Must Read: North Korea Contingency Planning and U.S.-ROK Cooperation
Although it seems to have genetic origins in plenty of other things I’ve read by Lankov, Noland, etc., combining and updating some already excellent works only makes the Asia Society’s / U.S.-Korea Institute’s final product even better. I’ll quote the executive summary and let you read the rest on your own:
– Current internal dynamics in North Korea suggest a growing need for international cooperation on contingency planning, led by policy coordination between South Korea and the United States.
– An effective response to potential instability in North Korea requires a whole-of government approach that integrates military and nonmilitary aspects of
contingency planning.– Interagency cooperation within both Seoul and Washington will be increasingly important as instability unfolds.
– The United States and South Korea should affirm a common vision for the future of the Korean peninsula and coordinate strategies regarding how to attain the agreed-upon end state.
– U.S.-ROK planning should incorporate efforts to have dialogue with China with the purpose of reassuring China that any future scenario will not harm Chinese interests. Such a dialogue might focus initially on practical coordination to deal with specific shared concerns.
– Any response to instability in North Korea will depend on the stage of contingency and functional issue, and requires a clear understanding of the
appropriate form and sequencing of cooperation.– Post-conflict stabilization tasks in North Korea include military disarmament, dismantlement of WMD and securing North Korea’s long-term economic
development in close collaboration with all stakeholders. [opens in pdf]
Big hat tip to KCJ for this one.
I wonder how this will work out with President Obama’s admin in control.
GI Korea has been writing about how Pres. Obama’s administration has not shown him to be an appeaser. One Free Korea has been pointing out how he has shown some signs of being tough on NK in a promising way. But…
…I wonder…how can this hold up over the period of years if, as it seems, he tends to place in his administration those who have long expressed the same very liberal views on foreign policy that Obama himself expressed for so many years before landing in the White House? Or to put it another way: Maybe Pres. Obama has shown an ability to shift gears away from what he’s said he holds dear and true in the past, but how many of those he’s placed in points of policy influence will fail to follow that lead???
Or to put in a way that might make it more clear: Maybe Pres. Obama has shown he can switch gears to have a CIA-mentality on certain issues, but when he has peopled his administration overwhelmingly with State Deptartment/UN-mentality people, will it really matter in the end when it comes to working level policy? Because, other presidents have seen their best efforts thwarted when the org(s) tasked with carrying out his will balked and fought: Carter with the Pentagon on removing troops from South Korea is a good example of that.
P.S. I wonder — maybe if Carter had tried that later rather than right out of the gate, after he had had a couple of years to replace senior leadership in the military, he would have had a better shot? I doubt it based simply on what else was going on in the world and in the US during Carter’s presidency, but just hypothetically, I’d think he would have stood a better chance if he’d been able to seed the military with people more like-minded to himself…..which is the point of my original comment…
USinKorea, please don’t mistake Obama’s tough talk on the DPRK (mainly via Secretary Clinton) as action or resolve. He is simply demonstrating to the world that he is the antiBush. He will go in the opposite direction of Bush/Cheney just because. It doesn’t matter if the policies were successful (in NK, they manifestly were not) as long as he can riff to the UN that ‘things have changed now that I am POTUS.’
Obama’s tacit complicity in allowing a former POTUS to grovel hat-in-hand before KJI was the most flagrant, humiliating act of appeasement our government has committed since the carter administration. We all wanted Ling and Lee released but at that price, our credibility is mortally wounded with Asia if not the world (I am currently in Korea).
Obama has spoken with GEN McChrystal, CinC in Afghanistan exactly one time since firing GEN McKiernan and appointing McChrystal in his place 71 days ago. The CinC is asking for 40,000 more troops and is being told, ‘let’s wait.’ The General says the war will most likely spin out of control in the next 9-12 months without the troop surge but is counseled to ‘be patient.’ Meanwhile this adminstration is in a breakneck hurry to pass a trillion dollar stimulus bill before it can even be read or debated – after all, the domestic agenda must be acted upon before any debate or meaningful analysis can take place. But the most important war since Viet Nam requires endless procrastination, second-guessing, reconsideration, dithering, indecision and waffling.
The Asia Society’s report rightly admonishes detailed contigency planning between alliance partners and regional stakeholders for the inevitable collapse of the DPRK. If this president shows weakness, appeasement tendencies, indecision or a lack of a cogent and credible foreign policy doctrine, our enemies will exploit it mercilessly, and not just in Asia.
