Two recent blog posts by John Pomfret over at the Washington Post got me thinking about how much more complicated China’s position on North Korea has become since the beginning of the Obama Administration.

As Pomfret points out in his May 27 post, for many years the U.S. has been waiting for China to solve the North Korea problem without realizing that our goals are not aligned.

First, there’s a silly assumption in Washington that our interests (no nukes in North Korea) are the same as China’s. But they’re not. China’s first interest in North Korea is making sure the Kim regime doesn’t collapse. China’s second interest? Making sure the Kim regime doesn’t collapse. From Beijing’s perspective, nukes in North Korea rank somewhere around 10th.

Pomfret goes on to give a great explanation about why regime change is the real threat to China.  At the end of the day, as long as the DPRK could be coaxed to the negotiating table, China was satisfied that it was not falling apart.

Then, a few days later, in a June 6 post, we get the following from Pomfret:

There are surprising noises coming from China these days about North Korea. One influential Chinese academic thinks China’s policy — long supportive of the hermit kingdom — might be changing.

So, what happened in less than a week?  Has China finally realized that no nukes is their number one priority?  Not exactly.  Turns out China, as evidenced by the Zhu Feng article that Pomfret is referring to,  may be realizing that the regime in Pyongyang is not interested in negotiations and doesn’t care what Beijing thinks.

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The “Dear Leader”

In the 2008 Presidential Campaign, and in President Obama’s subsequent speeches, there has been a lot of very sensible and justified emphasis on diplomacy over military force. If nothing else, this Administration seems to have a much lower threshold for initiating diplomatic dialogue and a much higher threshold for cutting it off. But there must be times when Democrats and Republicans, conservatives, neocons, and liberals, can agree that diplomacy just isn’t enough.

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Obama and Shultz at the White House on May 19 (AP photo)

At a meeting Tuesday with former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA), and former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, President Obama summed up the group’s deliberations on the goal of achieving a world without nuclear weapons:

“This is a reminder of the long tradition of bipartisan foreign policy that has been the hallmark of America at moments of greatest need, and that’s the kind of spirit that we hope will be reflected in our administration.”

It’s great to hear this from the President who also made “bipartisanship and openness” an official plank in his campaign platform, and now identifies it as a key to effective US national security and foreign policy for his Administration.

You might think Obama’s commitment to bipartisan consultation and cooperation on national security would win nothing but plaudits from a group of former leaders obviously assembled not just for their substantive expertise, but for their bipartisan credibility. So then what are we to make of George Shultz’s reply, in the role of spokesman for the elder statesmen? Not once, but twice, the former Reagan administration official remarked that President Obama was wrong about nuclear disarmament being a “bipartisan issue,” because:

“It’s really nonpartisan. This is a subject that ought to somehow get up above trying to get a partisan advantage. And it’s of such importance that we need to take it on its own merits. And that’s the way we’ve proceeded. And that’s the way, at least it seems to us, you’ve proceeded.”

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Right on schedule, Sunday morning President Obama received the campaign trail’s notorious “3 a.m. phone call” that promised to test his mettle in the early days of his presidency.  Incidentally, “the call” happened to be a knock on the door of his Prague hotel room by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs at 4:30 a.m. local time, and Obama happened to be waiting with one hand on the receiver and the other on his foreign policy playbook.  Three hours later, after Japan had watched North Korea’s three-stage rocket fly ominously over the northern tip of its main island before plunging into the Pacific Ocean, President Obama took the stage in Prague for a scheduled speech on the fitting subject of nuclear non-proliferation.

North Korea’s bold defiance of international nuclear weapons regulations has been a matter of grave concern since the rogue state removed itself from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003.  Three years later, Pyongyang burrowed even deeper into the abyss of international alienation when it expelled International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors and conducted a test of a nuclear weapon, albeit ostensibly unsuccessfully.

Three days ago, North Korea’s alleged attempt to launch a satellite into orbit demonstrated its potential to carry a nuclear warhead as far as Alaska.  But amid the hawkish cries for preemptive action and the widespread calls for a “strong response” to North Korea’s “provocative” launch, one-third of the UN Security Council’s 15 members remain tentative.  In fact, the reluctance to take a firm stand — shared by two of the Council’s five permanent members, China and Russia — has led to a stalemate, with not even a modest warning yet agreed upon as a suitable punishment.   This indecisiveness has left many in the international community confused and frustrated.  After all, North Korea flagrantly violated UN Security Council resolution 1718, which explicitly banned it from testing ballistic missiles.  But China’s UN Ambassador Zhang Yesui pleaded with Council members to “refrain from taking actions that might lead to increased tensions” and Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin maintained that “the core element in this situation is the six-party talks” to denuclearize North Korea, which have been dormant for months.

President Obama’s response to Russian and Chinese leadership has been characterized as soft, especially since recent polling data indicates that a majority of the American public favors military action to eliminate North Korea’s ballistic missile capability.  Pyongyang’s actions, however, do not constitute a distinct nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, but rather represent just one piece of the global nuclear security puzzle.  Obama’s focus must continue to remain on the eventual goal of eliminating worldwide nuclear proliferation which requires, above all, a unified position held by all members of the Security Council. (more…)

The latest trend in media coverage of the Obama Administration seems to be to ask variations on the question, “Is he doing too much?” Most of these stories focus on the ambitious domestic agenda, but the scope of the suggested foreign policy overhaul, particularly when it comes to rethinking bilateral relationships, is no less dizzying.

