Search Results for: John Kerry

April 1, 2004

Kim to Kerry: You Got Punk’d!

James Lileks’s excellent blog quotes an MTV interview with John Kerry. We’ve heard a lot of tired cliches about toothless, inbred Nascar Republicans; surely we should be just as worried when people encourage perky MTV airheads to pull a voting lever. In fact, we should give some serious thought to buying ads on MTV to explain that registering to vote requires you to go through a complex, drawn-out licensing process, complete with a civics examination, urinalysis, and the donation of...

Categories Uncategorized
March 11, 2004

Why I hate Kerry

A friend today asked me to explain why I hate Kerry. My choice of words. Fundamentally, his election would be a disaster for this nation when we can’t afford weak leadership. His policy weaknesses are rooted in his character weaknesses. Here’s my ranting, incohertent stab at ‘splaining a view I’ve felt strongly since the 1980s: 1. Deep down, he’s an America hater. Now G-d knows, if America sent me to an unpopular war, I might hold some bitterness at somebody,...

Categories Uncategorized
March 10, 2004

Why I hate Kerry

A friend today asked me to explain why I hate Kerry. My choice of words. Fundamentally, his election would be a disaster for this nation when we can’t afford weak leadership. His policy weaknesses are rooted in his character weaknesses. Here’s my ranting, incohertent stab at ‘splaining a view I’ve felt strongly since the 1980s: 1. Deep down, he’s an America hater. Now G-d knows, if America sent me to an unpopular war, I might hold some bitterness at somebody,...

Categories Uncategorized
March 8, 2004

What We Could Expect of Kerry and Kim

I know . . . sounds like porn, but it isn’t. One–umm–revealing fact is the degree of positive press that Kerry is getting in the North Korean papers. Perhaps this is simply a reaction against Bush, the devil they know. But it’s also likely that the North Koreans–like many Americans–look at Kerry’s long, dovish record on defense and foreign policy issues and suspect that he will take a softer line and seek (like South Korea) to avoid giving offense and...

Categories Uncategorized
March 7, 2004

What We Could Expect of Kerry and Kim

I know . . . sounds like porn, but it isn’t. One–umm–revealing fact is the degree of positive press that Kerry is getting in the North Korean papers. Perhaps this is simply a reaction against Bush, the devil they know. But it’s also likely that the North Koreans–like many Americans–look at Kerry’s long, dovish record on defense and foreign policy issues and suspect that he will take a softer line and seek (like South Korea) to avoid giving offense and...

Categories Uncategorized
February 23, 2019

Hanoi Redux: the Senate, the Supremes & Pompeo (also, Trump!) on the Iran deal

SAY WHAT YOU WILL ABOUT OBAMA’S DEAL WITH IRAN; what Trump signed with Kim Jong-un in Singapore makes it look like a model of clarity and specificity. For all its flaws, the Iran deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), undeniably gained us something. Its inspection terms and sunset clause were serious flaws and might have proven to be fatal ones. Even so, it got Iran to surrender a big stockpile of enriched uranium and make some useful concessions...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. Law/U.S. Politics
November 30, 2017

On the contrary, it is North Korea that refuses to talk to us

Whenever North Korea tests a nuke or a missile, like the rest of you, I immediately turn to the very people who got us into this mess for their sage wisdom … You were Secretary of State for four years, had no North Korea policy & invented “strategic patience” to fool shallow minds into thinking you did. At least have the humility & self-awareness to start with an apology. https://t.co/KzYb2R6tEB #FoxNews – Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) November 29, 2017 and to...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
March 20, 2017

Ted Cruz introduces Senate bill to re-list N. Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism

Ted Cruz, who has emerged as a leading advocate for a harder line against North Korea, has introduced a Senate companion bill to Rep. Ted Poe’s bill, calling for North Korea’s re-listing as a state sponsor of terrorism. According to a press release from Senator Cruz’s office,* Cruz’s bill has six original co-sponsors: Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Marco Rubio (R-Fl.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.). Compared to the House bill, the Senate...

Categories Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law/U.S. Politics
December 6, 2016

The U.S. may (finally) be serious about capping North Korea’s coal exports

For almost three months after North Korea’s fifth nuclear test, the U.N. Security Council remained deadlocked over how to respond, with the U.S. and its allies pressing to limit Kim Jong-un’s access to hard currency and China trying to shield its belligerent protectorate from the consequences of its behavior. Among the most hotly debated questions was how to limit North Korea’s coal exports to China, one of His Porcine Majesty’s most important sources of hard currency. Although UNSCR 2270, passed...