Obama’s tacit complicity in allowing a former POTUS to grovel hat-in-hand before KJI was the most flagrant, humiliating act of appeasement our government has committed since the carter administration.
You say that as if US presidents don’t carry out ritualistic appeasement during their regular pilgrimages to one of the homes of oligarchic oppression…when, of course, they do not invite them into their home. (1, 2, 3, etc.)
[if this is a repeat then please delete].
Frankly, I wasn’t fond of Bubba’s trip, and I’m not fond of Bubba, either, but I don’t think that’s as flagrant an example of appeasement as Bush lifting North Korea’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism while it’s using its state media as an instrument of terrorism.
Look, I voted for Bush. Twice. I’d be ashamed of that if it weren’t for the alternatives — and really, it would be more accurate to say that I voted against Kerry and Gore (I strongly supported McCain in the 2000 primaries, and if McCain had won, I’m sure many things would have worked out far better than they did). I didn’t vote for Obama, but he’s the president now. I think we owe our presidents support when they’re right and fair criticism when they aren’t. Also, while I don’t think we owe our presidents respectful criticism, I think we have a better national debate if we give due respect to the man and the office he holds. I hate seeing us become two countries.
@ Dan: those pics show proper cultural decorum, not appeasement. I have no problem with that. I understand the intrigue about Saudis and Salafist Islam, but I don’t think its proper to lay that at the feet of the Saudi monarchy when our POTUS visits with the King.
@ Joshua: concur. My take on the Bush administration’s delisting the DPRK was that they believed the collapse may have been imminent and the multiple layers of legal barriers to opening trade and diplomatic relations with the failed state would take too long to undo if we wait until Pyongyang collapses. As a sort of preperatory action, I think they wanted the stage set for emergency action towards rebuilding North Korea. That is 100% conjecture on my part. You as a lawyer probably know much more about the time it would take to reverse the legal barriers to trading with and investing in North Korea.
In the interest of full disclosure, I strongly disagree with the statist policies of this administration and have studied Black Liberation Theology at length – it is poison for our republic. However, I agree with you that the office deserves our deepest respect.
KCJ, congratulations, you have just outed yourself in that last paragraph.
Nothing in this article or President Obama’s North Korea plan has to do with Black Liberation Theology. You are the one fixated on it, not the president.
People with a secular worldview are deaf to the role of theology in forming political ideology. But Barack Obama immersed himself in Black Liberation Theology for 20 years in Jeremiah Wright’s Church. But of course, I’m fixated on it, not him. Wright’s particular vein of BLT is thoroughly marxist.
Outed himself as – what?
Someone who has read on the theology of the pastor and church where our current president spent most of his adulthood, had his children baptised, was married, and received support and direct, personal advice from the lead pastor?
Someone who is against that particular doctrine?
A closet racist?
Gay?
What?
I have outed myself as one who studies theology and its affect on political behavior. I have outed myself as an orthodox Christian. And finally, I have outed myself as an American military servicemember who has sworn an oath to defend the Constitution of the United Stes from enemies foreign and domestic.
I am here in Korea to defend the ROK from the communist DPRK. I’ll be damned if you think I am supposed to lap up the marxist statism peddled by this administration while bearing arms against the same BS in North Korea. It affects us here in USFK very directly and profoundly because we are here to fight a collectivist, communist regime built around a cult of personality in Korea while having no voice to oppose the same dynamics in my own country???? I don’t think so.
If I am here to fight this BS here in Korea, you can be damned sure I will fight it in my own country.
So I take it that you think of FDR as a socialist parasite to then…
those pics show proper cultural decorum, not appeasement. I have no problem with that. I understand the intrigue about Saudis and Salafist Islam, but I don’t think its proper to lay that at the feet of the Saudi monarchy when our POTUS visits with the King.
Wait, hold on. We are talking about a man who presides over one of the most brutally oppressive societies in the world, to such an extent that it makes Egypt, Syria, even Iran look comparatively liberal.
