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Category: Diplomacy

March 18, 2009

Missiles, Sanctions, and Surprise Attacks

As North Korea continues to prepare for an April missile test, Great Britain warns North Korea of new sanctions, Japan warns of a “harsh response,” and both Japan and South Korea are drawing up target lists for new sanctions. It would be interesting to see how South Korea joining in sanctions instead of undermining them with change things. It would be just as interesting to see whether the new sanctions will be as tough as the old ones that no...

Categories "United" Nations/NK Military/Proliferation/WMD
March 18, 2009

Five senators write Obama, ask him to withdraw Christopher Hill’s nomination

Read the full text of the letter here. The senators signing include Brownback (R-KS), Ensign (R-NV), Inhofe (R-OK), Bond (R-MO), and Kyl (R-AZ), the Senate Republican whip. McCain and Graham are still opposed to Hill’s nomination but did not sign. No one on the Foreign Relations Committee signed or came out in opposition. The big question now: will any Senator hold the nomination? Not yet. A hold would shift the focus to the Senator instead of Hill. Those opposed to...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics
March 16, 2009

Kaesong Managers Become Hostages, OFK Blogger Fails to Suppress Schadenfreude

[Update: North Korea lets them out. It’s not clear whether the border is fully reopened, but either way, no sane foreign business would invest in Kaesong now. And just in case all of this wasn’t strange enough, South Korean “academics” see North Korea cutting off one of its own main sources of hard cash and conclude that it’s South Korea that’s in a bind. Hey! I had just been thinking that what an economically strapped economy really needs most is...

Categories Appeasement/NK Economics
March 16, 2009

Opposition to Christopher Hill’s Iraq Ambassador Nomination Grows

Somewhere, Anthony Zinni must be smiling. There are now four senators — Brownback of Kansas, McCain of Arizona, Graham of South Carolina, and Ensign of Nevada — who have declared their opposition to Chris Hill becoming the next U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Recall from the experience of Kathleen Stephens, now our Ambassador to South Korea, that it takes just one senator to hold an ambassador’s nomination. Hill’s nomination will not go forward unless those senators all lift their holds. [Oops:...

Categories Diplomacy/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
March 13, 2009

This is not the Dennis Blair I knew

Dennis Blair, who tried to put diplomacy’s own Jeremiah Wright in charge of writing our national intelligence estimates, has just thrown the entire Obama Administration off message on North Korea’s upcoming missile test. (Mark your calendars for April 4th, though April 15th seems at least as likely). Blair, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee no less, mused that North Korea’s missile test is probably just what the North Koreans say it is: “I tend to believe that the North...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
March 11, 2009

David Asher: How to Talk to North Korea

If Marcus Noland and Stephen Haggard are the world’s foremost experts on the North Korean economy, David Asher may be the world’s foremost expert on its illicit side — drugs, counterfeiting, arms trafficking, and the recouping of its ill-gotten gains. Asher served as the Coordinator of the State Department’s North Korea Working Group and the NSC’s North Korea Activities Group from 2003-2005. In that capacity, he was a key architect of the financial constriction strategy that briefly forced the North...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
February 24, 2009

Dear Mrs. Clinton: Pyongyang Will Not Be Triangulated

For a moment, leave aside what we think Hillary Clinton’s goals for her recent Asia visit should have been. For most of us, that is just an exercise in catharsis anyway. Ask yourself what Mrs. Clinton’s subjective goals were. One certainly must have been to improve our frayed alliances with South Korea (frayed by Roh Moo Hyun’s America-bashing populism) and Japan (frayed by George W. Bush’s betrayal on the abduction issue), and to show both nations that America is a...

Categories Diplomacy
February 17, 2009

Prof. Sung Yoon Lee in the Asia Wall Street Journal

One of the most consistently perceptive commentators on dealing with North Korea is Professor Sung-Yoon Lee, an adjunct assistant professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. By a very interesting coincidence, Stephen Bosworth, the next North Korea Special Envoy, is the Dean there. If Bosworth tolerates views this much at odds with his own, we can certainly hope he’s open-minded enough to take some good advice from Prof. Lee — if not...

Categories Diplomacy/Washington Views
February 13, 2009

Stephen Bosworth, Formerly Ambassador to S. Korea, to Be New Asia Assistant Secretary N. Korea Special Envoy

One of the legitimate complaints about Bush’s Korea policy that Democrats actually made was that one man cannot simultaneously be an Assistant Secretary for all of East Asia and a de facto special envoy to North Korea. The Special Envoy post looks to be going to Kurt Campbell, and now, it looks like the East Asia A/S post will go to former U.S. Ambassador to Seoul Stephen Bosworth, who was in Pyongyang recently displaying his prowess at forcing the North...

