Oberdorfer to Be Inducted Into Irrational Exuberance Hall of Fame

I like Don Oberdorfer as a person, but he really should ask the Council on Foreign Relations to put this link in a more obscure place:

This morning when I turned on the BBC, the newscast started by saying that the last days of the Cold War may be near. They were talking about the developments regarding North Korea at the Six-Party Talks and signing of the latest agreement between North and South Korea looking toward an eventual peace treaty, signed by the two leaders. Is this a little overblown?

No, I don’t think it’s overblown if you mean in the sense that finally something is happening on the Korean peninsula that is going to greatly reduce and perhaps end the tension across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that divides the Korea peninsula. As an historian of the Cold War, it was over a long time ago but you have this remaining problem which is inherited from the Cold War and from the division of the Korean peninsula in 1945. This problem–if not ended–is now sufficiently dealt with that it should not be a cause for grave international concern.

As you look at what’s happening, it seems to be that for once on the Korean peninsula, the stars are in alignment, especially the major powers, all of whom would like a reduction of tensions, a greater engagement and understanding across the Korean peninsula. The United States has certainly wanted it, South Korea has for a long time. Japan is hesitant. We may be on the edge of some new day. It’s always dangerous to be too optimistic when you are talking about North Korea. You never know what is going to pop out of the box, but all indications are now that engagement and understanding across the DMZ are moving ahead.  [Don Oberdorfer at CFR, Oct. 4, 2007]

Read on — its only gets more embarrassing:

The next inspection is going to be of greater importance because they are going to be able to inspect the aluminum tubing that was allegedly used to create new centrifuges, which would have allowed North Korea to make a program to enrich uranium to the point to be used to make nuclear weapons, so-called highly-enriched uranium. All indications are they are going to find that the aluminum tubing is there, it has never been made into centrifuges, and this whole thing that caused the breakdown of the Agreed Framework, the earlier agreement on North Korean nuclear weapons, was a fiction. There was no highly-enriched uranium program in North Korea, but the North Koreans at one time admitted there was–although there is controversy about what they actually said back in 2002–and then they’ve been vehemently denying. If you inspect the aluminum tubing and you find it is still there and it hasn’t been made into centrifuges, where was this big program everybody was so afraid of?

Then, two months later ….

And finally, here’s Oberdorfer’s prediction on the future of North-South relations under a Lee Myung Bak administration:

The rapprochement between the two Koreas will go ahead with a few setbacks and strains here and there and a little more slowly than Roh Moo-hyun is doing it now, but it will move ahead unless there are some basically North-generated problems. At the moment, I don’t see it. North Korea needs to have a period of peace.

Oberdorfer’s analysis is flawed in the same way most “realists” are wrong about North Korea — they build in the unrealistic assumption that diplomatic outcomes necessarily depend on American initiatives, as if North Korea’s behavior has nothing to do with those outcomes.  I don’t expect Oberdorfer to be clairvoyant, but by October 2007 a long historical record justified skepticism, and little else.

What’s so jarring about this analysis — aside from how poorly it has held up — is just how commonly held it was at the time.  By October 2007, North Korea has already blown several Agreed Framework II deadlines and was on the verge of breaking its promise to fully disclose its nuclear programs, yet AF II’s believers clung to it with the desperate faith one usually associates with stalkers, not professional analysts.
To drive the point home to a degree that’s probably unsportsmanlike, contrast Oberdorfer’s predictions to that of a snot-nosed unpaid amateur with none of Oberdorfer’s professional credentials.  Other than the whole Al Gore thing, the unpaid analysis seems to have held up quite well.