Home  >  Diplomacy

Category: Diplomacy

January 28, 2009

U.N. Special Rapporteur Soldiers On

He was seconded by a fallen government, gets no respect from the U.S. government, and works for the world’s most overrated entity, but Vitit Muntarbhorn, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in North Korea is making (in U.N. terms, at least) a creditable effort to do his job: An independent U.N. investigator on North Korea’s human rights situation Tuesday described the food shortage and rights violations in the country as ”very grim” and called on Japan to strengthen support...

Categories "United" Nations/Abductions/Human Rights
January 28, 2009

Jimmy Carter Would Serve Mankind Best by Retiring

There is nothing so harmful to the interests of a nation as a politician desperate for a legacy: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says North Korea’s nuclear issue could be worked out “in half a day” given the right conditions. Carter told AP he believes North Korea would surrender its nuclear weapons in return for U.S. diplomatic recognition, a peace agreement with South Korea and the U.S., and new atomic power reactors and fuel oil. He said North Koreans “have...

Categories Appeasement
January 24, 2009

Jay Lefkowitz: Requiem for a Bantamweight

To the limited degree history remembers Jay Lefkowitz at all, it should remember him as a good and well-meaning man who was unequal to the great task laid before him. I have sometimes suspected that this was the very design of those who appointed him. With the change of administrations this week, Lefkowitz departed as Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, leaving behind a final report that still clings obediently to the myth of constructive engagement with sociopaths:...

Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Washington Views
January 19, 2009

AEI Scholars Predict Gloomy Future for N. Korea Policy

Dan Blumenthal, who was a senior foreign policy advisor to John McCain, has teamed up with Aaron Friedberg again to offer “An American Strategy for Asia,” one that might have gotten wider circulated had the economy not collapsed shortly before the election. Their ideas will probably experience continuous vindication as we near the mid-point of the third Clinton Administration, which by my count started around December 2006. Unfortunately, there is little reason to doubt at this point that the Kim...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
January 17, 2009

For the Thousandth Time, Secretary Rice ….

Ad infinitum, ad nauseum, ad eternitum, ad apocalyptum, North Korea will never negotiate away its nuclear weapons, no matter what it promises our gullible diplomats in treaties or agreed frameworks: In an apparent message to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama who will take office next week, North Korea said Saturday it may not give up its nuclear weapons even if Washington normalizes relations with it. “Normalization of diplomatic relations and the nuclear issue are entirely different issues,” a spokesman for the...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/WMD
January 15, 2009

John Bolton Abducts Hillary Clinton, Assumes Her Identity, Nears Easy Confirmation Wearing Drag and Mask

First George W. Bush became Jimmy Carter, now this, at “Hillary Clinton’s” confirmation hearing: “Our goal is to end the North Korean nuclear program – both the plutonium reprocessing program and the highly enriched uranium program, which there is reason to believe exists, although never quite verified,” she said. Her vision of North Korea policy was much stronger in her written statements provided to Senator Richard Lugar before the hearing. “The new Administration will pursue direct diplomacy bilaterally and within...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
January 14, 2009

Lee Myung Bak’s Nightmare Scenario

Yesterday, I noted that North Korea is now demanding the full normalization of diplomatic relations with the United States as its latest demand prerequisite to nuclear disarmament … notwithstanding the fact that as recently as February 2007, it had agreed to disarm in exchange for a completely different set of demands. Having achieved its first set of demands — the lifting of U.S. sanctions, the terror-sponsor designation, and probably enough fuel oil and food to take care of its inner...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Japan/U.S. & Korea
January 5, 2009

Rice Denies Idiocy Rumors

The first rule of escaping an obvious conclusion is not to suggest it yourself: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview released on Friday only an “idiot” would trust North Korea, which is why the United States is insisting on a way to check its nuclear claims. [Reuters] Well, thanks for clearing that up for us, Madame Secretary. Was this just a case of protesting too much or does this suggest that Maoist self-criticism will be this year’s...

