Chris Hill’s North Korea legacy in three concise paragraphs

Here, via Yonhap, where Hill takes credit for the idea of blowing up the cooling tower at Yongbyon.

The North’s destruction of the cooling tower briefly raised hopes for real progress in the six-party talks aimed at ending the North’s nuclear program, but the negotiating process later reached a deadlock over how to verify the North’s declaration of nuclear materials, facilities and activities.

In exchange for blowing up the tower, the North was removed from the U.S. list of states sponsoring terrorism. Six-party talks were convened one more time later in 2008, but the negotiations have since been stalled. That has reinforced criticism that Pyongyang abuses the negotiations only to win concessions.

Since then, the North has conducted two more nuclear tests, in 2009 and 2012,* as well as a series of long-range rocket launches in an effort to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland with nuclear warheads.

If only he could have snuck in a reference to those scantily clad women enriching uranium.

I guess when you have as much in your career to defend as Hill does, you’re eventually going to have a write a book, but judging by this sample, Hill’s diplomatic legacy will still exceed his literary talents.

The high-level calls had another unhelpful impact on our efforts. They became part of the toolbox, meaning that whenever there was an impasse on the ground, the idea of ginning up a telephone call quickly emerged on the to-do list. Senior phone calls also had still another negative impact on our efforts: Washington bureaucrats went operational. Thus we began to receive missives offering such nuggets of advice as “Never ignore Hashimi!” Of course, we had been in regular contact with him, but he wasn’t the great hope that some of these veterans of the early years had thought. Some of the Washington micromanagement extended to offering me advice as to who from the embassy I should bring along for meetings with Maliki and others. It all added up to an impression that Washington wanted out of Iraq. [Politico]

That Hill’s paragraphs are dangling, forced-together assemblies of mismatched bits of plastic and surface-printed particle board isn’t a bad metaphor for his Ikea diplomacy with North Korea. Like Ikea, Hill’s products look just fine until you scratch them, and hold up well enough as long as no one tries to climb or stand on them.

By the way, has anyone noticed that the same administration that couldn’t convince Nuri Maliki to sign a SOFA agreement a few years ago was able to push him completely out of office and choose his successor this year? (It deserves some credit for the latter achievements, amid the larger disaster it helped create.) Also, am I the only one who wonders whether our soldiers in Iraq are covered by a SOFA today?

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* This is an error. It’s actually 2013. I notified the reporter, who posted a correction.