It’s Time for Jay Lefkowitz to Resign

I recently wrote a piece for publication on North Korea’s finances, the rumors of the then-prospective deal with North Korea,  and how to increase the pressure so that we could get a truly verifiable dismantlement of their nuclear program and a real and fundamental movement toward transparency.   If no favorable agreement could be achieved,  our financial strategy  showed real promise in  collapsing  the regime’s palace economy, and maybe even the regime  itself, something for which my aspiration is no secret.   I had the  piece all ready to go,  but recent events  overcame it.  It may still be published, with the co-authorship of a friend, but it’s clearly based on the discarded illusion that this administration was interested in those same goals.  I’d wager that Nicholas Eberstadt (OFK interview here)  and I were both  writing that same weekend, and I suspect Eberstadt is in the process of discarding the same illusions.

Yet inexplicably, the Bush team continues to overlook a spectacular opportunity to deliver freedom to tens of thousands of North Koreans, to pressure the country from within for fundamental change and to lay the groundwork for a peaceful, reunified Korean Peninsula. By fostering an underground railroad to rescue North Korean refugees living in China, the United States could do all these things at once. 

On humanitarian grounds alone, the case for action on behalf of the wretched North Koreans in hiding north of their country’s border along the Yalu River is compelling. While the exact numbers are unknown, this refugee emergency may be second only to Darfur: the International Crisis Group speaks of scores of thousands of refugees, and recently uncovered Chinese official documents indicate hundreds of thousands.  [NYT]

The word that Eberstadt may have cause to rethink here is “inexplicable.”  And when Washington has just cut the knees out from under Japan, who  can still believe that it will be willing to apply the pressure of our good offices to  China’s barbaric and unlawful treatment of North Korea’s refugees, or the comfort women on whom its men prey?

The critical missing piece for getting this underground railroad up and running is safe passage through China. But because the South Korean government fears antagonizing the North and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is too timid to face down Beijing, China’s opposition to this rescue mission has gone unchallenged. Only the United States is in a position to help overcome Beijing’s recalcitrance.

The Chinese government’s cost-benefit calculus regarding these refugees would change drastically if Washington weighed in as their advocate. If the United States (along with other governments) provided informal assurances that China is merely a way station for North Koreans — assuaging any official fears about a permanent foreign refugee population — it may well be possible to convince Beijing to cooperate in the relocation mission (or at least to look the other way as it takes place).   

Clearly, Eberstadt and I were laboring under at least one of the same illusions:  that this Administration is serious about helping North Korean refugees.  I’m beyond blaming rogue elements in the State Department, and probably should have been, in retrospect, a year ago.  The President is the decider.  He has decided not to comply with a law he signed.  Commenter Sonagi flatters me by saying that with my background in law, I could give Eberstadt’s piece more of a grounding in law or get it wider exposure (than the New York Times?  She really flatters me there).  But this is not a question of law.  The law is clear.  It’s a question of will.  The will is not there.  It was lost in a belated  campaign for the approval of those who despise this President unconditionally.

Those of us who want a better North Korea policy instead of the drift we’ve had for the last seven years had better focus our attention where Kim Jong Il is putting his — on the next administration.  Some probably still hope that this deal will not last anyway, and  that it will  give way to something more clear-eyed, but that defies a fundamental rule of American politics:  presidents, and especially unpopular ones, do not shift their policies in bold directions while they’re packing their furniture and  picking sites for  their presidential libraries.  On the other hand, a policy shift of such exceptionally short-sighted  cowardice was a surprise.  It was a dash of cold water to those of us who took this President’s words at face value. 

(Personally, I take comfort in knowing how much worse it all would have been under Gore or Kerry, and in the knowledge that McCain was my own  preference in 2000.  That’s the down side of democracy.  You seldom get your favorite.  You only get the lesser of two evils, and it’s the greater of the two evils from which you usually draw your inspiration. And of course, the world is bigger than Korea, and no candidate who advocates surrender to terrorism will ever get my vote.  Appeasement, of course, is where surrender meets preemption.   And North Korea’s way of negotiating sometimes crosses the line into terrorism.)

In the meantime, this Administration has offered rhetorical support for treating the North Korean people humanely, and has designated one of its minor officials to say exactly the opposite of what the rest of the Administration quietly does.  Jay Lefkowitz has said the right things, and done so as recently as this month, but the things he says bear no relation to the actions of the Administration he has served.  There can be no more purpose for Lefkowitz to offer more of those words but to  fool as  many of us  as will still  be fooled.  It’s been widely believed by human right advocates that Lefkowitz’s office was filled with State Department careerists of a more corporate mentality, who have carefully monitored and controlled his actions.  I do not have personal knowledge of this, but I did  personally observe the “minders” sent to watch over John Bolton.  A failure to assign minders to Lefkowitz would seem an uncharacteristically incautious lapse.  You can’t ascribe this to simple factionalism any longer.  It’s disingenuousness.  And if Jay Lefkowitz has the self-respect not to be an agent of it, and the wisdom to know that that’s all he is, he should resign now.  He should do so without any public whining or sniveling, but as a dignified man’s simple and quiet statement that he refuses to be used to use others.

Clarification, 2/22:   If it wasn’t clear enough in the last paragraph, let me make it clearer:  I don’t  think Jay Lefkowitz is personally  Machiavellian or devious.  That’s not my default position for most people.  Although I don’t know Lefkowitz well, everything I do know suggests that he means well, even if he didn’t come into the position full-time, with a particularly high stature in the field, or with a particularly strong background on the situation in North Korea (which is no barrier; the one thing no one questions is his intellect).   Unfortunately, Lefkowitz simply lacks the power to give any effect to the ideas he expresses, and as such, he ends up obscuring the Administration’s actual policies more than he expresses, reflects, or affects them.  In retrospect, I suspect that this was probably  someone’s plan from  day one.  

I don’t question  Lefkowitz’s sincerity.  I question  the sincerity of the Administration that employs him as a probably unwitting and well-meaning  instrument of  a human rights  bait-and-switch.  Although plenty of us have wanted to view Lefkowitz as speaking for the Administration, in retrospect, I think we’ve been victims of wishful thinking.  Note, for example, how little the South Korean government and Yonhap barely seem to concern themselves with what Lefkowitz says.  That could be  because they’ve reached the same conclusions I have.