Worldwide Web WorldTribune.com

  breaking... 


Thursday, February 7, 2008       Free Headline Alerts

N. Korea: No mention in the State of the Union or by any reporter coverning any candidate

By Donald Kirk

WASHINGTON — It's the great unspoken issue of the U.S. presidential campaign: the North Korean nuclear crisis and standoff in which the North has failed to come up with a list of all it's got in its nuclear inventory, much less to shut everything down.

President George W Bush said not a word about it in his State of the Union address on January 28. No one in any of the televised debates has asked any of the candidates for the Republican or Democratic presidential nominations about North Korea. None of the hundreds of reporters covering all the candidates has raised a question about North Korea — or at least reported on the response.

As the race to succeed Bush narrows down, however, behind-the-scenes speculation mounts in Washington over what each of them might do — John McCain, the Republican, or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, the Democrats.

Also In This Edition

The question is watched most anxiously by Korean diplomats and political figures as the conservative Lee Myung-Bak awaits inauguration on February 25 as president of South Korea. Lee, promising to bargain hard in response to North Korean requests for rice and fertilizer, will fly to Washington after South Korea's National Assembly elections on April 9. He hopes to build up a measure of rapport with Bush after nearly a decade of strained relations between Bush and the past two occupants of the Blue House in Seoul, outgoing President Roh Moo-hyun and Roh's predecessor, Kim Dae-Jung, whose Sunshine policy of reconciliation transformed the nature of inter-Korean relations.

Although no one in Lee's camp is saying so, clearly McCain offers the best hope for going along happily with a turn to the right in South Korea's policy toward the North.

In fact, as analysts point out, it's not quite accurate to say the word "Korea" has yet to break into the miasma of camp rhetoric. McCain did, on February 4, take the trouble to include South Korea in a short list of countries where the U.S. has had troops "for many, many years".

The point he was making was that he believed the U.S. would have to make a deal with Iraq for U.S. troops to stay — as they have elsewhere around the world since World War II — a view that differs entirely from calls to Obama and Clinton to pull them out of Iraq. The implication is that McCain would oppose any moves to reduce the number of U.S. troops in South Korea from approximately 25,000, down from 37,500 five years ago, and would support the plan to view them as part of a defense system ready for deployment elsewhere in the region.

McCain's views on North Korea appear almost as tough as his outlook on Iraq, at least to judge from an article in the American journal Foreign Affairs. "It is," he wrote, "unclear today whether North Korea is truly committed to verifiable denuclearization and a full accounting of all nuclear materials and facilities, two steps that are necessary before any lasting diplomatic agreement can be reached."

Those words may not appear extreme, but in the next sentence he held out what might appear as demands that North Korea is not likely to fulfill. "Future talks," he said, "must take into account North Korea's ballistic missile programs, its abduction of Japanese citizens, and its support for terrorism and proliferation."

If McCain's outlook appears to mesh with president-elect Lee Myung-bak's insistence on verification and reciprocity as prerequisites for aid, they are clearly at variance with the conciliatory tone of both Clinton and Obama.

Clinton, very much in passing, excoriated the Bush administration for its tough line in the early years in which Bush, hosting Kim Dae-jung after his inauguration to his first term, expressed "skepticism" about dealings with North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Il. Coming nearly a year after Kim Dae-jung flew to Pyongyang for the first North-South summit, Bush's remarks were widely interpreted as a rebuff of the Sunshine policy that Kim had so carefully initiated.

"North Korea responded to the Bush administration's effort to isolate it by accelerating its nuclear program, conducting a nuclear test, and building more nuclear weapons," Clinton wrote in Foreign Affairs. "Only since the State Department returned to diplomacy have we been able, belatedly, to make progress."

Obama if anything appears more of a fan of Sunshine than Clinton. Although he has said very little on the nuclear issue, he has made negotiations on all levels a centerpiece of a drive to rebuild alliances and partnerships. "Needed reform of these alliances and institutions will not come by bullying other countries to ratify changes we hatch in isolation," he wrote in Foreign Affairs. "In Asia, we belittled South Korean efforts to improve relations with the North."

If either Obama or Clinton wins, a key player in foreign policy may well be the New Mexico governor, Bill Richardson, who dropped out as a rival for the Democratic nomination but presumably would love to be on the ticket as vice presidential candidate. Alternatively, Richardson, who served as ambassador to the United Nations and energy secretary under the first Bill Clinton administration, would be delighted with an appointment as secretary of state — a real possibility. A Foreign Affairs piece by Richardson may be just as significant as those of the three leading candidates, especially considering he has visited North Korea a number of times, has criticized the hard line of the Bush administration and has been a staunch advocate of reconciliation.

"Fighting nuclear trafficking will require better human intelligence and better international intelligence and law enforcement coordination," he wrote. "And it will require tough and persistent U.S. diplomacy to unite the world, including China and Russia, behind efforts to contain the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, even as we provide these nations with incentives and face-saving ways to permanently renounce nuclear weapons."

The bottom line, as expressed by Richardson in the next sentence: "We should remember that no nation has ever been forced to renounce nuclear weapons, but that many nations have been convinced to renounce them." Richardson specifically cites Libya, but clearly has North Korea in mind.

A Clinton victory, though, might bring another familiar name into the process. How about Bill Clinton himself? Koreans in the U.S. and in Seoul are already speculating on the possibility — some say the expectation — that Hillary would surely want Bill to serve as a roving ambassador. What could be more appropriate, they ask, than for Bill to go to Pyongyang?

No one forgets that Bill Clinton had considered going in the final weeks of his presidency before the infamous Florida recount distracted too much attention — and lofted Bush to the presidency. Nor is it forgotten that Clinton was the president who promoted the Geneva framework agreement of October 1994 under which North Korea shut down its reactor at Yongbyon.

A Clinton visit to Pyongyang might happen, it's widely believed, if the U.S. moves to have North Korea removed from the State Department's list of nations sponsoring terrorism and then moves to open diplomatic relations with Pyongyang.

U.S. nuclear envoy Christopher Hill, testifying this week before the U.S. Senate foreign relations committee, held out that hope as well as the dream of a peace treaty to replace the armistice that ended the Korean War if the North would just submit a "complete and correct" record of its nuclear activities.

The betting, though, is that North Korea, again accusing the U.S. of undermining the nuclear agreement, will wait to see who wins the U.S. election — and then determine how inclined is the winner to negotiate more concessions and aid.


About Us     l    Contact Us     l    Geostrategy-Direct.com     l    East-Asia-Intel.com
Copyright © 2008    East West Services, Inc.    All rights reserved.