Don’t you think its a little of a double standard to be so, so, so vehemently anti-DPRK to the extent that you’d call Obama’s policy — which is, as Mr Stanton has mentioned, more confrontational than that of his predecessor — “humiliating appeasement”, but yet simultaneously shrug off the American political elite’s palling around with another brutal dictator as being A-OK? Just proper cultural decorum? Whatever the merits of Clinton’s visit to DPRK, at least he didn’t kiss the guy, or state that he was there to “seek his counsel”…let alone develop extensive economic, military and diplomatic ties with his rotten-to-the-core regime.
And I don’t want to come across as an Obama-lover here, but the man is simply not a Marxist, at all. If he is a Marxist then the whole of Western Europe has been communist for decades. I speak not as a Marxist but as one does see the academic merit of engaging with post-marxist thought as a means of critiquing dominant discourses, particularly in societies where a notable chasm exists between a dominant elite and a relatively silenced proletariat (indeed, as I believe Mr Stanton has hinted before, the DPRK is particularly vulnerable to such a critique)…Anyway, by European standards generally, the furthest left Obama could be is the center.
By the way, in another post you refer to the particular brand of Christianity which Obama follows as being neither democratic nor American. Now, I suppose religions are rarely democratic as such, but I am curious as to how exactly any religion can be less American than another? I didn’t think there was an official American religion — I refer to the First Amendment of the constitution you mention swearing an oath to defend.
FDR is one of my favorite presidents, but the past few years, the general point of agreement stated in the press much from experts who would know better than me was that FDR’s socialist policies lengthened rather than shortened The Great Depression.
Socialism has failed to produce a higher standard of living than capitalism anywhere in the world. Why do people fight history so hard? The only nations who have come close to making a go of it are Western European ones who build up on the back of capitalism then have played around with establishing some balance between poverty-creating socialism and capitalism.
The Grapes of Wrath mentality warms people’s hearts, and inspires Hollywood and the offspring of the middle class – who have no real experience with poverty, but what it advocates in reality is — a perpetuation of serfdom in the face of technological and economic development that — since it won out instead of warm-hearted socialism — was a stronger economy – an economy in which the sons of generations of dirt poor sharecroppers trapped on farms they didn’t own but buried their sweat and blood into – were finally able to leave the dust behind and move into new economic sectors or into a better agricultural sector – and save money to buy their own land and build a better home and give a stronger promise for the future to their next generations…
Socialism wants the government to control things so it can give money to the sharecroppers to convince them this is the best it can get for them while it cripples economic development and makes sure the upper middle class and above are the ones who enjoy wealth. Maybe that is why their offspring end up being some of the biggest public advocates of socialism…
Dan, I didn’t say Obama’s NK policy was appeasement – I said his tacit support for Bill Clinton’s humiliating suck up to KJI was. This administration may appear more confrontational in rhetoric, but that may be because President Lee Myung Bak is doing most of the heavy lifting in actual dealing with the Norks. Bush presided over the Sunshine Policy years in the ROK.
As far as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, you’ll get no defense from me on its appalling record for human rights. However, the Kingdom is not threatening other states with nuclear weapons or other WMD or massing on the border of any other nation as far as I know. We do have diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and trade with them. Pres. Bush exchanging kisses and bows with the Saudi King is not the same thing as Pres. Clinton shuffling hat-in-hand to KJI to ask for clemency for two US citizens while not being able to say a word about the gulags or the nukes.
You seem too smart to really not know Barack Obama’s marxist roots and ideological bent. Your omission of Obama’s religious adherence in the Trinity Church of Christ under the teaching of Jeremiah Wright is telling. I’ll let another black Doctor of Theology tell it. As for Europe, you know very well that it is socialist and that its population is in decline. Were it not for the US military, Europe would still be hatching its various utopian theories, experimenting on their own populations and attacking each other as they have for millennia. The presence of US Forces in Europe garaunteed enough stability for them to launch their welfare states without any need to maintain robust (and expensive) militaries. Obama is to the left of Sarkozy as recent challenges by the French premier have suggested.
By not being democratic, I meant that liberation theology does not admit to the right to private property. Judeo-Christian tradition provides for the protection of private property. BLT inasmuch as it based on marxist constructs (most especially its shrill victimology and theory of economic ‘justice’) is very far out of step with the religious roots of our Founding Fathers. Forgive me if my earlier statements were not clear. Same with the ‘American’ comment. It is unAmerican to seize wealth and redistribute it by the arm of the state.
