Peace in Our Time: Bracing for a Missed Deadline, and the ‘Good’ Unilateralism

If you wonder just how fundamental our policy shift on North Korea has been — fundamentally bad, that is — just look at the fact that Bill Richardson’s amateur diplomacy toward Kim Jong Il is no longer being ignored by the White House  [AP, Foster Klug].  Six months ago, a Bill Richardson visit to his friends in Pyongyang would have followed some White House statements that Richardson was acting  on his own as a private citizen.  Today, as President Clinton once adopted Jimmy Carter’s freelancing, Bush now sends Victor Cha to join Gov. Richardson and lend him the legitimacy that substance, gravitas,  and toughness alone never could.  And as you might expect, Richardson gets about as much respect from the North Koreans as he expects.  Can you shut down Yongbyon by April 13th?  Ah, but that will be difficult.  Can I inspect the reactor?  No, not today, but  tour the U.S.S. Pueblo instead, you imperialist war-mongering scoundrel!   Can the U.N. inspect the reactor?  We’ll revisit that one  … after you give us back our drug money.  

Of course, Richardson didn’t actually meet Korigula, who himself is only  North Korea’s de facto supremo (the  nominal one, Kim Il Sung,  today also holds the distinction of being  North Korea’s largest stockpile of preserved meat).  Instead,  Gov. Richardson  met with North Korea’s de facto Foreign Minister, who is also holding a dead guy’s hat. 

You can already see us softening on our expectation that North Korea will meet this deadline.  Bush’s former Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs, Anthony Principi,  and negotiator Chris Hill both acknowledge it:

“They can make a beginning, but whether they can completely shut down a nuclear reactor in such a short time would be very difficult,” Principi said.

Christopher Hill, the top U.S. nuclear envoy, in Tokyo for talks with his Japanese counterpart, said Monday that the U.S. would still push Pyongyang to fully meet its obligations under the agreement.

“There’s no such thing as partial implementation,” Hill said.

But, he acknowledged that the “timeline is becoming difficult” in getting the North Koreans to meet the deadline.

Hill is an expert at sounding tough without actually being tough, and I’m sticking with my prediction that the actual “implementation” of “shut down and seal” may be as simple as missing the deadline entirely, or may  end up being  as superficial as putting “caution” tape across the door (in which case, they might as well exploit  a nice  metaphor and use Scotch tape and a fig leaf).  

Now, I’m no nuclear physicist, and not all of  the ones who read this blog have been helpful, but to me, “shut down and seal” should mean something tangible and substantive, such  as removing and storing fuel rods under the watchful eyes of the IAEA.  Might this have been what we had in mind last February?  Only six parties know.  AF 2.0 carefully avoided making such specific demands,  perhaps with this  very week  in mind.  Even some South Koreans are taking note of the agreement’s lack of any firm goals and timelines, beyond those that clearly won’t be met:

Park Geun-hye, one of the two front-runners in the race to become South Korea’s next president, on Monday urged the countries involved in six-party talks to set a timetable for the scrapping of North Korea’s nuclear programs.

“Time frames are also of utmost importance,” Park, a former chairwoman of the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP), told a news conference in Seoul.

“The six-party talks need to set a clear time frame for the dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear program and for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” she said.  [Yonhap]

Park also noted with disapproval that even as North Korea prepares to renege on the first deadlines of AF 2.0 — all over money to which it’s not legally entitled and which AF 2.0 didn’t promise to return — South Korea has just forked over $400,000 in cash for the Dear Leader’s use.  It’s real money, too, not that stuff they print  at Pyongysong Printing House Number Six.  As with the $25 million in Banco Delta, there is a nominal specified purpose for the money, which gives everyone a basis to pretend that we’re not violating U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718, but any fool knows that Kim Jong Il will spend it any way he wants, and no one but a few angry bloggers and purged State Department hawks will object to this kind of unilateralism.