“Hill isn’t just a modest civil servant following orders. This is a strategy he pushed and marketed to POTUS himself, and he’s been willing to lie to us all to save it.”

Bingo. This was what I was going to say in response to Alex before Joshua beat me to it.

I also think Alex crying about “ad hominem” attacks from Joshua is hypocritical, given that he threw mud first. Also as an aside, I too had the (dis-) pleasure of listening to Hill speak at length at the Korea Society here, and I cannot say I was exactly floored by the man’s intellect.

1. Don’t come here throwing out 2-won insults and then expect status as an aggrieved party when you get the worst of it.

2. Again, sir, reading comprehension. If you’ve read this site at all closely, you’d have seen that I link back to that post frequently. Though as you should realize, I do not speak for Bolton or Cheney.

3. Hill has shown himself to be a habitual liar, and Hill’s credibility is central to any defense of his dealings, since no living person except Kim Jong Il knows what shape they will ever take. So many of the critical terms “agreed” with the North Koreans — or so Hill would have us believe — are either undisclosed, hopelessly vague, or constantly changed by the North Koreans.  Case in point:  the Feb. 13th agreement stipulates the eventual disarmament of “all nuclear programs.  Does that mean nuclear weapons and fissile material?  Hill has repeatedly said it does, and that the North Koreans agree.  Obviously, if you listen to the North Koreans, they’ve been telling us for a year that it does not include weapons or fissile material, and when Hill couldn’t smooth that over, he simply conceded the single most important point in this whole damned disagreed framework.  Honestly, can you even tell me what terms you’re even defending? A year from now, for all you know, he’ll agree to cede Guam and the Aleutian Islands in exchange for them not evicting a Latvian U.N. inspector.

4. You’ve no doubt read Kessler’s reporting on Hill. Hill isn’t just a modest civil servant following orders. This is a strategy he pushed and marketed to POTUS himself, and he’s been willing to lie to us all to save it.

5. Can you defend Hill as to the charge of mendacity, or explain to us why it does not matter?

6. Do you actually believe that the current strategy will disarm Kim Jong Il of so much as one gram of plutonium, or one bomb?

7. Do you really doubt that a year from now, this entire deal will be in shambles on some convenient North Korean pretext, and that they’ll be ready to start up that nearly complete 50-megawatt reactor next to the used-up one?

I think your ad hominem attack on me misses my points.

I have read your blog somewhat closely. I just do not understand what your policy prescription — and the Bolton/Cheney policy, which you seem to hold in high regard — toward NK is. How does it achieve the presumed US goals, which are, as far as I know, nonproliferation, reduced tension on the peninsula, and human rights in NK, as well as using the Six-Party Talks and NK nuclear issue as a catalyst for a new Northeast Asian security architecture? As far as I can see, just saying NK is evil and until it de facto surrenders to us it will get no benefits is unrealistic; as psychologically comfortable as it is, it doesn’t get anything done. The fact seems to be that while we engaged NK we got some degree of amelioration of their nuclear program and when we then changed to Bolton/Cheney the NKs went full bore creating fissile material, and testing it (semi-successfully).

When I heard Hill talk his outline of action seemed comprehensive and with a reasonable chance of success, though he did say that the NKs were difficult so who knew what was going to happen. Force the NKs to make their choice, if they deal, fine; if they don’t, let them alienate those that have real leverage over them.

You also didn’t address what is really my central point. Why the ad hominem attack on Hill? He is a professional diplomat carrying out a policy, not of his making, to the best of his ability. If you don’t like the policy attack the man who sits where the buck stops.

I have read many entries in your blog. I have heard Chris Hill speak a couple of times. Comparing the intellectual firepower displayed in both, I’ll take Hill.

So obviously, with all that time on your hands to read something so unintelligent, your life isn’t exactly fully booked with love, happiness, fulfillment, professional accomplishment, or intellectual stimulation. And based on #3, you didn’t even comprehend much of what you read here.

A life is a terrible thing to waste, no?

US policy is that the six-party talks are designed to get buy-in from the other four (ROK, Japan, China and Russia) in a deal OR by taking the negotiations as far as possible so that it is clear NK doesn’t want to deal iPROVE to the other four that no deal is possible and then get their buy-in on a policy to get tough with NK.