I’ll let another black Doctor of Theology tell it.
For some reason, the link didn’t take.
Pres. Bush exchanging kisses and bows with the Saudi King is not the same thing as Pres. Clinton shuffling hat-in-hand to KJI to ask for clemency for two US citizens while not being able to say a word about the gulags or the nukes.
Saudi Arabia has its own gulags filled with Western expats and developing country laborers. No VIP pampering in state guesthouses for international prisoners of the Saudi regime, just lots of torture in a dark and dirty dungeon until you sign a confession and plenty more torture afterward. The Saudi regime does not directly threaten its neighbors, but Saudi oil money provides generous financing to Al-Qaeda and other international terrorist organizations.
I don’t want to excuse either the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or a too-friendly relationship and ignoring of human rights abuses by my own government, but, to get to the point quickly – since we’re comparing and equating here — what is that kingdom’s bodycount over the past 20+ years? Pyongyang’s?…
If we’re going to base the level of our displeasure through comparison of abuses…….
And as I was typing this, another thought popped in my head and one which I’d attack somebody else for having – but here it is: If the US went after Saudi Arabia, the home of Mecca and Medina, for human rights abuses in the international community, what do you think would happen in the streets throughout Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia? and what would the mid to long term effect be?
Just imagine if part of that attack on human rights was religious persecution – which it’d have to be – and along with that the lack of religious freedom…… The Mohammed cartoons caused on explosion (meaning fierce but short in duration). What would this do???
KCJ said: “Judeo-Christian tradition provides for the protection of private property. ”
Im pretty sure that the paganistic Romans prior to Constantine also enforced that concept.
and ignoring of human rights abuses by my own government
That sentence is ambiguous, teacher, although I know what you meant.
what is that kingdom’s bodycount over the past 20+ years? Pyongyang’s?…
I don’t know. You tell me.
Just imagine if part of that attack on human rights was religious persecution – which it’d have to be – and along with that the lack of religious freedom……
I do not know what you mean. Why would criticism of human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia automically entail religious persecution or a lack of religious freedom?
I’m sure you know much better than most that the number isn’t remotely close to the millions dead in North Korea. That was the point.
On the ambiguity on my nation – the point there was that it isn’t just the United States among the Western and other democracies that don’t say much about human rights abuses in SA or NK or elsewhere.
Because SA is a theocratic state. That is its constitution and in cultural terms, its version of Islam is strigently orthodox and on of the fountainheads of the Muslim extremism we have seen the last few decades.
So, any serious international discussion of human rights abuses there will be viewed by millions of Muslims in the Middle East and beyond as a direct attack on Islam, not human rights abuses. And that will naturally include discussion of SA as a theocratic state that does not allow other religions.
Persecution in SA is automatically connected to religion, becaue religion is what the government is founded on.
The visit today by Premier Wen includes some video that almost certainly is new, and it shows Kim Jong-il looking much healthier than in the past. I included some video stills to show his paunch and his movement. I don’t know how pancreatic cancer might affect a person’s vitality, but as far as the stroke is concerned, he looks like he may be on the mend.
On the mend? I don’t think so. He trundled slowly down the red carpet with Premier Wen and his left side still shows permanent stroke damage with a sloping shoulder and drooping mouth. It looks like Kim skipped most of the walk down the red carpet with Wen as he waved to the crowds.
A grim-faced Clinton spending a few hours in Pyongyang to collect two journalists hardly compares to the Bush family’s long, close relationship to members of the Saudi regime. And that is the point.
Because SA is a theocratic state. That is its constitution and in cultural terms, its version of Islam is strigently orthodox and on of the fountainheads of the Muslim extremism we have seen the last few decades.
So, any serious international discussion of human rights abuses there will be viewed by millions of Muslims in the Middle East and beyond as a direct attack on Islam, not human rights abuses.
I didn’t know the Quran permitted the use of torture to extract confessions. Sadly it does condone the rapes of servants with the line about “…those whom your right hand possesses…” I see your point, now, USinKorea. We’d better not criticize human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia or Iran because the Muslims will feel persecuted and get angry. Chinese people also feel persecuted when the West criticizes human rights in their country, so maybe we should lay off the Chinese, too. I guess we should limit our human rights focus to small nations.
