Search Results for “John Kerry”

July 30, 2015

Obama Administration plans N. Korea human rights push at U.N., but is it too late?

Had you asked me two months ago how a deal between the Obama Administration and Iran would affect North Korea policy, I’d have answered that it would preoccupy Congress through September, and that after that, things would pick right up where they left off. How wrong I was. The Iran deal continues to dim the odds of another Agreed Framework with North Korea by drawing so many unflattering comparisons to the 1994 Agreed Framework as to destroy its legacy. Republicans...

"United" Nations/Diplomacy/Human Rights

May 28, 2015

U.S., allies talk sanctions and human rights (emphasis on talk)

We’d hardly had time to digest all those rumors of “exploratory talks” with North Korea just two weeks ago, before John Kerry was in Seoul, sounding like his speechwriters had slipped him some cut-and-pasted OFK text. There, Kerry denounced Pyongyang’s “recent provocations,” said it wasn’t “even close to” ready for serious about talks, and accused it of “flagrant disregard for international law while denying its people fundamental freedom and rights.” “The world is hearing increasingly more and more stories of grotesque, grisly,...

Diplomacy/Sanctions/Six-Party Talks

May 11, 2015

On progressive diplomacy: Friends first, frenemies second, enemies last

Aside from the vanishingly small chance of Agreed Framework III, the foundation of our North Korea policy, as set forth in a series of U.N. Security Council resolutions, is multilateral economic pressure. That means that all hope of success rests on building multilateral unity before we negotiate with Pyongyang. Every time Seoul, Tokyo, or Washington is taken in by Pyongyang’s divide-and-rule tactics, there is a piecemeal relaxation of pressure by one or two of them, at the expense of one or two others....

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

April 22, 2015

Craig Urquhart: Withdraw U.S. soldiers from Korea

Writing at NK News, Craig Urquhart makes a punchy but powerful case for withdrawing U.S. soldiers from South Korea: South Korea has been allowed to act like an overgrown child for decades. The U.S. exercised exclusive military command because South Korea could not be trusted not to start a world war, and now resists the American push to transfer operational command. It relies on U.S. protection when it flubs its own diplomatic efforts. It carved out a state-sponsored industrial policy...

An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea

March 16, 2015

Three Pinocchios for Glenn Kessler’s “fact-check” on North Korea

If only for prudential reasons, 47 Republican Senators should not have written to Iran’s Supreme Leader. We only have one President at a time, and only the President should negotiate with foreign leaders. Parallel, shadow-government negotiations with foreign adversaries are wrong when Republican Senators do it; they were just as wrong when Jim Wright met with Daniel Ortega, when Nancy Pelosi met with with Bashar Assad over a Republican President’s objections, and when a young John Kerry met with Madam...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Iran/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/WMD

January 13, 2015

House Foreign Affairs Committee holds briefing; members demand tougher sanctions on N. Korea, China (updated with video of full hearing)

The House Foreign Affairs Committee held a briefing on North Korea and the Sony hack today. Three witnesses appeared: The Honorable Sung Kim Special Representative for North Korea Policy and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Korea and Japan U.S. Department of State [full text of statement] The Honorable Daniel Glaser Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence U.S. Department of the Treasury [full text of statement] Brigadier General Gregory J. Touhill, USAF, Retired Deputy Assistant Secretary for...

Anju Links

December 20, 2014

We are all North Koreans now

As far as I know, I didn’t liberate a single North Korean during my four-year tour with the Army in South Korea, although I’ve argued their distant and forgotten cause ever since I came home. The crimes of Kim Jong Un were still distant just five weeks ago, when Professor Lee and I, writing in The New York Times, sounded a lonely warning about Kim’s efforts to censor his critics in the South with terror and violence, writing that “[c]aving...

Censorship/Human Rights/Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law

September 18, 2014

What Bob King should have said about travel to North Korea.

Ambassador Robert King, whose title is Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues, has written to The Washington Post in response to Anna Fifield’s reporting on North Korea’s efforts to market itself as a tourist destination (which may be more accurately described as the efforts of foreign collaborators to sell North Korea as a fine place to go slumming). King wishes that Fifield had given more emphasis to what should be obvious to anyone with good sense — that “[t]ravel to...

"United" Nations/Anju Links/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Foreigners in N. Korea

August 25, 2014

Is Obama’s North Korea policy at a tipping point?

Following of Congress’s resounding, bipartisan vote of no confidence in the Obama Administration’s North Korea policy last month, Secretary of State John Kerry has been traveling around the Pacific. In Australia, while meeting with that country’s Foreign Minister and Defense Minister, he traversed his gargantuan mandible toward Pyongyang and threatened to tighten sanctions “if it ‘chooses the path of confrontation.” If? If? “The United States — I want to make this clear — is absolutely prepared to improve relations with...

