North Korea Reprises Its Role as International Beggar
The death of North Korea’s Kim Jong-il put relations with the rest of the world on hold. But Pyongyang has stirred, reprising its role as international beggar.
The new regime, at least nominally headed by Kim’s 28-year-old son, Kim Jong-un, issued its first statement regarding relations with Washington. The United States should send more than 300,000 tons of previously promised food aid and end economic sanctions to “build confidence” with the North. In return, the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea might be willing to suspend its uranium enrichment program. The United States, Japan and South Korea stated yesterday that a “path is open” to restarting the six-party talks to address the concern over the North’s nuclear program.
Pyongyang seemed particularly aggrieved that the Obama administration would link humanitarian assistance to security issues. Shocking!
As Yogi Berra famously said, it is déjà vu all over again. North Korea makes agreement. North Korea gets aid. North Korea breaks agreement. North Korea blames West. North Korea offers to negotiate agreement. And the cycle starts again.
No one knows what to do with the DPRK. So far regime elites have preferred even impoverished stability over anything more than pro forma reform. The death of Kim Jong-il creates an opportunity for change, but there is no obvious constituency for revolution among the party apparatchiks and military officers who dominate the system.
That almost certainly means that Pyongyang is not prepared to negotiate away its existing nuclear capability. Only two men have ruled the North in the past 63 years; Kim Jong-un has none of their authority, and there are several plausible claimants for the throne. None is likely to be so foolish to alienate the military by campaigning to give away its ultimate weapon.
It still is worth talking with North Korea. Despite good reason for skepticism, lesser objectives might be achievable—limits on missile development, withdrawal of advanced conventional units, even caps on nuclear capabilities. Moreover, the DPRK appears to moderate its behavior while engaged in negotiations.
However, Washington should not pay for more promises. And the U.S. should not provide inducements just to get Pyongyang to talk. America has much to offer—diplomatic relations, end of sanctions, access to international aid, military withdrawal from the South. If confidence is to be rebuilt, it must be rebuilt on both sides.
Washington should make no exception for food aid. The suffering of the North Korean people is tragic, but it remains the result of conscious policies adopted by the North Korean regime. In fact, that is what “Juche,” the oft-proclaimed policy of self-reliance, is all about.
Moreover, the DPRK would view any government assistance as political affirmation. And any assistance would bolster a system under siege, aiding the government as it attempts to demonstrate its power and wealth this year during its centenary celebrations of founder Kim Il-sung’s birth. If the North needs more help, let it go to China, which already is keeping this desolate land afloat economically.
Refusing to engage other nations rarely makes sense, even in the case of North Korea, despite the monstrous nature of the regime. However engagement does not mean appeasement. In the future, Washington should restrict its rewards to the North for acting, not promising.
On Not Leaving Iraq
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq expects to have 17,000 people on his staff after the United States “withdraws” from Iraq at the end of the year, he told the Senate this week. This is astounding. A typical American embassy in a small country might have 100 employees, in a big country such as Great Britain or Russia maybe a few hundred. A staff of 17,000 (including contractors) is not an embassy, it’s an occupation force. Or at least a viceroy‘s staff. Here’s the Washington Post report:
The top U.S. diplomat in Iraq on Tuesday defended the size and cost of the State Department’s operations in that country, telling lawmakers that a significant diplomatic footprint will be necessary after the withdrawal of U.S. troops at the end of this year.
James F. Jeffrey, the U.S. ambassador in Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that his staff of 8,000 will grow in the coming year to about 17,000 people, the vast majority of whom will be contractors.
And while the State Department is spending about $2 billion annually on Iraq operations now, it plans to spend an additional $1 billion on the construction of facilities in each of the next several years….
We’re spending $2 billion a year now on State Department operations in Iraq alone, and we intend to spend $1 billion a year on construction for some years to come. That’s some withdrawal! I know that when Sen. Barack Obama asked to be entrusted with the presidency by repeatedly saying, “I will bring this war to an end in 2009. It is time to bring our troops home,” he only said “troops.” But I can’t believe that the voters who heard him anticipated leaving thousands of Americans and spending billions of dollars in Iraq for many years.