Categories China & Korea/Sanctions
November 14, 2016

No, Newt Gingrich did not call for us to invade Iran and North Korea

It’s faint praise to say that Newt Gingrich would likely be an improvement over John Kerry as Secretary of State. I hardly count myself as Gingrich’s greatest fan. He’s intelligent and qualified for the job, and he certainly has grand policy visions, although I’d have concerns about putting a man of his ego and temperament into the nation’s top diplomatic position. I also think he’d have more trouble than Bob Corker or even John Bolton in his efforts to bend...

Categories Media Criticism
July 11, 2016

U.S. joins diplomatic squeeze on North Korean labor exports

Last week, the Leiden Asia Centre made headlines around the world with the release of its exhaustive, 115-page report, “Slaves to the System,” on North Korea’s overseas labor arrangements and how those laborers are treated. The Leiden report coincides with new diplomatic efforts by the U.S., South Korea, and now, the International Labor Organization to bring those arrangements to an end. The Chosun Ilbo reports that the U.S. government “is preparing a series of reports on the abuse of North Koreans...

Categories Diplomacy/Human Trafficking/Sanctions
June 6, 2016

Obama Administration, GOP Congress join forces in N. Korea sanctions push in Asia

It’s a rare day in any election year, much less this one, when anyone could write a post title like that about a major public policy issue. Now, for the first time since I began writing this blog, all of the cylinders — the President, the Congress, the U.N., South Korea, and Japan — are all firing in the same sequence to raise the pressure on Pyongyang and Beijing. Over the last week, we’ve seen the Republican Congress’s key foreign...

Categories Anju Links/Money Laundering/Sanctions
June 2, 2016

The Treasury Department just went full Alderaan on North Korea (updated)

For decades, North Korean drug dealers, counterfeiters, proliferators, arms dealers, money launderers, and most recently, bank burglars have used our financial system to move their profits into the regime’s offshore bank accounts, or into casinos. For years, the U.S. Treasury Department had to fight Pyongyang’s abuse of the financial system with its hands cuffed behind its back by the State Department, which sought a deal with Pyongyang at almost any cost. But yesterday, in a move that was at least...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
February 9, 2016

NYT: How China helped N. Korea buy ski lift cable cars, and break U.N. sanctions

Yesterday, I posted about hunger in North Korea, the fact that Kim Jong-un is spending the nation’s lunch money on missiles and ski resorts, and the importance of helping the North Korean people make that connection though a comprehensive information operations strategy. The New York Times has bolstered the evidence of North Korean and Chinese culpability for this tragedy with a detailed report on North Korea’s purchase of the equipment for its ski resort through China. Previously, NK News revealed that the...

Categories China & Korea/Class Warfare/Luxury Goods
February 5, 2016

Obama’s weakness and Xi Jinping’s bullying are about to start a nuclear arms race in Asia

Next Wednesday, the full Senate will vote on, and almost certainly pass, the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act, an almost unprecedented bipartisan vote of no confidence against a sitting president’s foreign policy. If the bill becomes law, it will legislate the biggest shift in our North Korea policy in more than two decades. Meanwhile, our Asian allies are holding another, quieter vote of no confidence on our North Korea policy. During the power vacuum of the Obama years,...

Categories Proliferation/WMD
January 17, 2016

If S. Korea won’t close Kaesong, let it pay N. Korea in food.

The bad news from North Korea’s nuclear test is that its yield exceeded those of its 2006, 2009, and 2013 tests. The good news is that while the blast wasn’t thermonuclear, it was still hot enough to burn away plenty of policy fog. In Congress, sanctions legislation has sailed through the House, and seems to have good prospects in the Senate. Opinions are shifting among Korea scholars here, too. This morning, I had a chance to finish reading last week’s testimony before the...

Categories Kaesong/Sunshine
January 11, 2016

The biggest loser from North Korea’s nuke test? China. (updated)

When I was in high school, my favorite TV show was “Miami Vice.” Until it jumped the shark in Season Three, I’d count the minutes until each episode began. One of its best episodes was called “Golden Triangle,” in which the show developed the main characters’ boss, Lieutenant Castillo, played by Edward James Olmos in his breakout role. Olmos played Castillo deep and dark. To me, at that age, Castillo personified cool. In this episode, Castillo revealed his past as...

Categories China & Korea
September 17, 2015

Shoot it down.

As some of you may be aware, President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, and the Obama Administration’s official view is that North Korea is “not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987.” Legally and factually, this has long been a difficult view to defend. Although this week’s threat from Pyongyang to nuke the United States (see coverage in The Washington...

Categories Missiles