Highly recommended analysis. This is the one to take the time to read fully this weekend.
North Korea is simply the latest failure highlighting a foreign policy hobbled by ideological flights of fancy and a remarkable inability to recognize the limits of U.S. power to remake distasteful realities. When the paintball revolutionary who penned Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech popped up this week with a prescription for the Korea crisis that included forcing South Korea to starve North Korea, encouraging Japan to build nuclear weapons, and inviting Taiwan to NATO meetings in order to “punish” China, what became abundantly clear was that the Administration has suffered all along from an absence of adult supervision.
Colin Powell was always treated like the hired help by the berserk brats he was supposed to be minding. And it was on North Korea that this first became apparent. Powell had been on the job scarcely three weeks when he told reporters that the new administration would be pursuing the engagement strategy of the Clinton team, and was publicly rebuked by Bush, who also made clear his disdain for South Korea’s ‘Sunshine’ policy of engaging the North. The Cheney crowd was having none of it, and appeared to have persuaded Bush that by sheer force of its “moral clarity,” the U.S. could smite those deemed “evil” from its path. Regime-change, not engagement that propped up Kim Jong-il was what they wanted, and this clearly appealed to a president who made no secret of his loathing of Kim. Of course, “regime-change” was a non-starter in the real world, not only because the U.S. couldn’t make it happen without at least a million Koreans being killed, but also because it was flatly rejected by South Korea – whose protection was ostensibly the purpose of the U.S. presence on the peninsula. (For four decades, South Korea had been a military dictatorship ready to do Washington’s bidding; when it finally became a democracy in the early 90s it began adopting positions increasingly at odds with those of the U.S.)
Nobody had any interest in “regime-change,” but the “moral clarity” imperative allowed the hawks to reject any real engagement with North Korea. The result was a hybrid policy that went nowhere, eventually forcing the U.S. to accept the six-party process but never doing what it was going to take – as China and South Korea repeatedly implored – to make it work: direct U.S.-North Korea talks, and security guarantees offered to Pyongyang from the only power it truly feared. That’s why there’s so much pressure on the U.S. five days after North Korea’s announcement to retract its policy of no diret talks. That’ll happen eventually, of course (either on this administration’s watch or the next). And Powell may permit himself a wry smile.
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…So now, it’s Condi Rice traveling around the world touting “transformational diplomacy,” spreading “creative chaos” in order to change the world, lecturing all and sundry as she went on the error of their ways. Naturally, this approach does little to sway neutrals, or even allies. The essence of diplomacy is conversation: The Bush Administration’s failure to grasp this is evident in one of Bush’s arguments against talking directly to North Korea – “They know our position.”
Obviously, the megaphone approach doesn’t lend itself to listening to others. And the basis of diplomacy is listening to others and taking account of their concerns as you push your own agenda – you win the game by articulating your positions in a way that accomodates and addresses the concerns and interests of those you’re facing across the table.
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Perhaps blinded by its own sense of moral authority or raw power, the Bush Administration has often failed to ask the most basic question of international cooperation: Are there mutual interests that can create agreement for united action among disparate parties.…
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The Bush Administration won’t talk to Iran, North Korea, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood…. To talk to them, say the hawks, would legitimize them. That’s just plain dumb. None of these political entities is dependent on U.S. recognition for their political status. The legitimacy of Hamas and Hizballah, for example, is established at the ballot box and on the ground through popular actions. Denying them contact with the U.S. hardly weakens the regimes in Tehran, Pyongyang or Damascus, it simply weakens the U.S. ability to anticipate, manage and resolve dangerous conflicts. What I find particularly ironic about this position is that it’s adopted in the name of a Reaganesque “Moral Clarity.” Sure, Reagan had the “moral clarity” to denounce the Soviet Union as “Evil,” but he still pursued the most extensive engagement with its leaders of any U.S. President.… Article
