sanctions are supposed to achieve, or how they fit into a greater strategy. Nor, for that matter, have they bothered to read the conditions for lifting those sanctions at sections 401 and 402 of Public Law 114-122.

We are very far from backing Kim Jong-un into a corner. It takes more than three months to go from “sanctions never work” to “OMG sanctions are working WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!” Sanctions are an essential part of a policy that’s designed to weaken the cohesion, control, and survivability of the North Korean regime, in a way that presents Pyongyang with a clear choice: disarm and reform, or perish. We’ll know that the conditions are right for a diplomatic solution when Pyongyang is ready to accept fundamental transparency in its dealings with the world. It will take more than inserting a few U.N. inspectors at Yongbyon for us to know that Pyongyang has made that decision. It will mean free and nationwide access by food aid monitors. It will mean Red Cross workers in North Korea’s prison camps. It will mean the de-escalation of conventional forces, including artillery and rockets, along the DMZ. It will take more than a few months to exert the pressure needed to achieve that.