Sonagi wrote:
He appears fatter than in past months, his left arm is mobile and has energy, he was walking and standing during the ceremony rather than sitting. This is notable because it is quite a different impression of how he has been depicted in past months and, moreover, the nature of the photos and video resists claims of having been photoshopped. I would say he definitely appears to be on the mend (i.e., “getting better, recovering”) from past stroke damage.
That doesn’t mean he will recover 100% (in my post I mention his gnarled left thumb), but I think it does mean he shouldn’t be written off so quickly. Frankly, though, while I’m more familiar with stroke recovery or lack thereof, I have no direct knowledge of how someone with pancreatic cancer would appear and behave. But since KJI appears to be heavier than some months ago, I wonder if that diagnosis is accurate or merely speculative.
I’m certainly not cheering on KJI. I’m only pointing out that wanting him dead isn’t enough to kill him. I think a lot of the speculation about his health that we saw in the past year may have been exaggerated.
Kushibo, I too caught the BBC video of Premier Wen’s visit today. I also found the video / report of the critical food shortage extremely disturbing, though, and wonder if this is a cold-blooded gamble by Obama and his allies (ROK, Japan, Australia, etc.) and can almost feel the blood on our hands…. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8129157.stm
^ I share the concern that this may amount to a food sanction. Too bad we’re only now getting a Special Envoy for North Korean human rights issues, because I believe Lefkowitz argued for/the Bush administration provided unconditional food aid irrespective of any political situation (by funding US NGO’s or contributions of the WFP – unfortunately NK kicked out all US NGO’s so the only option is through the incompetent WFP).
On the other hand, there is the real concern of the diversion of food aid. Cutting off contributions to the WFP would to be cutting off material support for the NK military. Similarly, food aid under Christopher Hill must have been seen as a goodwill gesture by NK for partially supporting the NK military.
I’m just glad I didn’t have to make this difficult choice – or gamble with lives of the common North Korean…
He appears fatter than in past months, his left arm is mobile and has energy, he was walking and standing during the ceremony rather than sitting. This is notable because it is quite a different impression of how he has been depicted in past months and, moreover, the nature of the photos and video resists claims of having been photoshopped. I would say he definitely appears to be on the mend (i.e., “getting better, recoveringâ€) from past stroke damage.
He doesn’t look any heftier to me, and his left arm was always mobile but less so than the right. If you look at the footage of the men embracing, his right arm is higher than his left. Kim has been seen walking in other recently released videos in the past few months. Honestly, I see no recent improvements.
Do we have to get into a US-based political/pseudo-political pissing contest about who is worse – Bush or Clinton or Obama or Reagan or Carter —- which leads to shifting around rankings of human rights violations?
Read it.
And now we’ve moved from millions starved to death and massive concentration camps where untold numbers of have been systematically tortured and many, many killed or driven to death — with Bush and SA’s use of torture to get confessions…???
I honestly don’t give a poo at the moment about Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, or which political party in the US has a better track record on promoting human rights in the world….especially when it starts arguing over apples and oranges when it comes to human rights abuses in other nations…
No. You have uncharacteristically missed the point…
Everything after that was about pondering what the results would be if the US went after Saudia Arabia on human rights.
I wasn’t clear, but it was not offering an excuse for not doing it based on that reaction. It was pointing loosely to the fact that the US and West would back off – and the world community would demand it.
Cartoons in some newspaper the vast majority of the world would never have seen, and probably most of the people in the nation they were printed in the newspaper would never have seen, —- if it had not unleashed deadly riots across Europe and elsewhere….
…What would happen if the US went after the homeland of Islam and the current Islamic ideological leader because of human rights violations?
Millions are dead, tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands are tortured in concentration camps in NK now, and more and more will be added to the bodycount in NK, and the world mostly couldn’t care less and the nations of the world do even talk about it above an occassional murmur…
…But the US is going to take on the heart of Islam and the Muslim world based on the level of human rights violations it has demonstrated and continues to demonstrate?
And France and the UK and Germany and Japan and nations around the world that make up the UN are going to applaud the US effort and urge it to continue after the Muslim world reacts?
That is not a value judgement on whether the US should or shouldn’t attack SA’s human rights record.
That is acknolwedging the reality —- regardless of who is in the White House…
I don’t like the reality. But I can’t pretend it isn’t an overwhelmingly oppressive reality…