Diplomacy/Sanctions

August 17, 2014

Between surrender and stupid: Regressing toward the mean in a post-Iraq world

As the world’s attention is focused on the disaster in Iraq, let’s take a moment to mourn the last remnants of Syria’s non-extremist, secular rebels, who are facing their final extermination in Aleppo. To Syrians who risked everything for a future worth living in, it’s academic now that Hillary Clinton privately agreed with what I said back in 2011 (last item), when I called for us to arm moderate rebels there. Clinton now says she warned that if we didn’t,...

Geopolitics

August 4, 2014

Obama’s soft line on North Korea sanctions has failed.

AT LEAST ONE NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER thinks North Korea has never been nastier to the United States, and if its racist attacks on President Obama aren’t proof enough of that, maybe this message from North Korea’s U.N. Ambassador, Ri Tong-Il, is: He accused the United States of using its military power to deliberately subvert any dialogue between North and South Korea — which is also a standard North Korean assertion. But in a variant of that theme, he said...

"United" Nations/Appeasement/Missiles/Proliferation/WMD

August 3, 2014

U.S. urges Japan to rejoin coalition against N. Korea

When Japan’s ransom deal with North Korea threatened to fracture the regional coalition pressuring Pyongyang to end its nuclear programs, I was critical of the Obama Administration for failing to use its influence to prevent Japan’s defection. As leaks to the Japanese press have since confirmed, however, someone in the White House subsequently arrived a similar conclusion. Soon thereafter, the administration began some desperate behind-the-scenes diplomacy to press Japan to get back on the team: A senior White House official said the...

Abductions/Japan & Korea

July 30, 2014

Congress marks 20th anniversary of Agreed Framework I, asks how that’s working out

The House Asia-Pacific Subcommittee commemorated the 20th anniversary of Agreed Framework I by calling Ambassadors Glyn Davies and Bob King over for a hearing this afternoon, and it was a tough day for Team Foggy Bottom. If you want to see how congressional oversight should work – if you want to see a well-informed, well-prepared legislator completely, verifiably, and irreversibly dismantle 20 years of bad policy – then watch Subcommittee Chairman Steve Chabot’s opening statement. Chabot made great use of...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics

July 27, 2014

Kim Jong Un stages missile test for the hard-of-hearing

“QUIET” NORTH KOREA has tested another missile to celebrate the anniversary of its survival of its invasion of South Korea. Based on the range, it was probably a SCUD, which makes the test a violation of UNSCR 1695, 1718, 1874, 2087, and 2094, in case you’re keeping track. According to Yonhap: Saturday’s firing is the 15th rocket launch, and the sixth ballistic missile launch, by the North this year, which the international community condemned as a violation of the United...

Missiles

July 11, 2014

Open Sources, July 11, 2014

~ 1 ~ I SUSPECT THAT SOMEONE LIKE KURT CAMPBELL would have been a better man for the job, but I wish John Kerry the best of luck in his discussions with the Chinese: “China shares the same strategic goal, and we discussed the importance of enforcing U.N. Security Council resolutions that impose sanctions on North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile program,” Kerry said. However, Kerry said China needs to do more in reining in its...

Anju Links

July 9, 2014

Keeping China’s Cold War cold: The case for PATO

As our alliance diplomacy fails in Asia, “Pentagon officials,” no doubt with some prodding from the White House, say that if the Senate confirms Mark Lippert as Ambassador to South Korea, he would redouble U.S. efforts to rebuild a trilateral alliance with Japan and South Korea. “Trilateral” would be a very good start toward “multilateral,” and I wish the administration success. I don’t know much about Mr. Lippert, but a diplomatic vacuum now could mean war and chaos for us all, while...

Asia/China/China & Korea

April 25, 2014

Breaking! N. Korean gulag prisoners celebrate liberation by Samantha Power’s hashtag

The Talmud scholars have long written that it isn’t given to any generation of human beings to correct every wrong and every injustice. But neither are we excused from our obligation to try. And that is the challenge as an international community we face this week. It isn’t given to any generation, or members of the Security Council or the great officers of the world, to right every wrong. But surely we are not excused from our obligation to make...

"United" Nations/Human Rights

April 17, 2014

Yay, nuclear blackmail! Obama Admin caves on N. Korea denuclearization, human rights in face of nuke test threat (Updated)

The Nuclear Threat Initiative Newswire, citing Yonhap, reports that the Obama Administration, South Korea, and Japan have agreed to a major shift in its policy toward talks with North Korea, “easing its conditions for returning to nuclear talks,” out of fear of a new nuclear test on the eve of mid-term elections in South Korea and the United States. Since before Obama’s inauguration, North Korea has repeatedly said that it would never give up its nuclear weapons programs. Until now,...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks

Search Results for: John Kerry