If members of Congress are looking for ways to cut a trillion-dollar deficit, they might look at our construction and employment and nation-building plans in Iraq.
Wikileaks Sheds Light on Government Ineptitude
For years I have told anybody who would listen how U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan contribute to Pakistan’s slow-motion collapse. Well it appears that my take on the situation was not so over-the-top. Amid some 250,000 confidential diplomatic cables released by online whistleblower Wikileaks, former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson warned in cable traffic that U.S. policy in South Asia “risks destabilizing the Pakistani state, alienating both the civilian government and the military leadership, and provoking a broader governance crisis without finally achieving the goal.”
On one level, this cable underscores what a disaster American foreign policy has become. But on another level, the leak of this and other cables strikes me as completely odd and slightly scary. How did Pfc. Bradley Manning, who stands accused of stealing the classified files from Siprnet and handing them to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, obtain access to these files in the first place? How does a young, low-level Army intelligence analyst gain access to a computer with hundreds of thousands of classified documents from all over the world?
After 9/11, the government made an effort to link up separate archives of government information. In theory, anyone in the State Department or the U.S. military can access these archives if he has: (1) a computer connected to Siprnet, and (2) a “secret” security clearance. As Manning told a fellow hacker: “I would come in with music on a CD-RW labeled with something like ‘Lady Gaga’ … erase the music … then write a compressed split file. No one suspected a thing… [I] listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga’s ‘Telephone’ while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history.” Manning said he “had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months.”
I’m all for less government secrecy, particularly when U.S. officials are doing bizarre things like tabulating the biometric data of various UN officials, the heads of other international institutions, and African heads of state. That these supposedly “confidential” communications were so easily leaked highlights the appalling ineptitude of our unwieldy national security bureaucracy. Indeed, the phenomenon of Wikileaks says as much about government policy as it does about government incompetence.
America’s Alliances: Frayed, but not Disappearing
National Journal‘s Paul Starobin asks at the National Security Experts blog “Are America’s Alliances Fraying?” Starobin notes that two normally reliable allies, Brazil and NATO member Turkey opposed an additional round of sanctions against Iran. Meanwhile, President Obama has failed to persuade Europeans to provide large numbers of troops to Afghanistan. “Is the ability of Washington to assemble coalitions on behalf of its global objectives starting to ebb?” Starobin asks. “Are our alliances fraying — and if so, why? Does this trend have to do with our flailing economy, with inept diplomacy, or with some other set of factors?”
Excerpts from my response:
It is hardly newsworthy when one of America’s allies bucks Uncle Sam. It has become an almost daily occurrence.
[...]
But just because the United States has had difficulty keeping its allies in line doesn’t mean that it can’t assemble a coalition to deal with common challenges. It all depends on whether the parties agree on the nature and severity of the threat, and on the best means for mitigating it. In this context, the multinational naval task force operating off the Horn of Africa has had great success beating back piracy in the region. The countries that choose to participate agree that piracy poses a threat to their commercial interests, and are willing to band together in a loose coalition — and not as part of a formal, permanent alliance — in order to deal with the challenge. Their contributions are generally consistent with their interests; the benefits seen as in line with the costs.
Alliances are no different, or, at least, they shouldn’t be. Alliances are supposed to be sustained by interests. (British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston’s observation that “nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests” has been repeated so many times that it has become cliched). And yet, the United States has maintained its commitment to NATO, South Korea and Japan in recent months, even as it is obvious that the parties do not share common interests. The alliances have become an end in and of themselves, instead of the means to an end.
[...]
When she presented the Obama administration’s national security strategy late last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that NATO was one of several global commitments that was “embedded in the DNA of American foreign policy.”
Hardly. While a bipartisan consensus in Washington is enamored of Europe’s dependence upon the United States, most Americans tire of defending our wealthy European allies who are eminently capable of defending themselves. The resentment has only grown as these same allies have shown precious little enthusiasm for supporting the United States in its hour of need in Afghanistan.
[...]
We have created a class of wealthy and secure allies who lack the capability, but most importantly the will, to act on their own behalf, let alone in the service of the world’s policeman.
Read the full response here.
The Libertarian Take on Iran
In this video, David Boaz makes an excellent case for tamping down our overblown perception of Iran.
In the clip, Boaz argues persuasively that far from being suicidal, the track record of Iranian behavior shows pragmatism and calculating temperament when attempting to advance its interests in the region. Thus, rather than assessing Iran based on their leaders’ repulsive and provocative rhetoric, U.S. officials should deduce future Iranian intentions based on how it has reacted when confronted with overwhelming force. While no one can predict the future, regional experts—not hawkish, misinformed policy analysts or neo-conservative ideologues who advocate regime change—insist that the clerical regime has valued self-preservation and in the future can be deterred.
My colleague, Justin Logan, argues here that U.S. policymakers must press for direct diplomacy with the Iranian leadership and have a plan “B” in case that diplomacy fails. Of course, the problem is that those who endorse a tougher approach toward Iran insist that we have tried diplomacy before. That is not true. Washington typically offers halfhearted gestures and then falsely concludes that diplomacy does not work. Americans must reject the alarmist rhetoric and tortured rationales that have thus far proved counterproductive for arriving at a long-term solution toward Iran.
Weekend Links
- “Government should not subsidize health insurance — for the uninsured, the poor, the elderly or anyone else — or regulate health insurance markets.” Here’s why.
- This is what happens to health care when you are not the customer.
- An update on the EU Lisbon Treaty.
- Why Fannie and Freddie mustn’t be left out of reform efforts.
- Skepticism over nuclear diplomacy with Iran. (PDF) Subscribe to the Nuclear Proliferation Update here.
- Podcast: “Obama: Kinder Bud to Federalism?” featuring Aaron Houston of the Marijuana Policy Project.
Bush v. Obama on Diplomacy
The Hill‘s Congress blog has a regular series that provides policy experts a forum to discuss current topics of the day. This week, the editors posed this question:
President Obama has taken a very different approach to diplomacy than President Bush. Does the new approach serve or undermine long-term U.S. interests?
My response:
What “very different approach?” Sure, President Bush implicitly scorned diplomacy in favor of toughness, particularly in his first term. But he sought UN Security Council authorization for tougher measures against Iraq; a truly unilateral approach would have bombed first and asked questions later. By the same token, President Obama has staffed his administration with people, including chief diplomat Hillary Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan Rice, who favored military action against Iraq and Serbia in 1998 and 1999, respectively, and were undeterred by the UNSC’s refusal to endorse either intervention.
There are other similarities. George Bush advocated multilateral diplomacy with North Korea, despite his stated antipathy for Kim Jong Il. President Obama supports continued negotiations with the same odious regime that starves its own people. Bush administration officials met with the Iranians to discuss post-Taliban Afghanistan and post-Saddam Iraq. In the second term, President Bush even agreed in principle to high-level talks on Iran’s nuclear program. President Obama likewise believes that the United States and Iran have a number of common interests, and he favors diplomacy over confrontation.
This continuity shouldn’t surprise us. Both men operate within a political environment that equates diplomacy with appeasement, without most people really understanding what either word means. Defined properly, diplomacy is synonymous with relations between states. As successive generations have learned the high costs and dubious benefits of that other form of international relations — war — most responsible leaders are rightly eager to engage in diplomacy. Perhaps the greater concern is that they feel the need to call it something else.
Time to Cut Back Boondoggle Embassy in Iraq
The Bush administration has many legacies. One is the more than $700 million U.S. embassy, set on 104 acres, only slightly smaller than the Vatican’s land holdings, in Baghdad. It was an embassy designed for an imperial power intent on ruling a puppet state.
It turns out that Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki doesn’t plan on being anyone’s puppet. U.S. troops have come out of the cities and will be coming home in coming months. Provincial reconstruction teams also will be leaving. The Bush administration’s plan for maintaining scores of bases for use in attacking Iran or other troublesome Middle Eastern states is stillborn. And Prime Minister Maliki isn’t likely to ask for Washington’s advice on what kind of society U.S. officials want him to create.
So just what should the Obama administration do with this White Elephant on the Euphrates? Cut it down, says the State Department’s own Inspector General.
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad — the United States’ largest and most costly overseas diplomatic mission, with 1,873 employees — is overstaffed and must be reduced to a size more in keeping with the evolving U.S.-Iraq relationship and budget constraints, government auditors said in a report issued Wednesday.
The State Department’s inspector general said that although the U.S. presence in Iraq will become more civilian as the military withdraws over the next two years, the embassy “should be able to carry out all of its responsibilities with significantly fewer staff and in a much-reduced footprint.” The reduction “has to begin immediately,” the report said, before Foreign Service officers complete their next assignment bidding cycle and other employees are extended or hired.
The U.S. should be preparing to have a normal relationship with Iraq. That includes maintaining a normal embassy.
Who Said “No Comment”?
In this morning’s Washington Post, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has some advice for the Obama administration regarding the protests in Iran:
[T]he reform the Iranian demonstrators seek is something that we should be supporting. In such a situation, the United States does not have a “no comment” option. Coming from America, silence is itself a comment — a comment in support of those holding power and against those protesting the status quo.
I just did a quick search on www.WhiteHouse.gov, and I did not find the words “no comment” as it pertains to the Iranian elections. I did, however, find two statements on the protests by President Obama:
- Speaking to reporters following a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on June 15th, President Obama said:
I am deeply troubled by the violence that I’ve been seeing on television. I think that the democratic process — free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent — all those are universal values and need to be respected. And whenever I see violence perpetrated on people who are peacefully dissenting, and whenever the American people see that, I think they’re, rightfully, troubled.
and
I think it would be wrong for me to be silent about what we’ve seen on the television over the last few days. And what I would say to those people who put so much hope and energy and optimism into the political process, I would say to them that the world is watching and inspired by their participation…
and
[P]articularly to the youth of Iran, I want them to know that we in the United States do not want to make any decisions for the Iranians, but we do believe that the Iranian people and their voices should be heard and respected.
- The following day, the president hosted South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak. Despite the fact that they had a number of very urgent topics to discuss, President Obama took time to state that while it was “not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations,” for the U.S. president to be “meddling in Iranian elections,” he wished to repeat his remarks from the previous day:
[W]hen I see violence directed at peaceful protestors, when I see peaceful dissent being suppressed, wherever that takes place, it is of concern to me and it’s of concern to the American people. That is not how governments should interact with their people.
and
I do believe that something has happened in Iran where there is a questioning of the kinds of antagonistic postures towards the international community that have taken place in the past, and that there are people who want to see greater openness and greater debate and want to see greater democracy. How that plays out over the next several days and several weeks is something ultimately for the Iranian people to decide. But I stand strongly with the universal principle that people’s voices should be heard and not suppressed.
So, President Obama has not been silent, and he has never said “no comment.”
Why We Shouldn’t Bomb Iran–From an Unlikely Source
Many of the same people who were telling us what a cakewalk invading Iraq would be are now lobbying to bomb Iran. They assure us it would be another cakewalk which would restore American prestige around the world. Indeed, North Korea and other rogue states would come groveling.
Right.
But an unusual opponent of launching another war has emerged. Reports the Jerusalem Post:
There is no viable military option for dealing the Iranian nuclear threat, and efforts by the Israeli government and its supporters to link that threat to progress in peace with the Palestinians and Syria are “nonsense” and an obstacle to the Arab-Israeli and international cooperation essential to changing Iranian behavior.
That’s the conclusion of Keith Weissman, the Iran expert formerly at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), speaking publicly for the first time since the government dropped espionage charges against him and his colleague, Steve Rosen, earlier this month.
There’s no assurance an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities – even if all of them could be located – would be anything more than a temporary setback, Weissman told me. Instead, a military strike would unify Iranians behind an unpopular regime, ignite a wave of retaliation that would leave thousands dead from Teheran to Tel Aviv, block oil exports from the Persian Gulf and probably necessitate a ground war, he said.
“The only viable solution is dialogue. You don’t deal with Iran with threats or preaching regime change,” said Weissman, who has lived in Iran, knows Farsi (as well as Arabic, Turkish and French) and wrote his doctoral dissertation at the University of Chicago on Iranian history. That’s where the Bush administration went wrong, in his view.
“President Bush’s demand that Iran halt all nuclear enrichment before we would talk with the regime was an excuse not to talk at all,” Weissman said. “And the administration’s preaching of regime change only made the Iranians more paranoid and told them there was no real desire to engage them, only demonize them. The thing they fear most is American meddling in their internal politics.”
His arguments would have had no effect on the previous administration. But his judgment offers powerful and welcome backing for President Barack Obama, who seems determined to pursue diplomacy.
Solving Our Problem in Pakistan
Pakistan has nuclear weapons, an active jihadist movement, a weak civilian government, a history of backing the Taliban in Afghanistan, and a military focused on fighting another American ally, India. Pakistan probably is harder than Iraq to “fix.”
Unfortunately, the gulf between the U.S. and Pakistani governments is vast. Starting with the respective assessments of the greatest regional threat, Gen. David Petraeus has given Islamabad some unwanted advice. Reports AP News:
The United States is urging Pakistan’s military to focus more on the Taliban and extremists advancing inside their borders instead of the nation’s longtime enemy — India.
The top U.S. commander in the region told Congress Friday that extremists already inside Pakistan pose the greatest threat to that nation.
Gen. David Petraeus (pet-TRAY’-uhs) was asking a House Appropriations subcommittee for funding to help the Pakistani military root out and stop insurgents, saying he wants Pakistani leaders to realize they need to learn how to fight internal extremists.
Petraeus called India a “conventional threat” that should no longer be Pakistan’s top military focus.
Gen. Petraeus is obviously right, from America’s standpoint. But try explaining that to Pakistan, which has fought and lost three wars with India. Indeed, Pakistan was dismembered in one of those conflicts, leading to the creation of Bangladesh.
Enlisting Pakistan more fully in combating the Taliban and al Qaeda will require recognizing, not dismissing, Islamabad’s other security concerns. Squaring the circle won’t be easy. But doing so will require more creative diplomacy and less preemptive demands, more regional cooperation and less military escalation.
A Far Cry from ‘Axis of Evil’
Hoping to derail the re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President Obama today gave an unprecedented appeal to the Iranian people in a special video message. In it, he offers a “new beginning” of engagement to end the nearly 30 years of hostile bilateral relations.
This video comes less than a month after the administration wrote a letter to the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, who, as opposed to Ahmadinejad, truly controls the apparatus of government and has the final say on the country’s nuclear ambitions. Khamene’i sent a congratulatory letter to Obama after he won the presidency.
My colleague, Justin Logan, has written extensively on U.S. policy toward Iran, such as here and here, to name a few. He argues — and I agree — that U.S. policymakers must press for direct diplomacy with the Iranian leadership and have a plan “B” in case that diplomacy fails.
In response to those (usually neoconservatives) who fear Israel will be wiped off the map, Logan argues persuasively that attempting to deduce Iranian intentions from public statements is not helpful in ascertaining whether the clerical regime values self-preservation. Instead, we must evaluate what the regime has done when confronted with overwhelming force. For example, rather than wage the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) to the bitter end, Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini, one of Iran’s most radical Ayatollahs, saved his country from more suffering by accepting a disadvantageous ceasefire with Saddam Hussein.
Overall, the track record of Iranian behavior shows pragmatism and calculating temperament when attempting to advance their interests in the region. As I’ve written here, occasionally the interests of Tehran and Washington have overlapped, most recently when Iran quietly supported America’s effort to oust the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Thus, it would be prudent for Washington to engage Tehran and allow it to produce uranium and plutonium if the regime agrees to IAEA safeguard regulations in compliance with United Nations resolutions.
National self-preservation has figured prominently in modern Iranian diplomacy. President Obama and his subordinates appear to understand that. Hopefully, this new strategy will work.
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