Must Read: Daily NK Interviews Heritage Foundation’s Bruce Klingner
Klingner, formerly a CIA analyst and a private consultant with the Eurasia Group, has been with Heritage since 2007. He’s also a daily reader of this site. Here’s a sample of his assessment of the current situation:
Pyongyang is increasingly desperate to have the UN sanctions removed. Obama administration officials have commented that the Banco Delta Asia (BDA) sanctions of 2005-06 were very effective and it was a mistake for the Bush administration to have removed them. This is, of course, a dramatic reversal from Democratic Party criticism of the Bush administration at that time, when they characterized the sanctions as merely a neoconservative attempt to undermine the Six-Party Talks. Obama officials explain that the UN sanctions are even more effective than the BDA sanctions since it is the United Nations telling member nations to comply rather than the unpopular Bush administration requesting nations abide by U.S. regulations.
Washington is more pessimistic about the potential for success in achieving North Korean denuclearization than ever before. The trip by Ambassador Stephen Bosworth is widely perceived as a failure. Of course, the coming year may bring another bilateral U.S.-North Korea meeting or even a resumption of the Six-Party Talks. There are even rumors in Seoul of a possible third inter-Korean summit. However, the real measure of the success of any such meeting must be what was accomplished rather than simply whether such meetings occurred.
In 2010, we can expect more of the same from North Korea. It will alternate provocations with seemingly conciliatory behavior. But the landscape is different in both Washington and Pyongyang. There is far less patience in Washington for Pyongyang’s antics and far fewer experts and officials who still believe that unfettered engagement will actually achieve denuclearization.
And there is a greater potential for instability in North Korea. Kim Jong Il’s failing health; doubts of a successful succession to Kim’s third son Kim Jong Eun; worsening economic conditions brought on by systemic problems and the tightening noose of international sanctions; and unrest following North Korea’s currency revaluation could combine to create a tinderbox of dangerous change in North Korea. [Daily NK]
I tend to think that the danger of change is grave for North Koreans, but less than advertised for foreign powers. If North Korea is in a state of unrest, we’re likely to see an amplification of mostly-empty rhetoric and mostly-harmless provocations to raise the specter of external threats in a vain effort to unify North Koreans, but in fact, the last thing an internally unstable state needs is a real external threat to constrain a flexible redeployment of its forces.
Frankly speaking, North Korea is proliferating so many dangerous things to dangerous people (and that’s just the things I know about) that regime collapse is probably safer for us than the status quo. As I see it, the real danger lies in the risk of clashes with China as multiple nations enter North Korean territory, and for any foreign (that is, non-Korean) power that that tries to occupy North Korea.
I wholeheartedly agree with Klingner’s assessment of the Obama Administration’s policy, and how much its performance has exceeded expectations.
Read the rest on your own.
Joshua, I have to question your sunny assessment of the Obama administration’s actions toward the DPRK. You say “its performance has exceeded expectations” while Klingner attributes the success to UN sanctions. Klingner also says Bosworth’s trip “is widely perceived to be a failure.”
I am not trying to be combative but your analysis consistently marginalizes Lee Myung-bak who is the real strength behind the current policy virulence on the peninsula. If de-listing Pyongyang was such a mistake and the Obama administration is doing so well, why haven’t they re-listed the DPRK? Pyongyang has tested nukes and fired TBMs sonce Obama was sworn in.
I beg your readers to consider (again) that Bush had to govern in alliance with Roh Moo hyun and Kim Dae jung and the appease-at-all-costs Sunshine Policy. Seoul transferred the equivalent of $4 billion USD during that decade and achieved nothing except bolstering the regime and its sick cult. Obama is allied with Lee Myung bak who in my opinion, is taking most of the risks, confronting North Korea steadfastly, and is artfully avoiding taking action against the balloon launchers.
Obama may yet agree to unconditional bi-lats, unless that campaign promise like so many others wilts under the withering heat of realpolitik – I hope he does not engage the DPRK directly. If the current trajectory continues, we may see the choices shift to hard vs soft landing as opposed to engage vs constrict.
KCJ, First, I don’t see respectful disagreement as being combative. Let me try to address a few of your points.
But Obama pushed for those sanctions, and he’s ordered State and Treasury to enforce them. I agree, as do most observers, that Bosworth’s trip is a failure. I agree, as do most observers, that the sanctions are putting real pressure on Kim Jong Il’s regime. The question is, what is the administration’s real focus? For the present time, the sanctions seem to be the focus. The administration is feeling tough and patient for the time being.