Less than two months into the Administration, President Obama and Secretary Clinton have telegraphed their intention to change the landscape surrounding some of our most troubled relationships.  Clinton went to China on her first trip and emphasized cooperation over conflict.  Just a couple of weeks later, she sat down with her Russian counterpart and pledged to “reset” the relationship, despite handing FM Lavrov a red button that read “overload” in Russian.  While in Israel, Clinton dispatched two envoys to talk to Syria.  Same trip — invitation extended to Iran to sit down in the same room with Clinton and discuss Afghanistan.  Now, throw in the Congressional changes to the Cuba travel policy that Obama has supported.

For those scoring at home, that’s one member of the Axis of Evil, two A of E wannabes and our two biggest headaches on the Security Council.  I’ve personally blogged about the need to reach out to Iran, Syria and Cuba, and PSA recently put out a statement about renewing the U.S.-Russia relationship.  So I would humbly suggest to the media that the question is not whether Obama is doing too much, it is whether any of the other countries will respond as he hopes they will.

There is a question of moral hazard here.  When presented with an open hand, will these countries see any consequences in responding with a clenched fist?  After Bush’s belligerence, will they view Obama’s openness as a free pass to do as they wish?  They may view the transition to Obama in the U.S. as insulation from any real risk regardless of their actions.

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This is the last post I will write before the presidential election. I do not pretend to know what the outcome will be but if the polls are right it appears that Senator Obama will be the next U.S. president. If so, it is likely that it won’t be long before, as his running mate Sen. Joe Biden said, that he will be tested. The same thing could be said even if Sen. McCain wins.

The truth is that in respect to many different foreign policy and military issues the United States has been acting like a not very proficient juggler, tossing balls into the air in an effort to keep them from falling to the ground.

The truth is that the time that some dubbed the “unipolar moment” which all the neoconservatives were crowing about years ago, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and U.S. victory in Operation Desert Storm, is long gone.

Just consider what the next president of the United States will confront. In respect to Iraq there might not be an accepted Status of Forces Agreement, meaning U.S. troops will lack legal authority to remain there. U.S. officials say they would have to cease operations and confine troops to bases unless some other arrangement, such as an extension of the U.N. mandate, could be worked out.

In respect to Iran, aside from its nuclear program, a new president will have to deal with what seems to be an ongoing program of U.S. sponsored covert violence to bring about regime change. A new paper by the Century Foundation detailing this program concludes that:

We can expect more incidents, and we can expect the risk of retaliatory incidents to increase. As that happens, the point resurfaces. When does Iran reach its tipping point and begin to fight back, not with words, but with expanded terrorist acts?

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One might think that the current crisis roiling the American economy might be an opportunity for Senators Obama and McCain to spell out their differences on one important issue; U.S. military spending.

Consider the fact that on September 24th, during the fight over the Wall Street bail out, the House of Representatives passed, bill passed by a vote of 392-39, a $612 billion defense authorization bill for 2009 without any public protest or meaningful press comment. This show there is unlikely to be any significant pressure to cut military or related national security spending.

Instead, Senators Obama and McCain seem to be reading off the same page. That is the kind of bipartisanship we do no need. The time is long past for someone to stand up and say the obvious; that both military and associated “national security” spending is out of control and continually getting more outrageous.

The latter category includes nuclear weapons spending at the Energy department, plus the State department, as well as Veterans Affairs, and the intelligence agencies. All together that totals exceeds a trillion dollars annually.

Let’s stipulate that there are multiple factors which impact U.S. military spending. And yes, while the financial crisis will increase pressure to reduce military spending, other countervailing political factors will ensure that there likely will be no significant reduction.

Why is this? The primary reason is that the United States is at war, even if is an undeclared one and one which the country is largely disengaged and removed from. And no politician dares cutting military spending for fear of being accused being ’soft on defense” or not “supporting the troops.”

Unlike the situation at the end of the 1980s and early 19980s there is nothing comparable to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, which drove significant reduction in U.S. military spending.

Today the situation is reversed. The United States is fighting the “long war” (formerly known at the global war on terror) and politically both the incumbent administration and the opposition party are reluctant to cut military spending at such a time.

Sadly, there is nothing in the campaign platforms of either Sen. John McCain or Barrack Obama to suggest that they would significantly reduce military spending.

In fact McCain says the United States must enlarge the size of its armed forces. That alone will guarantee that operation and support costs, traditionally one of the highest categories of U.S. military spending will stay high.

Likewise Sen. Obama supports plans to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 soldiers and the Marines by 27,000 troops.

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Another deal with North Korea is on the cusp of falling apart. Anyone who is actually surprised by this should feel free to leave a comment below.

