Vanishing Goalposts and a Fool’s Errand

The minute we have bilateral talks, the six-party talks will unwind. That’s exactly what Kim Jong Il wants.

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George W. Bush seemed to understand the stupidity of holding both multilateral and bilateral talks with North Korea when John Kerry was proposing them back in 2004. To truly discredit that idea, however, Bush had to flip-flop and try it on himself.

Now we know what the worst of both worlds looks like. First, we got together with the representatives of five other nations that were mostly in competition to take the biggest bite out of our ankles. Then, we signed the worst deal the collective malice of four nations could extract from us (the fifth nation, Japan, was our ally). Now, we’re back out on our own re-negotiating the same terms we thought we’d agreed four months ago … this time, bilaterally.

Having sent Chris Hill on that fool’s errand, the Bush Administration wants us to join it in celebrating the possibility that North Korea just might finally do one of the things it was supposed to have done two months ago. Apparently, getting even that out of Kim Jong Il meant we had to bring more goodies, including a direct meeting with Condi Rice, promises to fully normalize relations, and most incomprehensibly, a centrifuge. No, I am not kidding:

According to a report, the U.S. envoy suggested to North Korea that the U.S. could increase the pace of normalization of U.S.-North Korea relations and exempt North Korea from its list of terrorist sponsoring countries if it actively participates in denuclearization and dispels suspicions of highly enriched uranium (HEU) production.

In addition to that, he also suggested to North Korea that U.S. could buy a centrifuge for the country….

Meanwhile, the Chosun Sinbo, which is a newspaper for the pro-Pyeongyang federation of Korean residents in Japan, stressed in an article on June 22 that, “Thanks to Hill’s visit to the Pyongyang, the North and the U.S. will soon have normal relations and the six party talks accord will be fulfilled sooner or later. [Donga-Ilbo]

Third-tier presidential candidate “Kim Jong” Bill Richardson wasted no time claiming credit in a breathless press release:

North Korean leaders made a promise to me to invite Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill to meet in North Korea…. This high-level meeting comes on the heels of progress made toward shutting down the Yongbyon nuclear facility.

(There’s still no word on whether Richardson asked his friends to shut down Camp 22 and free the 50,000 men, women, and children who are dying there today. The press release listed the contact name of Gilbert Gallegos at (505) 412-2644. I called Mr. Gallegos, but he wouldn’t return my call. Maybe he’ll return yours. I think we should keep calling.)

Sean McCormack, who is State’s mouthpiece, couldn’t admit that we sent Hill to Pyongyang to make more concessions to North Korea just so that it would do things it had previously agreed to do for other concessions. Instead, he tried to project hawkish sobriety: “We are testing the proposition that North Korea has made that strategic decision.” [Bloomberg] The Administration’s own spin undermined that message:

Victor Cha, former Asian affairs director with the National Security Council of the Bush White House, said Thursday in Washington that Hill’s visit to the North is intended to signal Washington’s willingness to normalize relations with Pyongyang and urge the North to give up its nuclear programs quickly. [Joongang Ilbo]

Cha was flat-out contradicted by Hill on another point:

Cha said Hill’s purpose in traveling to Pyongyang was not to discuss specific measures such as shutting down the nuclear reactor, but to confirm each other’s commitment to the ultimate goals of normalization and complete denuclearization.

Cha was skeptical that the North would be able to get rid of all its plutonium- and uranium-based programs by the end of this year. [Joongang Ilbo]

The parties clearly did discuss (and probably negotiated about) the specifics. Hill came out to the cameras later to claim that North Korea had re-agreed shut down Yongbyong on ”a three-week timeframe … starting Friday.” [AP, via NYT] On that note, it looks like another of my predictions were accurate: Yongbyon will be “sealed” in some very superficial and reversible manner. Said Hill, “The North Koreans are going to shut the thing down and then put seals on it to keep it shut down…. The actual disabling, where you break it and it can’t be brought back on line, that’s a few months down the road.” [WaPo]

The other goal posts seem to have moved, and some are disappearing from view.

