Advantage, Lefkowitz?
The latest Bush Administration official to return from Pyongyang empty-handed is Sung Kim, who spent three days in Pyongyang and got no nuclear declaration for his trouble. It’s a well known fact of diplomacy that even when no translation is necessary, it can take 72 hours to comprehend the utterance of the word “no.
The latest Bush Administration alumnus to denounce its failing last-ditch appeasement of North Korea is former speechwriter Michael Gerson, who writes in the Washington Post about the conflict between Jay Lefkowitz and the State Department establishment:
The East Asia bureau at the State Department, headed by Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, has consistently viewed the raising of human rights as an impediment to the serious work of negotiating with Kim Jong Il. The Korea desk tried and failed to exclude Lefkowitz from important policy meetings with the president. It attempted unsuccessfully to weaken the North Korea section in the State Department’s annual human rights report. Human rights groups generally view Hill with great suspicion. [Washington Post, Michael Gerson]
No shock there. We’ve known for years that State was willing to defy the law to block the North Korean Human Rights Act. The problem is that after Congress expressed its unanimous will, it pretty much forgot the whole thing.
North Korea feels little pressure as a result of its noncompliance. China seems relieved that Kim hasn’t recently misbehaved and urges patience. The South Korean government continues to hold up its end of a protection racket: To keep the peace, South Korea provides North Korea with aid, which is diverted to strengthen North Korea’s military, which threatens South Korea, which gives more aid to keep the peace.
This is the problem of State Department “realism.” Negotiations that begin as a means become the end itself — a kind of blind and dreamy faith in the magic of the process. Any form of criticism or coercion disappears, because “the North Koreans won’t negotiate under pressure” — when, in the past, the North Koreans have negotiated only under pressure.
Nail head pounded. Carrots and sticks are perfectly fine for pavlovian beasts of burden, but influencing cunning sociopaths requires methods that are at both more sophisticated and more forceful. Carrots indeed. The man eats caviar.
Lefkowitz’s speech has since been Trotskied from the State Department’s web site, but it’s available here. If you haven’t read it, you should. Lefkowitz may have come into his position with little knowledge of the subject at hand, but something has obviously changed between then and now. His speech shows gravitas and understanding of the topic that his State Department detractors lack. The speech is good enough and brave enough to convince me that Lefkowitz must have really believed ““ at least when Christopher Hitchens goaded him recently ““ that he could still have a positive influence on the Administration’s policies from within. I don’t believe that, but no one can deny that Lefkowitz has changed the Administration’s tone. Neither President Bush himself nor the State Department is claiming progress anymore. Now, all they can do is counsel patience.
Ironically, Lefkowitz can thank Condi Rice’s inept and mean-spirited rebuke for the fact that the Russians, the Chinese, and thousands more Americans now know his name. The media, always eager to pry at any split within the Administration, are listening to him again. Almost as one, conservatives rose to defend him against a woman that others had once tried to draft as a presidential candidate. We’ve since learned that Lefkowitz may have tried to resign from the Bush Administration several weeks ago. President Bush, perhaps realizing how much damage Lefkowitz could now do him, convinced him to stay on.