Open Sources: Gates Disclaims Intent to Destabilize N. Korea

Did you really have to say that?

According to a transcript released by the US defense department on Sunday, Gates, speaking at the annual Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore Saturday. said that Washington has no interest in carrying out regime change against Pyeongyang. Rather, the defense secretary stated that the US is interestsed (sic) in helping that regime become a normal state abiding by the norms of the international community.

This is disappointing because I actually admire Gates very much; I’d be even more disappointed if I thought Gates still actually believed that North Korea had the slightest inclination to become “a normal state, abiding.” But that realization is only the beginning. If Gates can’t see that a coup, uprising, or insurgency is the only way we ever resolve the North Korean problem, can he at least see the diplomatic utility in subtly threatening to support anti-regime forces and sow chaos inside North Korea, and along China’s borders?

Don Kirk doesn’t see Robert King’s visit to Pyongyang as much of a diplomatic coup; instead, Kirk thinks King is going to be the next American diplomat to get rolled by the North Koreans:

North Korea’s ace is the relationship that its skilled negotiators appear to have struck up with the US envoy on human rights to North Korea, Robert King. His quick trip there, on a “fact-finding” mission about the North’s need for food and other forms of aid, was only the beginning.

Back in Washington, King is saying the North Koreans would like to have him back there – not just to talk about food but to get into the topic of “human rights”, the whole reason for whatever he’s doing. King thinks he’s made headway just by getting into North Korea for an initial visit – an opportunity, he notes, that was consistently denied to the United Nations’ rapporteur on human rights.

A North Korean official, he said, specifically invited him back to talk about “human rights,” and he’s “looking forward to the opportunity”. In other words, while spurning President Lee’s hesitant overtures in no uncertain terms, North Korea is happy to chat it up with a representative of the regime that’s seen as pulling the strings on the South Korean marionette.

The question South Koreans are asking, as they’ve asked regularly over the years, is how do North Korean negotiators manage to con their American interlocutors so easily.

The latest Good Friends dispatch is here.

Former U.N. Ambassador Marc Wallace calls out French shipping line CMA CGM for carrying some alarming cargo along the Axis of Evil:

In July 2009, the United Arab Emirates stopped another CMA CGM shipment of weapons from North Korea destined for Iran in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, which bans all North Korean arms exports. This time, CMA CGM apparently was fooled (again) by a false manifesto declaring the shipments to be “oil boring machines.

The international security implications of these incidents are obvious, as is the need for private-sector companies like CMA CGM to stop helping serial proliferators such as North Korea and Iran from arming the world. In the case of the North Korean shipment to Iran, it is believed that it also contained parts for the BM-25, a nuclear-capable missile based on original Russian technology with a presumed range of 2,400 miles. [….]

In commenting on the activities of IRISL, former Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart A. Levey remarked, “IRISL not only facilitates the transport of cargo for U.N.-designated proliferators, it also falsifies documents and uses deceptive schemes to shroud its involvement in illicit commerce.

If that’s true, CMA CGM ought to be to staring down the barrel of an indictment that includes some severe asset forfeiture counts.

Sometimes, North Korea’s lying is so easily detectable that it just seems pathological.

Unlike most conservatives, I’m mostly supportive of the President’s Libya policy, and like John Bolton, I wish he’d do more to defend and explain it. I think the President is clearly hoping that events are shifting toward the rebels and that Khaddafy will be gone before he has to invest any political capital in his policy. There’s something about his tendency for limited-scale interventions without consulting with Congress that reminds me of JFK. I’m sure Congress is starting to feel the same way, but so far, Obama has been much luckier than JFK in how those interventions have worked out, and I’m glad he had the guts to authorize them. In the case of the Bin Laden operation, an excess of congressional consultation could have burned the operation. In the case of Libya, more explanation of the administration’s policy goals and methods would have enlisted more support from both parties.

What’s most incoherent about our Libya policy is that the same humanitarian and national security justifications for intervening there apply to a much greater degree in Syria, which is one of Kim Jong Il’s main clients for nuclear and missile technology, and God-knows-what else. Syria is a well-known customer for North Korean missiles, notably the SCUD-C. What’s less clear is how much truth there is to reports that Syria has cooperated with North Korea and Iran on chemical weapons and uranium enrichment. Without question, Syria’s WMD cooperation with Iran is extensive.

The regime there represents such a grave proliferation threat that matters might not be much worse for long if the Muslim Brotherhood takes over — something that grows more likely as the regime’s brutality increases, yet fails to evoke much of a reaction in the West. Yet Bashar Assad is now shelling his own cities, and using snipers and helicopter gunships to mow down peaceful protesters in the streets. Following an apparent military mutiny and signs that the regime is dissolving from within, I’ll predict a major escalation of the regime’s atrocities. This is so predictable that I wish the President would be more public in his support of the opposition, to the point of moving some big menacing boat to the coast off Tartus or Latakia, though I suppose a U.N. resolution is at least a beginning. Syria is traditionally Western-oriented, which means that the potential exists for us to build links to more liberal elements of its opposition. But thanks to global laughingstock Dennis Kucinich, that won’t happen, and consequently, Kucinich has earned his rightful share of culpability for the massacre that’s about to begin.

“If you do this in an e-mail, I hate you.” If I confess that I’ve been guilty of some of these, will I be spared eternal damnation?

Someone should have warned the Taliban about the inevitable consequences of taking on a Gurkha.