Left Flank

J. Thomas Schieffer, American ambassador to Japan, should be told that the national papers are not the White House intercom. Especially, that is, when he uses the newspaper to bitch and try to pull rank.

In his cable, sources said, Schieffer stressed that he does not believe that Japanese interests should dictate U.S. policy toward North Korea. But he warned the president that rumors were flying in Tokyo that the talks on removing North Korea from the terror list were progressing rapidly, which he suggested could potentially harm U.S. relations with its closest ally in the Pacific. He noted that Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill had assured him that North Korea needed to first show substantial progress on the abduction issue before any action was taken, but Schieffer said he was seeking direction and clarification in part because the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo appeared cut out of the process.

But, it's no surprise Ambassador Schieffer would take this route, when Congress and the State Department are going at it in the other papers. And, that's with this sparing going on in the House Foreign Relations Committee hearings with Assistant Secretary Christopher Hill.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers on the panel made clear their doubts about whether North Korea could be trusted to come clean on its nuclear activities and follow through on the denuclearization pledges.

«My fear is that we will settle for something less than hard decommission» of the North's nuclear reactor, said Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade.

Sherman accused the Bush administration of soft-pedaling doubts about North Korea to achieve a lone diplomatic success amid what he said were failures in Iraq and Iran.

«What I can assure you is that we are not playing 'trust me,'» Hill said of the U.S. dealings with North Korea. «We cannot conclude this process without getting to the heart of any proliferation concerns.»

Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton demanded that Hill share more information with Congress on reports that the Syrian targets bombed last month by Israel were buildings under construction similar in design to a North Korean reactor.

Such nuclear cooperation, denied by Syria and North Korea, would violate Pyongyang's nonproliferation pledges and could kill congressional support for the deal.

«You guys over at State can't keep this from Congress,» Burton said, noting that Congress is being asked to approve $106 million to pay for denuclearizing North Korea.

Hill told the panel he was unable to discuss national intelligence matters in an open hearing.

Speaking of hanging leaders (of both parties, retired or serving), I'm willing to give government officials the benefit of the doubt until the proof of their perfidy or incompetence is too overwhelming. After all, I elected a few of these people, so I can't gloat. But, arguing in public like this is worse than advertising the government's problems. Diplomatic negotiations and intelligence are off-limits in public discourse. The Bush administration has been fractious starting even with its transition before the inaugural, and it has infected Washington with that disease ever since then.

Do we have to clear the rolls before the next election and ban this rotten brood for the rest of their careers?

Former Bush administration Special Envoy to the DPRK, Charles L. «Jack» Pritchard delivered a speech on August 9, 2007 (plugging his new book) at The Korea Society (mp3 file):

In recent years, North Korea?s pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability has gone from being a disturbing prospect to a frightening reality. The Six-Party Talks to end Pyongyang?s nuclear programs have generated some optimism, with the latest round resulting in the shutdown of the Yongbyon reactor, but daunting obstacles loom over further progress. How did we get here?

Ambassador Pritchard has valuable insights into the badly run Bush administration, a story all too familiar from Iraq War coverage. Still, the real problem with the DPRK is not the North Koreans themselves, but with how the situation in the DPRK affects the overall nuclear non-proliferation regime. Emphasizing bilateral relations becomes a rhetorical exercise without end. The DPRK is only as important as the Northeast Asian region and the NPT regime is to the US. Any other argument is just an excuse why the Bush administration shouldn't let itself become totally submerged in Iraq and that region and totally ignore subject areas where it cannot come away with clean political victories.

Caveat: This is not a book review; I have not read this book. I was interested in the opinions expressed in these two book reviews. But, for a complete account of the war, I recommend William Stueck's The Korean War and Rethinking the Korean War.

David Halberstam's last book, The Coldest Winter, about the Korean War, is receiving attention more for its author's career than the subject.

Two reviews, by Stephen Sestanovich and Erik Spanberg, caught my attention for what each said, not for the book each agreed was important, but if only for its author. Sestanovich concludes:

The Korean War that David Halberstam describes offers echo after echo of our contemporary predicament, or at least of one reading of it. His story is all about the hijacking of American policy, the fomenting of national hysteria, and the disaster that follows. But he would have written a truer?and, for that matter, a more useful?book if he had admitted how many people in high positions thought the policy was both necessary and right. For an understanding of the insidious workings of consensus, rather than of conspiracy, The Best and the Brightest would have been an excellent place to start.