The weakness in the “NK is evil and how can you deal with those lying bastards, let’s change the regime” school of John Bolton diplomacy is that China, Russia and even the ROK will not risk their equities in Northeast Asia with a crisis on the Korean Peninsula unless ALL diplomatic avenues have been exhausted. Look at a map, look at the size of NK relative to China and the ROK, both in polulation and wealth. If they don’t want NK to collapse, it won’t. There is no leverage for regime change without Chinese (especially) and ROK buy-in.

Remember October 2006 and the NK nuclear explosion, and the UN sanctions? Secretary Rice made a round robin trip to Russia and Asia to try to drum up support for a “they’ve blown off a bomb, let’s really get tough now” policy. She was blown off in every capital (except Tokyo) where they told her that the Bush administration had not made a serious attempt to negotiate yet and NK was forced to blow off the bomb to get the US back to the table. (Read the press from that time closely.) Rice came back to Washington and in December 2006 the negotations got serious. Coincidence?

Also, in 2006 the US did an Asian policy review (see Bush’s speech in Singapore in November 2006), with an emphasis on the need/desire for a new security architecture for Northeast Asia to replace the Post-WWII/Cold War structure, the rationale for which is starting to wear thin. The Six-Party talks are seen as a precursor for such a new architecture. In this the US is not alone; Chinese, South Korea and Japanese think tanks all talk about it. In this sense the North Koreans are both a sideshow and a catalyst to something bigger.
So, Hill is now playing out the string with the NKs. He has gotten disablement of Yongbyon, where all NK’s fissile material was produced (for all the hype about HEU in neocon talking points, the US intel community now concludes there wasn’t much to it), records of Yongbyon’s operation (even if there are gaps we know much more now than before — if those documents had been clandestinely obtained by an agent we would consider it a great intelligence coup). And what have we given up in return? Off the terrorism list, off the TWEA list — both reversible. What we got is irreversible.
And now the process goes on. We see what else we can get.

Will NK make a deal? Who knows at this juncture? The regime, though not the population, is indeed evil and will lie to you. But they are not stupid; they know that the further down the negotiation path they go, the more a final refusal may infuriate China and the ROK. So maybe, if the NK regime can get security guarantees that it thinks will prevent the US from using what it calls the “international cooperation system” to “strangle” NK, maybe it will deal. Perhaps the guarantees will be part of the new security architecture. Perhaps NK then opens the door a bit and some “reform” economic vitality begins to better the life of the average North Korean and gets him out a bit from under the oppressive collectivist/police state. And when Kim Jong Il dies and a collective military leadership takes over maybe it begins full scale reform on the model of China and Vietnam.

Or, maybe Kim Jong Il thinks he is pulling a fast one and strings things out and refuses to give up his nukes in the end. Good, then a joint Chinese, ROK, US, Russian and Japanese policy of really strangling the NK regime has a chance of being stomached in the respective capitals, both because of the danger of a nuclear NK and because NK has stiffed them to their face.

I make three points:

1) Hill is a professional diplomat; an analog would be a military officer. They serve as non-political experts implementing a policy approved by the President. They design the tactics for carrying out that policy to the best of their experience and expertise. Hill is to North Korea as General Petraeus is to Iraq. Ad hominem attacks on Hill by such as your blog are the same as moveon.org calling Petraeus “General Betrayus.” For each of your readers that criticized what moveon.org did but kvetches about Hill, they need to look in the mirror for a hypocracy check.

2) I have read many entries in your blog. I have heard Chris Hill speak a couple of times. Comparing the intellectual firepower displayed in both, I’ll take Hill.

3) What the hell is the Bolton/Cheney policy prescription for North Korea, anyway? Wasn’t NK’s plutonium bottled up when they took office in 2001, with maybe, maybe enough for one or two bombs worth extracted in the 1989 download, assuming the NKs really knew how to reprocess then, and the rest under IAEA safeguard? Didn’t NK cook another 35-50 kg of plutonium in secret AFTER Bolton/Cheney embarked the US on a “growl, talk tough, don’t engage, drink a testosterone tea each morning, but don’t actually do anything except get down on your knees and beg the Chinese to please, please get the NKs to do what we say” policy?

He needs to be replaced with someone who is convinced a deal with the North is impossible. Then let the North do a little real footwork to get around him. The US has learned nothing after decades the same games over and over.