I’m less comfortable about the administration’s overall direction. I’ve always said that this administration sees an agreement as the end, not the end of the regime itself. That’s where I’ve always expected this administration’s policy to break down. But be honest enough to admit that thus far, this administration has applied reasonably tough sanctions and done a good job of choking off the arms trade. That’s a start. And if there’s any hope for North Korea’s verifiable disarmament without regime change — which I tend to doubt — it’s going to be because Kim Jong Il sees that he’s on the road to Ceauscescuville.
Clearly, the loss of South Korean aid plays a very important role here, but Lee couldn’t have done it alone, and he clearly would have folded had Obama wanted him to. How do I know this? For one thing, because Lee’s people told me so. I met with two of LMB’s advisors on the day Obama was inaugurated. I was counseling them toward a financial constriction strategy even then, saying that North Korea had pretty much renounced AF II and wouldn’t disarm except under duress. At the time, the consensus would have been that I was nuts to say that — this was before the nuke and missile tests, when everyone thought Obama was going to send Bill Richardson to Pyongyang to give away the store.
You point out that Kim Jong Il forced Obama’s hand. That’s true, but it’s not dispositive. Kim Jong Il forced Bush’s hand with his 2006 nuke test and his ongoing proliferation to Syria. Bush bent over and took it. Obama didn’t. So give some credit where it’s due.
Now, that being said, biggest criticism of this administration’s policy its lack of a policy on human rights. Token lip service isn’t policy. Policy consists of concrete proposals, and this administration offers none.
Good question, and I’ve criticized Obama for it. Hey, I didn’t say Obama’s NK policy was good; I just said it was better than Bush’s, and had greatly exceeded my expectations.
Right. Because if Bush didn’t humbly supplicate at Roh Moo Hyun’s knee, Roh might pulled Korean Forces USA out of North Dakota and left us defenseless against all that artillery those ruthless despotic Canadians massed in Manitoba. You and I would have been the first ones sent to face human rights tribunals.
Seriously — Bush’s single most unforgivable error isn’t de-listing North Korea as a terror sponsor, it’s his failure to restrain South Korea from propping up Kim Jong Il why U.S. taxpayers were propping up South Korea. When I left Korea in 2002, we still had 38,000 uniformed personnel there. We should have stated, unambiguously, that either South Korea’s aid was conditioned on North Korea’s verifiable disarmament or the entire USFK would have gone straight to Baquba within a year.
Yes, Obama is lucky to have a rational partner in South Korea these days, but Bush had a rational partner in Japan (which Obama doesn’t). Point is, you play the cards you have. Bush played his cards horribly, and U.S. national security and the North Korean people both suffered terribly for it. The jury is still out on Obama, but if Selig Harrison, Leon Sigal, and Christine Ahn are all ranting at him, he must be doing something right.
Joshua:
Thanks for the detailed reply. I have only been watching the Korean peninsula closely since 2008 when I was assigned here. I defer to your superior knowledge in most things having to do with Korea (save analysis of the impact of religion on the current situation – but you are catching on! 😉
This administration would rather have an organizational enema than couple the words “regime” and “change” together, even if it obvious to the rest of the world. We’re still bent on getting them to like us, which, as you have pointed out many times before, is overrated. At least Bush publicly stated his “visceral” revulsion at the DPRK’s behavior and renounced their human rights violations.
I guess I’m either grossly uniformed about US/ROK relations or still believe that Washington cannot/does not control Seoul’s policy towards the DPRK. The Sunshine Policy years were a waste of time, money and human lives and it certainly doesn’t appear that appeasement was any part of the Bush doctrine. That tells me that Seoul was firmly in control of the policy – and to be fair, Sunshine policy began under the Clinton administration (boy, I bet KJI was delighted to see him last year!). Its not as though Bush could have unilaterally reversed Seoul’s policies even if he wasn’t decisively engaged in two other wars. OK, enough defending the Bush policies toward the DPRK, I freely acknowledge deep and dangerous flaws, but I would hope your readers place our country’s policies towards Korea in the context of the administration in power in Seoul.
Lastly, I believe that KJI is significantly weaker now than he was in 2006. The defectors are literally killing him. The secrets are out, the information is
leakingpouring in from the outside world, and the worker’s paradise is rotting at ever increasing rates. I also think Seoul is feeling a lot more independent now than they were when you were here – I could be wrong about that. The 2010 mark on the wall has forced the ROK government and military establishment to at least think about being the boss.I will give the Obama administration credit where it is due if I see the US leadership in the UNSC effort continue with results. As of now, this administration’s foreign policy is apologize, suggest, and sit back as one among equals. I just hope the collapse of Pyongyang takes neither the US nor the ROK by surprise. Thanks for the excellent explanations and instructive colloquy.
BTW, “…Kim Jong Il sees that he’s on the road to Ceauscescuville…” is classic!
Oops! Should say “2012” mark on the wall…