Spanberg concludes:

No one won much of anything, but the ripples and lessons of political and military hubris echo to the present. «The Coldest Winter» is a fitting, warm tribute to the art of reporting, the most appropriate epitaph imaginable for David Halberstam.

What about the Koreas today? What about the Six-Party talks at least? Has the Iraq War and partisan politics in America warped perception so completely, that all of history is a lesson about the Bush administration? Both reviewers agree on Halberstam's main thesis: General MacArthur was the problem. But, there were over two years left to a sausage-grinder of a war, in which battles often occurred for no reason but diplomatic leverage. Spanberg punctuates what for me is one of the enduring legacies of the war.

Late in the book, Halberstam skips over large portions of the war's final two years, exhausted, no doubt, by the endless skirmishes over anonymous hills and villages for little to no gain on both sides.

That is a minor quibble in a book filled with insight and marvelous detail. Some of Halberstam's work in recent years smacked of a reporting treadmill, churned out too quickly. With «The Coldest Winter,» it is clear that Halberstam invested all of his considerable talents - and energy - without being rushed to meet a publishing deadline.

Within the tedious diplomatic exchanges at Panmumjon lies the record of the infuriating tactics Pyongyang has honed to a science in the last 50 years. The casualties and deaths compiled on those Korean hills while diplomats talked is a harbinger of decades of murderous economic development and political infighting in both Koreas, and, possibly, of a future war. America could not end the war then in victory, and America has not found a way to end a war still stuck in armistice. The denizens of the DPRK's gulags are a testament to that inhumanly brutal and frustrating legacy.

Rovin: «Of course, this all falls under the category of diplomacy, which (according to the left) the Bush Administration has no interest in pursuing.»

What else could all this be? Is it the past repeating itself?

On May 23, 1997, Mohammad Khatami's unexpected election as Iran's president sparked hopes within the Clinton administration of Iran-US rapprochement. Khatami stoked these hopes even further when he sat down on January 7, 1998 with CNN's Christiane Amanpour for an interview, in which he said all the right things to facilitate dialogue. What ensued was years of carefully crafted secret messages and gestures initiated by both states, as all the while events threatened to derail any progress towards reconciliation.

The Clinton administration used a variety of tools to express its wishes. In October, 1997, it removed Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) from the official list of terrorist groups.  In 1998, Vice-President Al Gore, Jr. sent a message to Iran through the Saudis. In May, 1998, the US granted waivers to the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act to European companies. In December, 1998, President Clinton removed Iran from the list of terrorist states exporting narcotics. On April 12, 1999, President Clinton made remarks at a formal White House dinner about seeking an «accommodation» with Iran. Even when the Saudis gave the Clinton administration proof of Iranian complicity in the bombing of the Khobar Towers, the Clinton administration refused to announce its findings.These diplomatic maneuvers are just a sampling of the many tactics the Clinton administration, which early in its first term had put Iran on the official list of terrorist states.

it seems the Bush administration is traveling the same road with Syria, from «Axis of Evil» now to conferences, that the Clinton administration pursued with Iran in the late 1990s. The Clinton administration tried «Dual Containment», and on numerous occasions considered military strikes. The tactics don't change, only the players.

What got me thinking about this was Ed Morrissey's conjectural piece (and Ken Pollack's book on Iran):

It seems odd to include Syria in this conference, given current circumstances. The US just green-lighted an attack on a rogue nuclear facility in Syria, and Syria just assassinated another Lebanese politician in a car-bomb attack. Bashar Assad doesn't seem particularly interested in getting along with his neighbors, even the Muslim nations on his border. After the Israeli raid, Assad could get motivated by self-preservation, but his support for Hamas and Hezbollah doesn't give much confidence that Syria will add any productive energy to this effort.

Of course, too, the analogy to the Clinton administration and Iran might turn into template for a conference with Iran and Iraq in the wake of this conference.

What exactly happened at Dayr az-Zwar, regardless of «what» was recovered or not, becomes even more interesting, but possibly little more than prologue. It all also makes the Six-Party talks timeline seem wholly normal by comparison. The only palpable difference is the public disagreements between administration hawks and State department diplomats played out on the world stage.

Yes, this is diplomacy! Finally, in the eleventh hour the Bush administration is getting serious.

(Oh, and the comments sections at CQ have some choice speculation.)