Washington Views

August 2, 2008

Senate Confirms Kathleen Stephens as Ambassador to Korea

[Updates below and in the text.] A couple of days ago, while traveling on business, I was informed that Sen. Brownback would lift his hold on the nomination of Kathleen Stephens to become Ambassador to the Republic of Korea. She was confirmed in a voice vote later that day. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to post about it. The Senate confirmed a new American ambassador to South Korea on Friday, after a senator dropped his objections...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics/Washington Views

June 20, 2008

Why Should We Believe Chris Hill?

Chris Hill is the man in whom Congress will have to invest its trust if it decides to throw away America’s leverage and let the State Department de-list North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism this summer. The terms of Hill’s deal with Kim Jong Il are so hopelessly vague and endlessly flexible that the viability of this whole process rests on two thin and brittle reeds: Kim Jong Il’s good faith and Chris Hill’s veracity. Enough said? If not,...

Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Refugees/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics/Washington Views

May 31, 2008

Kathleen Stephens Nomination Woes Deepen

In March, I explained why I believe that Kathleen Stephens is the wrong person to be our next ambassador to South Korea. In April, I explained why Senator Sam Brownback had placed a hold on Stephens’s nomination, effectively blocking it. Brownback announced his opposition by going to the Senate floor to deliver an impassioned speech — “Google Earth has made witnesses of us all” — that made use of my own satellite image grabs of Camp 22. State had applied...

Appeasement/Human Rights/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics/Washington Views

May 31, 2008

N. Korea to Jack Pritchard: We Won’t Disarm

The U.S. State Department on Friday bashed its former envoy to North Korea, who a day before said Pyongyang is not going to meet Washington’s requirements on denuclearization despite laborious negotiations underway. [Yonhap] No one should be surprised by anything about this revelation except the name of the prophet. This has started a delicious red-on-red, Mick-on-Keith slap fight between Pritchard and the State Department. Pritchard, of course, was a Clinton holdover, an early defector from the Bush Administration, and a...

Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views

May 9, 2008

Leaked to OFK: Internal House Memo on N. Korea’s Support for Terrorism

Update: Link fixed, sorry. A reader and friend has provided me with an unclassified memo (thank you) summarizing a more detailed report by Larry Niksch of the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The memo is addressed from Ranking Member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to fellow House Republicans. The memo reveals details that do not appear in this December 2007 CRS Report. Although the links to the Japanese Red Army are old news, there is some alarming information...

Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics/Washington Views

May 5, 2008

Out With a Whimper: Scholars and Policymakers on Bush’s Legacy of Indecision and Weakness on North Korea

Last week, I attended a program at the American Enterprise Institute about Bush’s new North Korea policy, in which we are reduced to negotiating against our positions of last year, while the North Koreans observe with a mixture of arrogance and befuddlement. The sum total: the Administration has lost all will and all backbone. Don’t expect any policy changes toward accountability or reciprocity. Instead, expect the lesson to be that you can proliferate nukes to anyone and not just get...

Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views

April 27, 2008

Chris Hill Resignation Watch: National Review on Agreed Framework 2.0

Our long national slumber is ending with a very cranky awakening, and editorialists are starting to transform Chris Hill into a political liability for the Bush Administration: We still have no idea whether North Korea engaged in or is engaging in surreptitious uranium enrichment to complement the plutonium processed at Yongbyon. And we have not even asked Kim to dismantle his existing nuclear arsenal. Exactly what is it about this picture that has convinced Christopher Hill, the State Department’s top...

Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics/Washington Views

April 26, 2008

Chris Hill Resignation Watch: Lord and Gelb in the Washington Post

Winston Lord and Lawrence Gelb are two senior members of Washington’s foreign policy establishment, a constituency that has been pushing, conditionally, for Agreed Framework 2.0 ever since the death of Agreed Framework 1.0. The establishment has supported, in principle, the idea of making a deal and sacrificing adjectives to get one, but they’ve always kept one eye on the exits in case the North Koreans just wouldn’t play along. Maybe the flaw for which they can be most faulted is...

Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics/Washington Views

April 3, 2008

What Should the Senate Ask Kathleen Stephens?

