Obama Policy Watch, Plus: Chris Hill Reminisces on Failure

With most of the major players in Obama’s cabinet selected, the question turns to what sort of policies we’ll see during this administration. The shape of those policies is already being tested by North Korea’s state terrorism against South Korea, its threat to test an ICBM — in flagrant violation of two U.N. resolutions — and its continuing repudiation of its 2007 disarmament commitments.

So far, the preponderance of evidence suggests that the Obama Administration lacks a coherent plan for dealing with North Korea. Instead, it looks inclined to muddle along with Bush’s failed six-party initiative.

U.S. President Barack Obama agreed with President Lee Myung-bak by phone on Tuesday to cooperate closely through the six-party talks and the bilateral alliance to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons and programs in a verifiable way, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

That suggests Obama is inclined to stick to due process rather than agreeing to North Korea’s recent calls for nuclear disarmament talks or normalizing U.S.-North Korean relations before dismantling its nuclear weapons. [Chosun Ilbo]

Change! Continuity!

If you limit yourself to some of the shallower commentary on Hill’s Korean legacy, you could confuse complete, verifiable, and probably irreversible failure of Hill’s diplomatic project with raging success. Good to know, then, that at least Chris Hill isn’t fooled by Chris Hill’s propaganda, at least if you judge by these unintentionally revealing comments to the Asia Society in New York on Tuesday. One of the things Hill reveals is that he’s not going to be the one who negotiates with the North Koreans from this day forward. That’s North Korea’s loss … as well as Iraq’s. Hill did not hold back in his criticism of the North Koreans for, you know, having an actual negotiating strategy tied to some concrete objectives and for generally being North Koreans:

“The North Koreans were complete momentum killers,” calling a timeout whenever progress seemed within reach, recalls the outgoing chief U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill. [….]

In the lecture, Hill recalled how frustrating it was that North Korean officials never moved quickly to the next stage. He compared it to a coach called a timeout whenever one of his players is about to jump and shoot the ball.

He complained that Pyongyang delayed further talks by equivocating about nuclear sampling as a way of verifying its declaration of programs and stockpiles even after it was removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. [Chosun Ilbo]

I can’t imagine why. So obviously, the current strategy is a smashing success, then! And we must continue to build on all that progress we’ve made, right? Exactly:

But Hill expressed confidence that the Obama administration will continue the six-party talks. Asked if he had a message for his successor, Hill said patience was of the essence to find solutions in bilateral or trilateral talks. He added he always tried to see the positive side.

I wonder if Hill buys from the same guy as Michael Phelps.

By now, Hill must realize that there’s a pattern to this inscrutable North Korean behavior. His rumored move to a post as important as the Iraq ambassadorship suggests no repudiation of a policy in which Hill induced the investment of legacies and lives with Madoff-like glibness. The “unofficial” visit of such diplomatic glitterati as Morton Abramowitz and Stephen Bosworth also suggests more of the same:

Before leaving Beijing Morton Abramowitz, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state under the Reagan administration, told reporters that he was not carrying a special message for the communist government from U.S. President Barack Obama.

Another member of the group, former U.S. ambassador to Seoul Stephen Bosworth, claimed not to know who they would be meeting in North Korea, adding that the topics of discussion would be most likely be very general. [Chosun Ilbo]

I am sure some people will actually believe that the topic really will be general, that the administration really sent to message to the North Koreans, and that no quid will be offered for a quo of temporary quiet. After all, there’s one born every minute. But not all of the signals from the new administration suggest that it’s been neutered. The new administration confirmed a trade ban on three North Korean companies involved in proliferation, and there was even a vague threat to seek U.N. sanctions if North Korea tests a missile:

A senior diplomatic source in Washington, D.C said, “The Obama administration wants to solve problems through negotiations with North Korea. But if the North doesn’t cooperate, it could employ a firmer policy than the Bush administration.” [Chosun Ilbo]

This will ring hollow to North Korean ears. There’s no point in threatening new U.N. sanctions when the old ones were, on their face, both tough and potentially effective, but never seriously implemented by the United States, South Korea, or China. If the administration really is serious about a tougher policy, something I don’t really believe myself, it will have to abandon the impossible condition of Chinese cooperation, and it doesn’t have to look any further than a few executive decisions President Obama could make unilaterally.

Which he could get away with, because he’s a Democrat.

Overall, that’s probably unlikely unless (and even if) the North Koreans do something really stupid. Still, it’s too early to completely rule the possibility out. North Korea’s behavior at this stage could hardly be too much worse, and the Republicans have already proven to be far more effective as an opposition party than they ever were as a governing party. If the North Koreans attract the wrong kind of attention, the Republicans might even take the principled stand on this issue that so few of them took when George W. Bush was president.

Realistically, however, the best we can really hope for is policies that don’t prolong North Korea’s plodding, painful progression toward implosion. The most likely incentive for that is clientitis — the natural tendency of our diplomats to defer to the South Koreans and the Japanese. That would serve our short-term interests, too, but in the end, what kind of way is that to protect our country’s interests, or to advance the values that serve them?