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Category: Six-Party Talks

January 13, 2010

State Department Spokesman on Human Rights Policy

Because of time constraints, all I can give you for now is some quotes from yesterday’s press briefing, below the fold. Thanks to a reader for forwarding. Money quote: “We’ve made clear, going back several months, we’re not going to pay North Korea for coming back to the Six-Party process.” On the role of human rights in the six-party talks, however, the answers were vague to the point of being non-responsive.
Categories Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
December 12, 2009

You Didn’t See Me Raising My Hand

I confess that I may be one degree more interested than The Marmot in those “crucial” talks between Stephen Bosworth and the North Koreans, for reasons I explain in this Hegemon post. After all, it could have been worse. The State Department could have declared a “breakthrough.” Dreading this as I was, it wasn’t possible to maintain complete apathy. Every negotiation with North Korea is another chance for State to drive a Lexus to the car lot and limp home...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
October 5, 2009

State Dep’t: North Korea Will Return to Six-Party Talks

There is a catch:  North Korea’s willingness depends on the outcome of bilateral talks, meaning that North Korea will demand (and probably get) bilateral concessions before it returns to demand multilateral concessions … in exchange for a lot of dry air. A friendly reminder:  we’re no closer to actual North Korean disarmament than we were in December 2006, the last time this cycle began.  I’ll boldly predict that these talks won’t end any differently. Hat tip to a friend; link...
Categories Six-Party Talks
September 16, 2009

What I Think of the Bilateral Talks Talk

I’ve let much of the sturm and drang over the announcement of a bilateral meeting with the North Koreans pass while I tried to acquire a sense of what this really means, and whether it necessarily suggests that Obama’s not-bad North Korea policy is going to revert to something weaker, something ironically like the policy George W. Bush ultimately adopted, and which failed so completely to achieve American interests. Conservatives have gotten into the habit of opposing bilateral talks with...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
July 15, 2009

Gary Samore on North Korea Policy

In addition to his comments on North Korea’s HEU program, Gary Samore talked about President Obama’s North Korea policy.  As someone who found Bush’s North Korea policy to be incoherent and disappointing, but who didn’t have high expectations for Samore’s boss, either, I could not be more pleased to read things like this: I think we have to create, in the case of both North Korea and Iran, a narrative by which, if the big powers work together, and if...
Categories "United" Nations/Diplomacy/Sanctions/Six-Party Talks/Uncategorized
July 14, 2009

The HEU Debate Is Officially Over

From December 2002 until March 2009, it was the shared narrative of the shrill left, mainstream Democrats, and much of the spin circus in tow behind them that Kim Jong Il’s successful development of nuclear weapons was really George W. Bush’s fault.  This narrative held as infallible dogma that Agreed Framework I was successfully containing Kim Jong Il’s nuclear programs until Bush showed up to wreck it with suspect claims about WMD programs — specifically, the accusation that North Korea...
Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/WMD
June 17, 2009

Lee, Obama Still Talking Tough, North Korea Still Not Back on the Terror List

This week’s visit to Washington by South Korean President Lee Myung Bak has produced some nice, tough-sounding words that may or may not come to fruition, and which probably won’t mean a thing a year from now: Obama said a nuclear armed North Korea poses “a grave threat” to the world and said “we are going to break” the pattern of North Korea being rewarded for threatening actions. Lee thanked the United States for its “selfless sacrifice” in defending his...
Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea
June 15, 2009

Biden, Lee: Won’t Get Fooled Again

He’s best known for saying things that make us cringe, but even Joe Biden is on message on North Korea: “It is important that we make sure those sanctions stick and those sanctions prohibit them from exporting or importing weapons,” Biden said. “This is a matter of us now keeping the pressure on.”  [AP] And since everyone else is, Joe, why not psychoanalyze the North Koreans’ motives?  Nope, he wouldn’t touch that one: “God only knows what he wants,” Biden...
Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea
April 19, 2009

Joining the Great North Korea Debate

I’m gratified to see that my latest New Ledger article has picked up so much linkage and circulation, including at Instapundit, Real Clear World, the Memeorandum, Pajamas Media, Rantburg, Google News, and even the Puffington Host.  I doubt that I’ve done much harm to Chris Hill’s chances of being confirmed, but it’s gratifying to see my ideas debated by people not necessarily predisposed to agree (which must be nearly everyone, given that I’ve been highly critical of Presidents Clinton, Bush,...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Missiles/Six-Party Talks
April 14, 2009

Dozens Shocked by North Korea’s Repudiation of Disarmament Agreement

So much for George W. Bush, Condi Rice, and Chris Hill’s last-minute legacy grasp, the February 2007 deal with North Korea hereinafter referred to as Agreed Framework 2.0. Following a long rejection by the corpus of North Korean belligerence, Agreed Framework 2.0 has ceased to be: North Korea vowed Tuesday to restore the nuclear facilities that it had been disabling and boycott international talks on its nuclear weapons program to protest against the U.N. Security Council’s reaction to its recent...
Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
March 13, 2009

This is not the Dennis Blair I knew

Dennis Blair, who tried to put diplomacy’s own Jeremiah Wright in charge of writing our national intelligence estimates, has just thrown the entire Obama Administration off message on North Korea’s upcoming missile test. (Mark your calendars for April 4th, though April 15th seems at least as likely). Blair, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee no less, mused that North Korea’s missile test is probably just what the North Koreans say it is: “I tend to believe that the North...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
March 11, 2009

David Asher: How to Talk to North Korea

If Marcus Noland and Stephen Haggard are the world’s foremost experts on the North Korean economy, David Asher may be the world’s foremost expert on its illicit side — drugs, counterfeiting, arms trafficking, and the recouping of its ill-gotten gains. Asher served as the Coordinator of the State Department’s North Korea Working Group and the NSC’s North Korea Activities Group from 2003-2005. In that capacity, he was a key architect of the financial constriction strategy that briefly forced the North...
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
February 5, 2009

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...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
February 2, 2009

Sun Rises, Geese Fly South, North Korea Reneges on Promises to Disarm

Ad nauseum. Any old excuse will do: North Korea said on Monday it would never unilaterally dismantle its nuclear weapons and demanded inspectors probe the South to make sure it is not harbouring U.S. atomic arms, further stepping up tensions with its neighbour. [….] A North Korean army spokesman said in comments carried by the state’s official KRT TV that the North and the South remained in a state of war and it was “a shameless act of imprudence” to...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks