Obama Policy Watch: Reality Sinking In?
There have been several signs this week that the Obama Administration is reaching an early recognition of the realities that eluded the Bush Administration for most of its two terms. Recent statements from the new administration reflect a growing acknowledgment that unconditional aid and easy concessions have failed as tools for the “management” of Kim Jong Il. That acknowledgment would not have been possible without the inspiration of Kim Jong Il. I will give you some quotes, and then I’ll suggest some reasons for caution about all of this:
Over the weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Washington would not be “blackmailed” by the North. The United States and its allies will “tighten the band around North Korea,” she said. [….]
Washington’s current stand on North Korea has raised some concern in Seoul. After recent policy discussions in Washington, Moon Chung-in, a North Korea expert at Yonsei University in Seoul, described the American attitude as “just like the first-term Bush administration.
Shin Nakyun, a South Korean lawmaker, who also attended the discussions, said: “Although they said they keep their door open for North Korea, I felt they were turning uniformly hard-line. They said there will be no carrots for the North. [N.Y. Times, Choe Sang-Hun]
The United States says it will not give North Korea further economic aid until Pyongyang returns to nuclear talks. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told lawmakers Thursday that the Obama administration has “no interest and no willingness” to give North Korea further economic aid.
But Clinton said the administration has requested funds for economic aid to North Korea in case Pyongyang returns to nuclear talks and re-starts disablement measures. She said, in her words, that North Korea is “digging themselves into a deeper and deeper hole with the international community.” [Chosun Ilbo]
So Mrs. Clinton has conditioned economic aid on something she considers “implausible, but not impossible.” Fine with me.
A U.S. Defense Department spokesman, a few hours after the North Korean statement, said, “Let me just say very clearly that these threats only further isolate the North.” The Barack Obama administration is disappointed by the North’s recent antics but is treating it with a kind of benign neglect. [Chosun Ilbo]
The administration’s new Special Envoy even made some vague commitments to press North Korea on human rights in the context of North Korean Freedom Week, though I believe that about as much as G.I. Korea does.
As I hinted before, there are reasons to be skeptical that these statements will translate into a potentially effective policy — structured negotiations with hard deadlines, consequences, and meaningful benchmarks for North Korea’s transformation into a more transparent society. To borrow a crude expression: plata o plomo (lead or silver). In the highly unlikely event North Korea makes meaningful progress toward becoming a peaceful, open society, I would support the provision of various forms of aid and a guaranteed ride to China to offset the risks. But because it’s overwhelmingly likely that North Korea only means to stall and renege, negotiations must be backed by the acceptance of and preparation for regime collapse as a consequence.
If only such a coherent policy were likely.
First, never underestimate the power of the U.S. State Department to disregard reality for the sake of “realism.”
Second, the people who inhabit the policy-making echelons of the Obama Administration show no signs of the toughness necessary to articulate and stick to such a policy. Indeed, their reaction to North Korea’s first nuclear test, though perhaps excusable because of the administration’s not-ready-from-day-one novelty, reverted to the tired liberal reflex of deferring to the Nations That Are Not United.
Third, the administration shows few signs of considering a new North Korea policy with the sort of pressure that would be necessary to force real concessions from North Korea. Here, I mean the sort of pressure to which Caroline Leddy, Jamie Fly, and Christian Whiton refer in this piece for the Weekly Standard:
Furthermore, the United States should step up its implementation of UNSCR 1718. Absent U.S. leadership, enforcement will remain nonexistent. Every North Korean ship suspected of carrying illicit cargo should be boarded by the U.S. and allied navies. This should include Japan, which we can encourage to take on new missions that broaden its traditional view of self-defense.
Beijing is highly unlikely to help with these efforts. While there are limits to what can be done about this, the U.S. can dispense with the fantasy that China is a cooperative partner on North Korea. Beijing is concerned about its international image, and a policy of truth-in-advertising could have a beneficial effect.
Next, the U.S. should return to the successful tactic of targeting the finances of the North Korean regime and organizations related to it. This was done with great success early in the Bush administration, but abandoned to entice North Korea to agree to talks and concessions, which then went unfulfilled. Macau’s seizure of a relatively small amount of Pyongyang’s cash after the U.S. Treasury designated Banco Delta Asia as a primary money laundering concern in 2005 was one of the few measures that got North Korea’s attention–until it was reversed at the request of the Bush administration.
First among those sanctioned should be the North Korean individuals and entities who were involved in the construction of Syria’s plutonium reactor, destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in September 2007, which was the first step toward making a state sponsor of terrorism a nuclear power. It is unfathomable that the U.S. has yet to designate a single North Korean nuclear entity. Moreover, the U.S. should undertake efforts to expose, target, and sanction Kim’s personal cash reserves and assets scattered around the globe. [TWS]
One could be even more specific and enumerate the financial and legal tools for pressuring the North, as I did here. Bruce Klingner’s discussion of how to tie pressure to negotiations is also worth a second look.
The good news is that there is little appetite today for giving Kim Jong Il more concessions or regime-sustaining aid. Ironically, Obama’s election may have contributed to this trend by shifting the partisan dynamics. Republicans no longer have anything to gain by supporting appeasement by a president of their own party and to follow their natural proclivity to oppose appeasement by a president of the other party. Democrats, who have been placed on the defensive by North Korea’s provocations, must now contend with the danger that they will be made to look weak on foreign policy if the Republicans ever present a coherent message. The policies supported by their liberal wing have been discredited. New Republican-sponsored sanctions bills suggest the slender possibility that that could happen this year.
The bad news is that there are no signs that the new administration is prepared to articulate a coherent plan for eliminating North Korea as a proliferation threat — and if USFK left South Korea tomorrow, North Korea’s proliferation threat would still be an immediate danger to our security. Instead, the administration seems to be migrating toward a position of malign neglect. I’ve already laid out the reasons why such a policy won’t work: North Korea’s proliferation can’t be ignored, and North Korea has a gift for attracting attention no matter how much we may wish otherwise.
Still, this would be a dramatic improvement over the last administration’s policy. The North Korean regime will continue to decay and will eventually collapse without foreign aid. The question is how much damage it will do before the Götterdämmerung. We can do much to limit that damage with more aggressive containment and by doing what we can to curtail the regime’s endurance.