A reader tells me that the nomination hearing for Kathleen Stephens, State’s pick to be our next Ambassador to Seoul, will take place on April 16th, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. So if you sat on that panel, what would you ask? Naturally, I presume that every single answer to that kind of question will be thoughtful and intelligent, and the most intelligent and thoughtful questions have some unquantifiable chance to be seen by the people who will write...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics/Washington Views

March 31, 2008

Kathleen Stephens: The Wrong Person for the Job

A few months ago, the Korean press reported that State had submitted the name of Kathleen Stephens to be the next U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, to replace the competent and affable Alexander Vershbow. At the time, I did not have strong opinions about Ms. Stephens’s fitness for that position. Further research has convinced me that Ms. Stephens, though well qualified for the job and apparently a perfectly fine person, is the wrong person to be our next Ambassador to...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views

February 15, 2008

More Bush Loyalists Criticizing His N. Korea Policy

It’s not that surprising to hear the Japanese sounding disgruntled about the failure of Agreed Framework 2.0, but dissent from Bush Administration loyalists is less expected and more significant. I don’t think it’s fair to call Michael Green or (especially) Victor Cha opponents or skeptics of Agreed Framework 2.0 itself, but previously, they had been stalwart defenders of the current strategy. The fact that they are even gently criticizing Secretary Rice and Ambassador Hill for their spinelessness in the face...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views

February 13, 2008

Six months later, deafening silence about North Korea and Syria

Last Sunday, a friend invited me to attend an event at Bethel Israel Synagogue in Alexandria. The subject was “The North Korea-Syria Connection,” although the event seems not to have caught the notice of many Korea watchers or journalists. I was invited by a friend who happens to attend the synagogue. The host was NPR’s Robert Siegel, and the guests were Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post and Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times. Kessler consistently toes the State...

Proliferation/Washington Views

January 23, 2008

Just What We Needed: Our Very Own Ministry of Unification.

From a White House press briefing today: Q Is the administration about to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism? MS. PERINO: No. Right now where we are is waiting on the North Koreans to provide a complete and accurate declaration of their nuclear activities. So we’re continuing to wait for that. We still have people on the ground helping with the disablement of the Yongbyon nuclear facility. So at this...

Diplomacy/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics/Washington Views

January 23, 2008

Classless Condi

[Update: Miss that warm, moist pungence rising around your ankles? Here’s your fix for that: “I’m going to have a great deal more to say about elevating the issue of human rights in North Korea, which is clearly a priority for the president and Congress,” he said. [N.Y. Times, Helene Cooper] Exactly how stupid do these people think we are? Condi Rice has scarcely uttered a word about this in four years, has prevented anyone else but the marginalized...

Diplomacy/Human Rights/Washington Views

January 19, 2008

Good Riddance, Nick Burns

Nicholas Burns, the State Department’s number three diplomat and the man whom a reliable source told me was the one who blocked implementation of the North Korean Human Rights Act, will step down for “personal reasons.” Alas, the reasons are not known to include painful bleeding hemorrhoids, and so I must go on doubting God’s existence. Burns’s legacy will include such notable accomplishments as Iran’s nuclear bomb. His replacement is the eponymous William Burns (no relation) who has enjoyed such...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Washington Views

January 11, 2008

Did Chris Hill lie about North Korea’s declaration?

In the last episode of our drama, Chris thought he had convinced Kim to out himself in time for the New Year’s ball, only to have Kim say that he’d said enough when Chris visited his place last November. At moments like this one, when this blog begins to sound like the screenplay for a gay soap opera, I understand why The Lost Nomad went fishing. Several days ago, I believe I caught U.S. nucyular negotiator Christopher Hill in a...

Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views

December 13, 2007

Congressional Research Service issues report on the implications of removing North Korea from the terror sponsor list

Yesterday, a reader and friend was kind enough to forward the entire report to me (thanks!), which I’ve uploaded onto this blog, and which you can access here: crs-north-korea-terrorism-list-removal.pdf Since then, this has generated some press attention in South Korea. The report’s authors are the highly regarded Larry Niksch and Raphael Perl. There’s too much valuable information in there for me to graf and do it justice; this one is a must-read. I’ll limit my comments to a few...

Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics/Washington Views

December 11, 2007

Desperately in need of a stranger’s hand

At the end of last month, I linked to a post at Powerline, quoting Noah Pollak on the subject of Annapolis, which I said then could just as well apply to Condi Rice’s eleventh-hour test of Kim Jong Il’s character. Pollak said, If Condi’s pursuit of the peace process is due to a belief that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is possible and will unlock the forces of moderation and conviviality in the Middle East, then, well, she is simply a...

Diplomacy/U.S. Politics/Washington Views

Category: Washington Views