Jimmy Carter’s Trip to North Korea Was a Raging Success, and Here’s Why

First, Carter brought Aijalon Gomes home. Second, he apparently gave away nothing in exchange. Third, he felt so snubbed he hasn’t even been on the talk show / op-ed circuit (at least not yet, fingers crossed) telling everyone how prepared North Korea really is for dialogue. Fourth, Carter’s apparently intentional snubbing has demonstrated to most vaguely reasonable minds that North Korea is not ready for dialogue, and that not even Carter’s generous assistance to North Korea’s nuclear program has earned him Kim Jong Il’s respect and gratitude. As long as Carter (a) keeps his mouth shut, or (b) remains largely ignored, it will continue to be the case that Carter’s trip did more good than harm.

Victor Cha says that “[m]any journalists in Washington and Seoul have dubbed the trip a failure at worst or a non-event at best, given Carter’s inability to take the diplomatic initiative of his own as he had done in 1994 in the first nuclear crisis.” I would brand the trip as successful for that very reason, and wonder if the journalists in question have been sequestered in solitary confinement since 1993 or simply lack any capacity to draw inferences or learn from the repetition of past events. Try not to think that the fourth branch of our government is composed of people like this. You need your rest. I only wish they possessed the capacity to see, as Sung Yoon Lee does, how predictable the North Koreans’ playbook really is, even if the precise provocations, inducements, and deceptions may not be.

Because Carter has been so quiet, Donald Gregg offers this bizarre and rambling manifesto, which the New York Times deemed fit to print, and which comes down even to the left of John Feffer in its flirtation with 3/26 conspiracy theories:

Given the difficult agenda he inherited when he came into office, President Barack Obama did not give high priority to dealing with North Korea, whose leaders were seen as obscure and irascible.

“Obscure” wouldn’t be the word I choose for people who do this to other people and their children, but if you’re making a conscious effort to desensitize your readers to the implications of evil this profound and irreconcilable, adjectives are as good a tool of distortion as any other. And though there’s no question that Obama inherited a difficult situation with North Korea, so did his predecessor. And we all know how uncompromising he was with the North Koreans, don’t we?

For example, a suggestion last year that the White House invite Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il’s youngest son and probable successor, to the United States was not seriously considered.

The only thing I can really say to that suggestion is that I’d like to know the precise address where Gregg scores his weed.

Instead, President Obama formed a strong relationship with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, whom he saw as the dynamic leader of a strong American ally, and was content to let Seoul set the pace in terms of dealing with Pyongyang.

Imagine that! For some strange reason — possibly the fact that one of them has a significant gross domestic product, a functioning economy, a representative government, and facilities that still inexplicably host 29,500 U.S. military personnel — President Obama played favorites between North Korea and South Korea. President Obama’s foreign policy no longer frightens me much. For many of the same reasons Gregg finds it so disappointing, it’s far better than his predecessor’s. I’m only frightened when I try to conceive the expectations of men like Gregg when they voted for Obama (or so I presume, and it’s not a long limb I’m out on there). You’re about to see what I mean by this:

One problem, however, is that not everybody agrees that the Cheonan was sunk by North Korea. Pyongyang has consistently denied responsibility, and both China and Russia opposed a U.N. Security Council resolution laying blame on North Korea.

In June, Russia sent a team of naval experts to look over the evidence upon which the South Korea based its accusations. Though the Russian report has not been made public, detailed reports in South Korean newspapers said the Russians concluded that the ship’s sinking was more likely due to a mine than to a torpedo. They also concluded that the ship had run aground prior to the explosion and apparently had become entangled in a fishnet, which could have dredged up a mine that then blew the ship up.

I won’t repeat all of the reasons why this elaborate and unlikely theory is completely lacking in any scientific basis, other than to wonder why, in recent decades, we’ve seen no similar occurrence with the many boats in that area that actually use fishing nets. The pictures alone refute it.

Oh, and did I mention that Donald Gregg is the former U.S. Ambassador to Korea? Yes, I mean South Korea. This man was appointed by the President of the United States, confirmed by the Senate, and embraced by the brain trust of our foreign policy establishment. I seem to recall that he was even with the CIA. He is, in other words, the pairing of an extraordinary resume with a mediocre mind.

Putting further pressure on Pyongyang also only strengthens its dependence on China. The increasing frequency of Kim Jong-il’s trips to China, and the quality of the reception he receives, are clear indications of this trend.

Or, clear indications that China is using Kim Jong Il to create security problems for the United States and advance its own hegemonic interests, and that it’s time for us to make North Korea China’s problem, too.

American pressures are also likely to instill a mistrust and hostility toward the United States in the mind of Kim Jong-un, who is in his mid-20s and about whom little is known.

Because for all we know, nothing else in Kim Jong Eun’s background could possibly have exposed him to the idea that Americans are irascible, predatory, subhuman beings.

The disputed interpretations of the sinking of the Cheonan remain central to any effort to reverse course and to get on track toward dealing effectively with North Korea on critical issues such as the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Admittedly, the idea that the most appropriate response to a premeditated attack by a rogue state on a traditional ally, or even on our own selves, is to simply deny it does certainly does open up bold new approaches to the art of conflict resolution. For that matter, why should South Korea have a military at all if it’s just waiting to experience mysterious accidents, none of which are truly capable of objective explanation and thus subject to “disputed explanations,” and each of which is a potential obstacle to us “reversing course” and forking over whatever the attacker besieged and desperate interlocutor demands as a precondition to the next negotiation?

And yet something gnaws at me, suggesting that all of this will not end as quickly and cleanly as Gregg imagines. There is also this part of me that supposes that if North Korea shelled Seoul, Donald Gregg would pick his way through the rubble, find a takkoji stand that had somehow escaped destruction, and then write an op-ed declaring that it was a goodwill gesture and — that exhausted cliche — an olive branch.

In the end, it’s proof enough who saw and seized opportunity in Aijalon Gomes’s stroll across the Yalu. I hope no one else will think of doing anything like this again.