Jay Lefkowitz: Requiem for a Bantamweight

To the limited degree history remembers Jay Lefkowitz at all, it should remember him as a good and well-meaning man who was unequal to the great task laid before him. I have sometimes suspected that this was the very design of those who appointed him. With the change of administrations this week, Lefkowitz departed as Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, leaving behind a final report that still clings obediently to the myth of constructive engagement with sociopaths:

The Pyongyang initiative, Lefkowitz said, “may consist of a new framework for dialogue and effective steps to interact more deeply with North Korea. This should involve a candid and ongoing human rights dialogue with Pyongyang as a condition for the future normalization of relations.”

Lefkowitz called the working group on normalization of relations, established by a February 2007 agreement at the six-party talks, a “good starting point for this discussion.” [Yonhap]

Either Lefkowitz is still toeing the line of a Secretary of State who hushed him and held him in public contempt or he still doesn’t get it. To the North Koreans, constructive engagement means about as much as it does in your average prison holding cell. In principle, however, he is correct that money is the best lever to force the regime to modify its behavior. It’s just that Lefkowitz doesn’t dare advocate a sufficiently aggressive approach:

Lefkowitz proposed that the U.S. and its allies cooperate closely to link any aid to North Korea with human rights improvements. Such aid would include development assistance, World Bank loans, trade access and food.

“When countries provide unilateral aid to North Korea, it is easier for Pyongyang to resist monitoring,” he said. “If aid donors could be syndicated and would agree to offer large amounts of humanitarian assistance to North Korea contingent on full access and monitoring, Pyongyang might feel impelled to accept.”

“Were this to happen, the misery of the North Korean people could be partially alleviated in a way that does not strengthen the regime,” he added.

By the end of 2007, the U.S. and Korean press were paying noticeably less attention to his testimony and his conferences. Not surprisingly, the more unconditional concessions the State Department offered and the less it said about North Korea’s atrocities, the more atrocities it committed. Yet even as the State Department sidelined him from its policymaking, its talks with the North Koreans, and the public face of U.S. government policy, Lefkowitz somehow clung to the belief that he still mattered. What else could have kept him from resigning?

Christopher Hill, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July that he would invite Lefkowitz, to attend “all future negotiations with North Korea, except those specifically dealing with nuclear disarmament.”

His assurances cleared the way for some reluctant Republican senators to approve the nomination of Kathleen Stephens as the first female U.S. ambassador to Seoul.

The irony is that by renouncing the policies of the president who appointed him, he could have mattered. Certainly Lefkowitz owed Condi Rice no great debt of respect.

What will happen to the Special Envoy’s position now? (I know — the position title has recently been changed. I just don’t care.) The rumor in Washington today is that the Democrats plan to dual-hat the position with that of the nuclear negotiator, meaning that a person of Chris Hill’s inclination would have the deference to discuss human rights as little as he chooses. If that is so, we can be fairly certain that human rights will never be mentioned in any place where the North Koreans might hear.