A few days ago, there was much rejoicing over North Korea’s agreement to let in some U.N. inspectors. I could have spoiled all of this by pointing out that North Korea is practiced at kicking U.N. inspectors right back out again, that the inspectors will be tightly leashed to one small area, and that the U.N. is powerless in any event. I could have pointed that out, but the North Koreans saved me the trouble:

North Korea has put on hold a visit by officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency scheduled for next week, according to Reuters. An official at Pyongyang’s embassy in Geneva said, “As of now, US$25 million of the frozen funds in Banco Delta Asaia [sic] have not reached our bank account” in a Russian bank.

He added, “We have no objection to them preparing the visit as a plan, but we are not ready to give our official confirmation for the visit as scheduled by the agency. The IAEA planned to send working-level delegates to Pyongyang to discuss ways to monitor North Korea’s shutdown of nuclear facilities. [Chosun Ilbo, June 22]

Bill Richardson did not claim credit for this, by the way.

The Russians protested that the transfer “from Macau to a Russian commercial bank has been completed,” which at least means all eyes are now on them while they enjoy North Korea’s idea of public diplomacy [Reuters].

[Update: The IAEA is pressing ahead with its travel plans. It’s not clear whether the North Koreans have dropped their objections, or whether they’ll let the four IAEA officials in. In any case, this is supposed to be for making advance arrangement, not an actual visit to Yongbyon.]

It also looks like North Korea is still lying about the uranium.

Asked if he discussed about the North’s uranium-based nuclear program, Hill, without providing specifics, said that “we discussed all aspects of the six-party process. And all aspects means all aspects.” [Chosun Ilbo]

And this:

[Hill] said the United States would continue to press North Korea to allow inspection of and relinquish all materials and equipment related to its nuclear program. “I don’t want to go into specific elements of our discussions except to say we of course did discuss the need to have a comprehensive list of all nuclear programs, and I would just say ‘all’ means all,” Hill said, according to Reuters. [WaPo]

There’s no sign that we’ve even reached the issue of Kim Jong Il’s existing nuclear arsenal. Hill tried to put an optimistic face on all of this, but he had to admit to “the realization … that we are going to have to spend a great deal of time, a great deal of effort, a lot of work in achieving” the objectives of the denuclearization deal [Chosun Ilbo].

Of course, Hill and his bosses don’t really have a lot of time. That’s the fact I believe they’re counting on.

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* Two Words: Hennessey, Strychnine. The Daily NK’s sources say that Kim Jong Il didn’t have heart surgery after all, but had a procedure known as “Percuteneous Transarterial Coronary Angioplasty (PTCA)” and was back to work shrinking the number of his subjects the next day.

According to the doctors, Kim’s health was not bad except for kidney hypertrophy and some symptoms of diabetes. After examination he received the relatively simple PTCA treatment instead of surgery….

The Japanese source said that the “German doctors promised to keep Kim Jong Il’s procedure a secret and to coordinate a faked story with North Korea authority. Therefore, the spokesperson of Berlin Heat Center revealed that 6 members of the center stayed in Pyongyang from May 11th to the 19th, treating only three laborers, a nurse, and a scientist. [Daily NK]

* The Chinese auto industry isn’t ready for the export market, judging by this. I hope that all of the recent scandals about the safety of various Chinese products will harm China’s economy, because I’m not one of those who believes that a stronger Chinese economy in the service of the Chinese Communist Party is good for the United States, or for China’s neighbors. I also think that an economic recession is the most likely trigger of political change that will weaken or end one-party rule.

* A P-38 fighter found frozen in a Greenland glacier is being flown to England after a restoration. It’s the second attempt in 60 years.

* We are still in denial about Iran’s role in supporting our enemies — including Al Qaeda — in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Iran has launched a harsh crackdown on dissent and deviation from its medieval theology. This regime not only seems exceedingly unpopular, but the Iranian people seem to be talking about the many reasons for that.

* Pakistani extremists have released six Chinese women they had abducted, after accusing the women of being prostitutes. It really does appear that things in Pakistan are deteriorating fast. If Pakistan falls under the control of the extremists, what will be do to get their nukes away from them?