Categories Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
December 17, 2008

Even the Metaphors Are Deadlocked!

In the summary of its December 15th press briefing following the collapse of the Not-Quite-Agreed Framework, the State Department admitted that the talks are at an impasse and declared that the “[b]all is in North Korea’s court.” Interestingly, the Chosun Ilbo, summarizing a Rodong Sinmun editorial calling on North Koreans to unite around “the strength of comradeship,” headlines with the opposite conclusion: “Ball Is in America’s Court, N.Korea Warns.” Here, I must register rare agreement with our State Department. Our...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
December 16, 2008

WaPo Finally ‘Discovers’ Concentration Camps in North Korea

I submit that any man so morally retarded that he would utter the statement quoted below is not qualified to represent the values or interests of the United States abroad. And South Korea isn’t alone in tuning out the horrors. The United States is more concerned with containing North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. The State Department’s stunning lack of urgency was captured in a recent statement from its assistant secretary for Asia, Christopher R. Hill: “Each country, including our own, needs...

Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks/The Camps
December 15, 2008

Surely our government has bigger shoes than this to throw?

Taking a page, no doubt, from Richard Nixon’s Christmas bombing of Hanoi, President Bush has decided that Pyongyang must face stern measures for reneging on its most recent agreement to verifiably disarm: No more fuel oil for you! The humanity! Well, all I can say is, thank God he didn’t disinvite the Pyongyang State Symphony. How many more days until this cowboy diplomacy madness ends?

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
December 14, 2008

North Korea Imposes Harsher Penalties for Unauthorized Border Crossing

Although I recall hearing someone say recently that human rights would be an important part of the State Department’s negotiations with North Korea, I have yet to see any recent evidence that State’s masters of cerebellingus have applied their techniques to the task of lifting North Korea to a shallower level of hell. Somone had better tell Glyn Davies that a few more adjectives will have to be sacrificed for the cause: North Korea has imposed stiffer punishments on those...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Refugees
December 12, 2008

On North Korea, Bush has one last chance not to go out with a whimper.

In several ways, it would be a mistake to make too much of the New York Times’s declaration of the “collapse” of Agreed Framework 2.0, a/k/a the Not Quite Agreed Framework. The Times’s coverage of this story has never been particularly good, and its editorials have been ridiculously inconsistent. Clearly, The Times’s loathing of Bush did not dwell easily with its approval of Bush’s new willingness to excuse North Korea from every standard of human civilization. The Times saying so...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks
December 11, 2008

No Deal on Verification

Chris Hill’s words to the press speak well enough for themselves, but the testiness of his tone tells us just as much. He has no one but himself to blame for his own humiliation, of course. It’s just unfortunate that his personal ambition created such risk and suffering for so many others. Christopher R. Hill ,Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs China World Hotel Beijing, China December 11, 2008 ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL: Good morning. Obviously we would like...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
December 9, 2008

Agreed Framework 2.0 Death Watch

Whoop de doo. The six-party talks have started again. China has circulated a draft protocol that strives mightily to top Chris Hill’s gift for vagueness by omitting the word “sampling.” I don’t think the people who designed this six-party concept, in retrospect, realized what a perfect venue this was for Chinese, Russian, and (often) South Korean back-stabbing. The concept may be with us for a while, at least as a superficial demonstration of Obama’s commitment to “multilateralism.”* With the clock...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
December 8, 2008

The Unmourned Death of Agreed Framework 2.0

Just as Washington seems to have almost forgotten the name of the current president, hardly anyone still remembers Chris Hill, a media hero for one brief while after he conned George W. Bush out of one part of the “cowboy diplomacy” they loved to loathe. Also mostly forgotten: for the brief interlude when it was tried, the cowboy diplomacy worked. Less so: what replaced it did not. Hill is now about to round up the six various parties for one...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks