The Wake

“Katrina-style incompetence,” “priority, pessimism, politics” and “appalling,” were among the labels experts slapped on the United States’ policy regarding current nuclear and humanitarian crises on the Korean Peninsula at a recent Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs panel discussion. Former political leaders and government officials gave their take on the U.S.’s diplomacy – or accused a lack thereof – at the presentation, “Beyond the Nuclear Issue: Crisis on the Korean Peninsula” in mid-September.

“The development by Korea of intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons is one of the gravest threats that we have had in our lives, and in our history,” argues L. Desaix Anderson, whose credentials include 35 years as Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. State Department. The four-person panel, moderated by former Vice President Walter Mondale, agreed with Anderson that the threat was serious, but differed on how it should be handled.

As part of Bush’s proclaimed “axis of evil” (Iran and Iraq also make that club), North Korea has thus far evaded diplomatic efforts to curb their nuclear ambitions – which are believed to currently contain more than 800 ballistic missiles, according to a BBC News country profile. The Bush administration has sought six-party talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-iI, in hopes of using international coercion to urge North Korea into abandoning its nuclear program. The six parties are the U.S., North Korea, Russia, Japan, China and South Korea. North Korea’s requests for bilateral negotiations with the U.S. have been consistently denied by the administration. North Korea walked away from planned multilateral talks last fall due to financial sanctions imposed by the United States, after the United States accused North Korea of state-sponsored drug running and counterfeiting, explains Burton Levin, who is former Foreign Serviceman at posts in Asia, former U.S. Ambassador to Burma, member of the board of directors for the Mansfield Foundation and SIT investment visiting professor of Asian Policy at Carleton University.

Levin calls these public sanctions ridiculous, saying the issue of counterfeiting should have been “so secondary” to the diplomacy at hand. Whether the accusations were true or not, Levin says, a diplomat does not “create an atmosphere that’s going to create problems when you’re really working on diplomacy.” It was “appalling,” he says.

Defending the Bush administration’s policy, L. Gordon Flake, former director for research and academic affairs at the Korea Economic Institute of America, says the administration is acting with “priority, pessimism, and politics.” North Korea is hardly a top ten priority for the United States, he says. “In terms of foreign policy, our first priority is Iraq, our second priority is Iraq, and our third priority is Iraq,” Flake contends.

Flake argued that the United States’ policy is based on the fact that it is not capable of dealing with North Korea bilaterally – as it is tied up in the Middle East, and has little invested in the country to bargain with due to sanctions. “The fundamental outlook,” Flake says, “is that [negotiations] probably won’t work out right now.” Two-party negotiations would “provoke a crisis,” Flake says, “you don’t ask a question you’re not ready to answer.”

Anderson rejects Flake’s position, and continues to shame the administration’s approach. “The President of the United States has an obligation… to defend America and its national interests and just because you happen to be involved in Iraq, you need to be able to chew gum at the same time as you walk,” he says. “[North Korea] is a much more critical crisis than Iraq ever was. They didn’t have nuclear weapons – even Iran is three, four or five years away from them and North Korea is churning them out,” he says.

Seung-Ho Joo, a specialist in East Asian issues and associate professor at University of Minnesota-Morris helped explain in a later interview why the U.S. insists emphasis on Iran’s potential nuclear capabilities while sidelining North Korea. North Korea has a running nuclear program, he explains, which is different for the Bush administration, which leans toward preemptive policy. “North Korea’s nuclear issue is much more difficult to handle [than Iran’s],” he says, “plus the front line is in Iraq, and Iran is its neighboring country.”

“World leaders are more or less postponing,” Joo says. “The focus is more on the Middle East… ignoring Korea is not a smart policy.” He maintained that the United States needs to approach North Korea in two-party diplomacy, and “focus and reach actual results.”

At the discussion, Flake maintained that the “U.S. does not have the characteristics [needed] to solve the North Korea problem bilaterally.”

Bush, in his accused lax policy, enabled North Korea to develop nuclear weapons, Andersen argues. He agrees with Flake that the outlook is grim even if the United States does refocus its diplomacy with North Korea, but says “we still, I think, have to try because the only alternative is a nuclear-armed North Korea or war - and neither one of those is acceptable.”

To contextualize the nuclear crisis, it is important to understand the country – to the extent available at least, explained Dean of the Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs, J. Brian Atwood, also former administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development for the Clinton administration. “The route to peace is international cultural understanding,” Atwood says.

North Korea, which test-launched seven missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads in July, has remained a secretive government since becoming an independent state in 1953. The communist country emerged at the end of World War II, opted to remain isolated and is still technically at war with South Korea. The two never signed a peace treaty.

North Korean citizens have little access to the world outside of their country. Radios and televisions are pre-tuned to government stations. They do not have access to the World Wide Web either, only pages on a minimal intranet dominated by the government. The regime has been judged the world’s worst violator of press freedom, by Reporters Without Frontiers. The government is also accused of various human rights violations, including torture, slave labor and prison camps, according to a BBC News country profile.

Aid agencies estimate that over two million North Koreans have died due to famine, flood and economic mismanagement since the 1990s but the country does not release these facts, according to BBC. North Korea receives aid from the United Nation’s World Food Program. Dean Atwood argues humanitarian aid must not be compromised for politics, though he understands the temptation, he says.

In 2002, North Korea allegedly admitted to the United States the development of a secret nuclear arms program. This was in violation of a 1994 agreement to abandon nuclear endeavors in exchange for construction of two safer light and water nuclear power reactors and oil shipments from the United States In response to the admission, North Korea first claimed a right to the weapons, and later proposed negotiating for aid and a “non-aggression pact” with the United States. Bush responded by stopping oil shipments, after which North Korea said it never admitted having weapons – blaming a deliberate mistranslation of their statement of having the “right” to weapons. North Korea blamed the United States for the disintegration of 1994’s pact because of this and for being years behind schedule on the light power reactors. Nonetheless, North Korean Scud missiles and evidence of plutonium production were discovered by the end of 2002.

Throughout 2003 North Korea continued to demand bilateral “non-aggression pact” talks with the United States. The United States insisted on six-party talks, and four rounds of talks had occurred by 2006. After the last talk in September 2005, North Korea agreed to give up its weapons in return for aid and security promises. Later, North Korea demanded the right to a civilian nuclear reactor. In July, North Korea test-fired seven missiles.

Levin argued at the panel discussion that North Korea is scared of U.S. power, thus its nuclear program and insistence on the non-aggression pact. He says the problem is indeed between the United States and North Korea.

Bush insisted on an international front, and wants North Korea to resume six-party talks.

Though panel members voiced their reactions to Bush’s diplomacy from different poles, none tried to argue with Flake’s most basic premise. “Make no mistake about it; we are not prepared for a crisis in North Korea right now.”