Anju Links for 23 Feb 08

“SIX PARTIES, ZERO PROGRESS:” The Weekly Standard aptly describes the current state Bush Administration’s Korea policy:

The real state of play, then, is that North Korea will not fully declare, much less disable or dismantle, its nuclear weapons programs, and it has continued to proliferate. To mask this noncompliance, the State Department will talk optimistically of the next phases of diplomacy, continuing to provide North Korea with heavy fuel oil, removing it from the list of state sponsors of terror, even negotiating a peace treaty and full normalization. In short, no amount of evidence of North Korea’s bad intentions will deter the Bush administration from declaring diplomatic victory. [Dan Blumenthal, The Weekly Standard]

Well, I don’t see anyone declaring victory, and I think they’re spinning valiantly to deny failure. Furthermore, I don’t think that denial can go on for long. There’s no legacy to be had in following this course.

The Six Party Talks, supposedly a model of multilateral diplomacy, have thus caused each party to act more unilaterally. Washington is essentially conducting its own negotiations with Pyongyang. Japan, a little less confident of U.S. protection, is showing a keener interest in having its own military capabilities to defend against North Korean missiles. And China is taking military and economic measures of its own to live with or perhaps even control an unstable, nuclear regime on its borders. The situation is, in short, more precarious than when this new round of diplomacy began.

Although TWS does a fair job describing the events of the last year, it misses the real tragedy — how close Treasury’s strategy came to getting some real results, before State decided how it might look that the green eyeshades were actually better executors of foreign policy.

EMBRACING ROH’S OBSCURITY: I already see him following the Jimmy Carter model.

EVANS REVERE HAS, WITHOUT QUESTION, said the dumbest thing I’ve heard all year:

“I call it a 16-inch broadside of soft power fired by the Philharmonic.” [Bloomberg, Ken Fireman and Bradley K. Martin]

And with apparent pride, too! I call it (insert copyright symbol or brand a large letter “D” onto his forehead, your call). Depending on your actual goal, of course, this evokes the effectiveness of a broadside of kisses blown in the shower at Pelican Bay. You probably already know how the sensitive folk who staff the Peoples’ Internal Security Bureau have spent the last two decades quaking in terror of Evans Revere’s soft power. Soft power has kept Seoul free of T-62’s, denuclearized Korea, and closed Camp 22, right? Well, any day now, I suppose. Probably just needs another chance.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS celebrates the end of Yugoslavia.