Categories Diplomacy
February 8, 2009

Christopher Hill, Obama’s Choice to Be Iraq Ambassador, Showed Poor Judgment and Dishonesty as N. Korea Negotiator

I guess we can add another name to the list of those who have little use for Christopher Hill, the front-runner to be President Obama’s next ambassador to Iraq: General Anthony Zinni, the former top U.S. commander in the Middle East, said the Obama administration offered him the Baghdad job late last month but withdrew the appointment without explanation, apparently in favor of a veteran diplomat, Christopher Hill. With Zinni fuming in undiplomatic fashion about the way he was treated,...

Categories Diplomacy/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
February 7, 2009

Unifiction Ministry Reverts to Form

It’s official: the Unifiction Ministry should have been abolished after all: The Ministry of Unification announced Wednesday that it would ask police to investigate anti-Pyongyang activist leaders if they press ahead with their plan to launch propaganda leaflets and North Korean banknotes across the border to the North. A ministry official, along with a representative from police, met with organizers planning to launch the anti-North Korean leaflets, activists said. The two organizers who met the ministry official were Choi Sung-yong,...

Categories Activism/Appeasement/Deprogramming/Famine & Food Aid
February 6, 2009

‘To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.’

Or so we were told not very long ago. And while I think Richard Holbrooke added some much-needed sac to the Clinton Administration’s approach to Bosnia — and could well do the same for this administration’s approach to, say, Iran — I have to question whether it’s effective public diplomacy to rip nominally allied foreign governments in the press, or to compare an American diplomat to a guy who gassed thousands of men, women, and kids.

Categories Diplomacy
February 5, 2009

Obama Policy Watch, Plus: Chris Hill Reminisces on Failure

With most of the major players in Obama’s cabinet selected, the question turns to what sort of policies we’ll see during this administration. The shape of those policies is already being tested by North Korea’s state terrorism against South Korea, its threat to test an ICBM — in flagrant violation of two U.N. resolutions — and its continuing repudiation of its 2007 disarmament commitments. So far, the preponderance of evidence suggests that the Obama Administration lacks a coherent plan for...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
February 4, 2009

Diplomacy, Hubris, and the ‘Management’ of Sociopaths

The United States warned North Korea Tuesday that any testing of its longest-range missile would be seen as “provocative,” amid signs the reclusive Stalinist state could be preparing a launch. “North Korea’s missile activities and, you know, missile programs are a concern to the region. There’s no secret there,” said State Department spokesman Robert Wood. “And a ballistic missile launch by North Korea would be unhelpful and, frankly, provocative.” [AFP] Who believes that a statement like this is anything other...

Categories Appeasement/China/Diplomacy/Uncategorized
February 2, 2009

Sun Rises, Geese Fly South, North Korea Reneges on Promises to Disarm

Ad nauseum. Any old excuse will do: North Korea said on Monday it would never unilaterally dismantle its nuclear weapons and demanded inspectors probe the South to make sure it is not harbouring U.S. atomic arms, further stepping up tensions with its neighbour. [….] A North Korean army spokesman said in comments carried by the state’s official KRT TV that the North and the South remained in a state of war and it was “a shameless act of imprudence” to...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
February 2, 2009

Hostile Policy Update: State Terrorism Meets Priceline Diplomacy

As used in this chapter – (1) the term “international terrorism” means activities that “¦ (B) appear to be intended – (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they...

Categories Appeasement/Terrorism (NK)
January 30, 2009

Hostile Policy Update: North Korea Kills Off Sunshine

[Scroll down for updates] I don’t know why it comes as a surprise to anyone when North Korea reneges on anything: North Korea said Friday it is ditching a nonaggression pact and all other peace agreements with South Korea, in an apparent attempt to use the threat of an armed clash to press Seoul to give up its “confrontational” stance. The communist nation also said it will no longer respect a disputed sea border with the South, raising the prospect...

Categories Appeasement/NK Military
January 29, 2009

Obama Cabinet Watch: Abandon All Hope Now

Governor “Kim Jong” Bill Richardson is reported to be in the running for appointment as Special Envoy to North Korea, a position the Democrats are talking about dual-hatting with the position of special envoy for human rights. As I noted previously, Richardson’s statements to or about North Korea are conspicuously devoid of any references to North Korea’s death camps, its malign neglect of millions of starving people, or public executions. Worse, Richardson actively sought out photo ops with officials of...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. Politics/Washington Views