International crisis group blunders on North Korea
.jpg?w=728)
By Stephen Costello
The newest production on North Korea from the International Crisis Group (ICG) is strikingly unambitious, considering the organization is one of the few international NGOs in a position to speak truth to governments. The six-party talks are certainly dead in all but name, as Daniel Pinkston says, but they were never organized to reach realistic agreements. Non-governmental organizations and other non-state actors should certainly help keep North Korea connected as Tim Johnston urges, but they will never substitute for government action. Deterrence and containment are certainly necessary as President Jean-Marie Guéhenno states, but incremental changes are unlikely to make a significant difference.
The report selectively chooses which statements by North Korea to believe, even while acknowledging the lack of information available. Tong Kim, on this page, shows clearly how DPRK statements contain a wide range of possibilities, and how little its interests have changed. The ICG identifies the conservative/progressive split among South Koreans, but claims a “consensus” in the U.S. Its language of distrust toward North Korean claims is matched by an uncritical acceptance of today’s U.S. positions.
Most profoundly, it never discusses politics or ideology among U.S. elites and policymakers, nor the radical reversal of political power and national interests in the U.S. in 2001 and South Korea in 2003. Yet apart from North Korean actions, those changes have been the main determinants of policy since the late 1990s. Reasons for policy changes are not addressed by the report, and the impact on China and China-U.S. relations are ignored. Rationales for the South Korean engagement approach and for the U.S. six-party talks are misstated.
The report, “North Korea: Beyond the Six-Party Talks” is a useful reminder of what is now considered “new” or “clear” thinking in Washington D.C. The ICG’s reflection of the Washington conservative and anti-diplomacy mainstream is particularly disappointing, since only one year ago the ICG produced one of the only clear and hard-hitting international assessments of the politicization of the South Korean intelligence service ever done. In order to be politically careful, however, it neglected to mention the central role of the Korean president. But perhaps the most useful assessment of the new report is as an important marker to confirm how little Korea should expect from the White House and foreign policy team in the next U.S. administration.
The ICG was started in 1995, partly because of failed government responses to crises in Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia. One of the chief leaders was Morton Abramowitz, an experienced U.S. diplomat and foreign policy intellectual. On the Korea issues, ICG was at first a breath of fresh air, urging policy leaders to support engagement for all the logical reasons. Ambassador Abramowitz also led the late-1990s effort by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) to encourage a changed policy toward North Korea. That effort, co-chaired with former Ambassador to Korea James Laney, produced three reports on U.S.-N.K. policy, in 1997, 1998 and 1999. Both groups in those years were at the forefront of supporting the early stages of the Agreed Framework with strategic and realistic recommendations, despite pushback from the South Korean President, conservatives in Congress and defense hawks. Crucially, beginning in early 1998, the U.S. engagement effort was joined and in many ways led by the first progressive government in South Korea, and a President, Kim Dae-jung, who did not mind taking the lead. (Note: I worked with Mr. Kim in the 1990s.)
Even during meetings of the CFR Task Force from 1997 to 2001 (many of which I sat through) it was clear that there was deep tension between the conservative/Republican members of the committee and progressive/Democratic members. The language of the reports reflects ― unfortunately ― the power of the U.S. president not only to set policy, but to encourage “correct” thinking and to discourage realistic and strategic debate, both inside and outside government. It also demonstrates clearly the change from a relatively open and confident U.S. policy-making group in the White House, Pentagon and State Department, to a far more closed, paranoid and insecure group. From the cautious but determined engagement of North Korea by Bill Clinton and his team, to the reckless policy-reversal and ideological approach by George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, their policy preferences can be seen or implied in the texts from the ICG and the CFR.
Today, between this more closed and more politically polarized intellectual/policy atmosphere in Washington, the militarism and extreme aversion to diplomacy of today’s Republican Party, and the embrace of an unstable and unhealthy status quo in Northeast Asia by the Democrats, serious and realistic discussions about U.S. options on the Korean Peninsula have all but ceased.
This is extremely important to Korean media, intellectual and political leaders as the country approaches two important elections in 2016 and 2017. Put simply, Korea will not have U.S. power and understanding at its back the way Kim Dae-jung did from 1998 to 2000. In the most likely case, it will have the political, non-strategic and threat-based U.S. approach of the early 2000s, but without the immediate impacts of 9/11 and the Iraq War. The badly implemented Pivot to Asia of the Obama years will likely not include a rethink of policy toward the peninsula. As a former U.S. government official indicated to me recently, Koreans could pull the U.S. along on a more ambitious strategy, but only with strong and capable Korean leadership and commitment.
This picture of Washington policy-thinking paralysis and the dumbing-down of debates on these issues puts key problems and opportunities of Northeast Asia squarely on Korea’s back. The people, the ideas, and the recent diplomatic history to take charge of new initiatives are in place in Seoul. But will the system be bent to the will of the best people? Will the progressives settle their fights and remember their legacy? Will the conservatives re-imagine their worldview for modern times and develop a strategy? How can we hear from Korea’s best thinkers?
Stephen Costello is producer of Asia East, a Web and broadcast-based policy roundtable focused on security, development and politics in Northeast Asia. He previously directed the Korea program at the Atlantic Council of the U.S. He writes from Washington, D.C. He can be contacted at cosetllos@asiaeast.org.