So what happened this time? Mikhail Gorbachev says that the U.S. reneged on our deal with North Korea by leaving them on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. That’s a bit like the House Republicans saying that the first financial bailout bill failed because Nancy Pelosi made a partisan speech. It’s a convenient excuse, but it ignores the fundamentals of the situation.

The U.S.-DPRK deal failed because there may actually be no way to have a deal with the North Koreans. Sure, Christopher Hill, who has worked himself to the bone on this issue, just ended a visit to North Korea , defibrillator paddles in hand, to try and shock some life into this negotiation. It is unclear what effect his visit had.

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It would seem odd for this blog not to mention the agreement in the Six Party Talks to close the North Korean nuclear reactor at Yongbyon (covered in all of the major newspapers, but for the basic story, see the New York Times). But I find it difficult to get excited about this announcement, so I have little to say other than it’s “big news” — a point event compared to the daily feed of bombing announcements in Iraq, for example.

We’ve announced agreements with North Korea before, only to discover that the Korean language text differed from the English or Chinese text, so there was never a real agreement at all. Or as we found with the 1994 Agreed Framework (which seems quite similar in basic outlines to this new deal), perhaps neither side intends to follow through on its commitment (in the 1990s / early 2000s, the North Koreans continued their nuclear program despite the Agreed Framework, while the U.S., Korea, and Japan failed to deliver the heavy fuel oil or to build the “proliferation-safe” nuclear reactors that we promised to build under the Agreed Framework). Ultimately, this agreement is just a document that neither side has much ability to enforce; we’re in nearly the same situation we were in yesterday, where we can harangue each other at diplomatic conferences, but neither side has much compellance capability.

Dan Drezner posted some interesting commentary on yet another roadblock: the U.S. Congress might not agree to implement the deal, although Dan sees reason to believe that the Democrats might favor implementing something that looks a lot like the deal that a Democratic president negotiated in 1994. In his academic work, Dan has suggested that aid payments to adversaries are likely to elicit real policy change more often than we might think — more often than they might elicit real policy change from our friends. Perhaps so. This North Korea case might be a real test of the bribery side of economic statecraft (more generously called “linkage” by advocates): have we offered a big enough bribe to convince North Korea to make a real change to its national security policy? Such a bribe ought to be really big — but maybe we’ve found one that’s big enough. Or maybe they’ll just take the money and reneg. I’m no optimist on this one.

I am completely swamped by media requests on the North Korean nuclear test. I just wrapped up an hour-long program on KQED in San Francisco. All told, I’ve done over a dozen interviews in the past three days. Cato has published quite a few of studies on Korea over the years, and I have edited a number of these, so I am reasonably comfortable with the subject. And while I haven’t published much on the subject, that will soon change.

Rather than write a long post of my own, I wanted to point to some of the excellent articles that I have seen over the past few days, on the two most urgent foreign policy challenges facing the United States — North Korea and Iraq.

On North Korea:

Although most news stories and opinion articles have focused on what the United States must do, or has failed to do, with respect to the North Korean nuclear program, I have always argued that the threat posed by North Korea’s weapons program is far greater for its neighbors – especially China, South Korea, and Japan — than it is for the United States. Accordingly, these countries must take the lead in resolving the crisis, and this might mean putting aside long-standing suspicions and even hostility.

The United States obviously has an interest, not least because tens of thousands of American military personnel are stationed on the Korean peninsula and in Japan, well within range of conventional North Korean arms, let alone nukes, but it makes little sense for the United States to attempt to play a leading role in resolving the crisis. Much as leaders in both political parties would like to pin the blame on “the other guys”, there is in fact much blame to go around, and ultimately, this might be one of those truly vexing international problems that defy easy (or even palatable) solutions. In such a situation, one is frequently forced to choose from a list of unattractive options. That is where we are now. (Hint: That is where we are with Iran and Iraq, too.)

Two op eds which adopt the “less is more” approach (with respect to the U.S. role in the crisis) are:

Ted Galen Carpenter, “Chinese Must Pluck Kim From Nuke Perch,” New York Daily News, 10/10/06; and

Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman, “North Korea Isn’t Our Problem,” Los Angeles Times, 10/11/06.

(Lieven and Hulsman discussed their book Ethical Realism: A Vision for America’s Role in the World at Cato yesterday. The book includes a discussion about what to do about North Korea, as well as Iran and other aspiring nuclear weapons states.)

On Iraq:

News organizations have picked up on the recent study of civilian casualties in Iraq, which estimates that 600,000 have died as a result of the war. A similar study, released in October 2004, received relatively little coverage by the major media outlets, but was the subject of an hour-long radio program on the series “This American Life.”

This most recent study has narrowed the margin of error from the earlier study by polling more Iraqis, but both studies were based on accepted statistical sampling methods. It will be interesting to see if this most recent study gets more attention. (Indeed, it already has. See, for example, the stories in today’s New York Times, CNN and The Washington Post, among others).

On the subject of the dire situation in Iraq, Cato will be hosting Peter Galbraith, author of The End of Iraq, at a book forum at Noon on Thursday, October 19th. I will comment, as well as Marina Ottaway from the Carnegie Endowment. For more details visit the Cato web site.