Suddenly, Everyone Has an Opinion About North Korea

HILLARY CLINTON IS STRUGGLING at the U.N., as she pleads with China and Russia to agree on a resolution that John Bolton predicts will mean nothing in practice:

The initial draft Security Council resolution responding to yesterday’s missile launch, written by Japan and the U.S., is weak. It essentially only reaffirms Resolutions 1695 and 1718, and minimally tightens existing enforcement mechanisms. Moreover, China and Russia made it plain before the launch they had no interest in stricter sanctions — even arguing with a straight face that Pyongyang was only interested in peaceful satellite communications.

What the Security Council will ultimately produce is of course uncertain — but resolutions almost never get tougher as the drafting and negotiations proceed. Even worse than a weak resolution would be a “presidential statement,” a toothless gesture of the Council’s opinion. Either way, North Korea has again defied the Security Council, gotten away with its launch with the support of Russia and China, and now will likely confront only pleas by Mr. Obama and others to return to the six-party talks. [John Bolton, Wall Street Journal]

IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, a prediction that condemnations will become concessions. That sounds about right to me.

IN JAPAN, the head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party lights into George W. Bush, Condi Rice, and Chris Hill:

Ruling Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Hiroyuki Hosoda criticized Tuesday former senior U.S. officials including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for being ”weak-kneed” in dealing with the North Korean nuclear issue, LDP lawmakers said. By naming Rice and Christopher Hill, former chief U.S. negotiator for North Korean denuclearization under the George W. Bush administration, Hosoda told an LDP lawmakers’ meeting, ”They were weak-kneed. Their ways (of dealing with the issue) were wrong,” the lawmakers said. [Kyodo News]

The biggest obstacle I see to conservatives here in America winning the North Korea debate is their reluctance to distance themselves from the Bush Administration’s policies. For some of them, that reluctance stems in part from their own silence or approval of Agreed Framework II while Bush was still in office. The verdict of history should be that the Bush Administration was wavering, indecisive, unimaginative, and ultimately ineffective, and conservatives who pretend otherwise aren’t persuading anyone. President Bush’s North Korea legacy deserves the disrepute it has earned.

THEY HAVE THEIR PRIORITIES: The estimated $300 to $500 million it cost to test this missile, would be “more than enough to resolve the food shortage the North suffers every year.”

SCIENTISTS WHO TRACKED THE TEST suspect that the heads of North Korean rocket scientists will roll. Also reported: a North Korean vessel sent out to track the rocket had to turn back due to mechanical difficulties. I wonder how that will affect the value of the data the North Koreans were able to gather. The L.A. Times reports that in North Korea, the test is being lauded as a great success. The story has some good quotes by B.R. Myers:

“In the short run, he can tell his people the launch was a success, but there are enough people with access to South Korean television that the lie will be short-lived,” he said. “He’ll eventually have to come up with something else.”

I, FOR ONE, WELCOME the new Asian arms race, which Japan is about to enter. One of the few incentives China may have to bring the North Koreans to heel is the prospect that other nations may rearm as quickly as China is. Would you rather see Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan rearmed, or would you rather have those nations perpetually dependent on U.S. taxpayers, each the potential source of a potentially catastrophic conflict with China?

ONE OF THE GREAT JOYS of watching a story closely is waiting until that story hits the headlines, and then watching shallow thinkers with little subject matter knowledge and no original ideas try to meet a deadline by telling us how it all works. Case in point: Fred Kaplan, who spends two pages alternately transcribing both of the little voices in his head. One of them is one the cusp of a forehead-smacking epiphany that’s belated by a least a decade:

Whatever President Obama does, he should not go rushing off to the negotiating tables. Despite its failure, the rocket launch did violate a U.N. resolution warning North Korea not to launch any more missiles, and the reaction cannot be a reward. However, Obama should also resist mounting a long and ambitious campaign to stiffen the sanctions already in place–unless he can get the Chinese to agree beforehand that they’ll go along. Too many times, U.S. officials have labeled some North Korean action as “unacceptable”–only to accept it in the end, thus making all future warnings still less credible. [Fred Kaplan, Slate]

The other obviously spent Agreed Framework I, Agreed Framework II, and everything in between in seclusion. Kaplan eventually counsels us to pay no attention to the test and assures us that it is possible to negotiate with North Korea (though he never gets around to explaining how). What do you suppose Fred Kaplan knows that the Clintons and Bushes didn’t? Is it merely an unshakable faith that we’re this close to the Framework that really will work? Has it ever occurred to Kaplan to ask why North Korea always signs agreements the year before U.S. elections and always breaks them the year after? Consider this next time you hear someone call North Korea “unpredictable.”