Search Results for “Obama not ready”

May 6, 2009

Silent vs. Vocal Diplomacy: More Thoughts on How the State Department is Approaching the Saberi and Lee-Ling Hostage Cases

[OFK: It’s my great honor to present this first guest post from Jodi, formerly the author one of my very favorite K-blogs, The Asia Pages. The end of the Asia Pages left many of us missing the warmth, compassion, honesty, and elegance of Jodi’s writing. I hope this will be just the first of many posts, and I hope you’ll join me in welcoming her.] The United States is in an uncomfortable position: Three of its reporters have been detained...

Diplomacy

May 2, 2009

N.Y. Times: It’s Safe to Ignore North Korea Again!

It’s odd, though, how my mind my mind can’t let go of what’s gone down the New York Times memory hole — alarmist warnings about North Korean nukes, peddled with the meme that George W. Bush transformed a contained North Korea into a grave national security threat. I remember Nick Kristof warning us of a nuclear 9/11 if the Bush Administration failed to appease North Korea with aid, in the same way that worked so brilliantly for Roh Moo Hyun,...

Media Criticism/Proliferation/WMD

April 17, 2009

North Korea’s Terror De-Listing: Six Months Later

It has now been just over months since President Bush, true to his June announcement, removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. To calm skeptics of the move who noted that North Korea had neither renounced terrorism nor performed meaningfully on its Agreed Framework II obligations, Bush said this: The six-party process has shed light on a number of issues of serious concern to the United States and the international community. To end its isolation, North...

Uncategorized

April 17, 2009

Christopher Hill: Deep Kimchee for Iraq

Of the many things that will be written about North Korea this week, the least likely of these is, “Now there’s the kind of diplomacy we need more of.” Consider just the events of the last few days: the missile test itself, which may have hit closer to home than originally thought; the failure of the United Nations to enforce two of its violated resolutions; the broader failure of deterrence and counter-proliferation; and North Korea’s final repudiation of a February...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics

April 14, 2009

Dozens Shocked by North Korea’s Repudiation of Disarmament Agreement

So much for George W. Bush, Condi Rice, and Chris Hill’s last-minute legacy grasp, the February 2007 deal with North Korea hereinafter referred to as Agreed Framework 2.0. Following a long rejection by the corpus of North Korean belligerence, Agreed Framework 2.0 has ceased to be: North Korea vowed Tuesday to restore the nuclear facilities that it had been disabling and boycott international talks on its nuclear weapons program to protest against the U.N. Security Council’s reaction to its recent...

"United" Nations/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks

April 13, 2009

“United Nations,” “International Community,” and other oxymorons

“This provocation underscores the need for action–not just this afternoon at the U.N. Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons,” Mr. Obama said. “Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. [Barack Obama, April 6, 2009] It will soon be official: the rules are not binding, violations will not be punished, and our words mean nothing. It seems incredible that any American statesman still needs one more object lesson in...

"United" Nations/Diplomacy/Missiles

April 7, 2009

Suddenly, Everyone Has an Opinion About North Korea

HILLARY CLINTON IS STRUGGLING at the U.N., as she pleads with China and Russia to agree on a resolution that John Bolton predicts will mean nothing in practice: The initial draft Security Council resolution responding to yesterday’s missile launch, written by Japan and the U.S., is weak. It essentially only reaffirms Resolutions 1695 and 1718, and minimally tightens existing enforcement mechanisms. Moreover, China and Russia made it plain before the launch they had no interest in stricter sanctions — even...

Anju Links/Missiles

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:...

Diplomacy/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics/Washington Views

March 11, 2009

11 March 2009

JAPAN WILL GO TO THE SECURITY COUNCIL if North Korea tests a missile. If they’re shivering in Pyongyang, it’s probably just cold there. ARBEIT NICHT FREI: If the prospects for the Kaesong Slave Labor Park were bleak enough already, briefly imprisoning its South Korean business managers there can’t have helped matters. UH OH: The new U.S. Trade Representative calls the U.S.-ROK FTA “unfair” as negotiated. Pretty much as I’d predicted — South Korea let the issue become toxic in the...

Anju Links

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...

Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views

February 21, 2009

Human Rights Industry Reaps What It Sows; Humanity Loses

If I had to pick one single moment when the Human Rights Industry lost its focus on the objective measurement of evil, this statement by Amnesty International General Secretary Irene Khan may be it: “A new agenda is in the making, with the language of freedom and justice being used to pursue policies of fear and insecurity. This includes cynical attempts to redefine and sanitise torture,” said Ms Khan. She said the US claimed to be promoting freedom in Iraq,...

Activism/China/Human Rights

February 20, 2009

Sanctions? Yes We Can! (But Without the U.N.)

The power to tax is the power to destroy — Daniel Webster As the Obama Administration inherits an intractable, non-compliant, bellicose, and terroristic North Korea, the administration’s great challenge is to see beyond a strategy based on concessions alone. Via GI Korea, the new administration appears to be polarizing into factions, just as the Bush Administration did eight years ago. One of the factions advocates “normalization of relations with North Korea as soon as possible,” in other words, giving even...

NK Economics

February 10, 2009

Being Loved Is Overrated

Good morning, America — the world hates you slightly less! They took a poll shortly after Obama’s election: Views of the US showed improvements in Canada, Egypt, Ghana, India, Italy and Japan. But far more countries have predominantly negative views of America (12), than predominantly positive views (6). Most Europeans show little change and views of the US in Russia and China have grown more negative. On average, positive views have risen from 35 per cent to 40 per cent,...

Anti-Americanism/Europe/Geopolitics

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...

Appeasement/Terrorism (NK)

February 1, 2009

One Genocide that Wasn’t

[Welcome Gateway Pundit readers; Scroll down for updates] This site devotes most of its energy to bringing attention to a genocide that our news media, mostly for reasons not to their credit, generally fail to cover. Just for a moment, I’d like to pause to celebrate a genocide from which the world might just have been spared: Iraq on Saturday held its most peaceful election since the fall of Saddam. The vote to pick regional councils in 14 of the...

Terrorism/Iraq

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...

Appeasement/NK Military

January 26, 2009

Eberstadt: What Went Wrong

So over the weekend, I finally had a chance to read Nicholas Eberstadt’s fine summary of the Bush Administration’s eight years of drift and indecision on North Korea (hat tip to Robert Koehler). It’s hard to pick a favorite passage, but this one certainly struck a chord: In the absence of a coherent policy, though, the imperative of “success” in talks with North Korea suddenly took on a life of its own for the Bush team. (After all, there was...

Money Laundering/NK Economics/Washington Views

January 22, 2009

Gullible’s Travels: The Selective Disbelief of Selig S. Harrison

Here’s the latest installment of North Korea’s hostile policy: The North Korean military declared an “all-out confrontational posture”Â against South Korea on Saturday as an American scholar said North Korean officials told him they had “weaponized”Â enough plutonium for roughly four or five nuclear bombs. American intelligence officials have previously estimated that the North had harvested enough fuel for six or more bombs, although it has never been clear whether the North constructed the weapons. The scholar, Selig S. Harrison,...

Media Criticism/Proliferation/Washington Views/WMD

Search Results for: Obama not ready