More Bush Loyalists Criticizing His N. Korea Policy

It’s not that surprising to hear the Japanese sounding disgruntled about the failure of Agreed Framework 2.0, but dissent from Bush Administration loyalists is less expected and more significant.

I don’t think it’s fair to call Michael Green or (especially) Victor Cha opponents or skeptics of Agreed Framework 2.0 itself, but previously, they had been stalwart defenders of the current strategy. The fact that they are even gently criticizing Secretary Rice and Ambassador Hill for their spinelessness in the face of North Korean defiance, however, is highly significant.

“With North Korea, delays are inevitable, but the delays have not been met with any consequences, which is increasingly going to be a problem,” said Michael Green, a Georgetown University scholar who served as top Asia expert in the White House during earlier stages in the North Korea negotiations.

Green, while stressing that he supports the six-party deal, said a pattern of U.S. concessions toward North Korea “creates, intended or not, the impression that we are willing to do whatever we have to do to keep the process going.”

He cited the return of allegedly tainted funds to North Korea that had been held up in a money laundering investigation, failure to implement U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed after Pyongyang tested a nuclear weapon in 2006 and separating the issue of Japanese abducted by North Korea from the issue of taking the country off a U.S. terrorism blacklist.

To retain pressure on North Korea, the United States should quietly revive U.S.-Japan-South Korea policy coordination after several years’ hiatus and prepare to revisit the now dormant U.N. sanctions, Green told a Heritage Foundation panel. [Reuters, Paul Eckert]

The criticism from Cha is so muted as to be almost imperceptible; Cha merely states that the declaration was the real test of North Korea’s willingness to denuclearize, and Cha doesn’t have to tell us what happened there. He might also have said that it was a test of the State Department’s own willingness to level with us. Cha then says that we have no other alternatives, which OFK readers know isn’t the case. Green’s suggestion, which is along similar lines, may have been meant as a signal to the North Koreans and the Chinese.

HT: Richardson.