JVLV: DNI JAMES CLAPPER´S MYSTERIOUS MISSION TO N. KOREA; “WALTZ ME AROUND AGAIN, WILLY?” By Dr. Jiri Valenta with Leni Friedman Valenta 11-8-14

                DNI General James Clapper’s mission to Pyongyang on the eve of President Obama ‘visit to Beijing, sounds mysterious.  Yes, the release of two American prisoners from a North Korean jail was a good thing, yet we must learn more about the Obama message Clapper delivered to the North Korean dictator.  Our concern is that American presidents never seem to learn, but generally undertake not well thought through missions with the brutal, N. Korean dictators.

 Don´t we know the steps of this waltz by now?  Menacing threats against democratic U.S. allies, South Korea and/or Japan, and/or involving actual development and testing of WMD or its delivery system. ,, “We are crazy,” is the implicit message, “and you better send a high level person to mollify us and give our starving country (above all its nomenclature and military) economic aid.” Note that this Asian charade is usually staged as the presidential tenure nears its end, particularly if the president is embattled and seeks a legacy breakthrough.  Never mind if it´s phony promise of disarmament or verification, or nonproliferation.  What matters is that U.S. high level visits and negotiations help to legitimize and fund the regime.    

The Clinton administration fell into the trap after sending special envoy Jimmy Carter (who else?) to Pyongyang in 1994.  In October 2000, Clinton sent Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.    Her successor, Secretary Condi Rice, described Albright’s mission rather unkindly as her “… somewhat infamous visit…” complete with a stadium presentation of more than 100,000 North Koreans in a ‘”cultural performance…”’ intended to achieve enough to allow President Clinton to visit the ‘”hermit kingdom.”’    Poor Madeleine!  The presidential visit was not achieved, nor was the intended goal of verifying U.N, inspections of nuclear development and turning over spent fuel rods.   

However, critical Condi dittoed the mistake.  In October 2008, before the presidential election, the North Korean dictator tried to lure another high envoy into his hermit kingdom.   Unlike Clinton, President Bush rejected that option. “No!  That would really legitimize him!”  Rice then drew criticism from Vice President Dick Cheney for trying to reach a nuclear weapons agreement with North Korea through concessions that to him were an absolute mistake.  He recorded Rice saying to Bush, ‘“Mr. President, this is just the way diplomacy works sometimes. You don´t always get a written agreement.”’  No, you don´t.   Especially with someone who is the soul of honesty, probity and good will towards America like the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong II.  And particularly when it concerns the dictator´s committing himself to nuclear non- proliferation. 

Calling Rice´s advice on this s issue “utterly misleading,”  Cheney complains of her  having departed from the original, six-party regional diplomacy and having made … concession after concession to North Korea and turned a blind eye to their misdeeds.”’    Sadly, her policies regarding North Korea were approved by Bush on October 10, 2008.  Incredibly too, North Korea was removed by Rice, with Bush´s approval, from the State Department´s list of terrorist-sponsoring states!  Commented Cheney, “It was a sad moment, because it seemed to be a repudiation of the Bush doctrine and a reversal of so much of what we had accomplished in the area of non-proliferation in the first term.”  Recalled Donald Rumsfeld, “Rice and [Ambassador Christopher] Hill seemed to believe they could obtain an agreement with North Korea to end its WMD programs.”  The issue was also a struggle over bureaucratic turf.  As Rumsfeld also noted, Rice and Hill made clear, “that North Korea was the State Department´s issue alone, and that the views of the Defense Dept. would carry little weight.”

We still don´t know the details of Clapper´s present mission.  Clapper, unlike Albright and Rice, is an old North Korea watcher for decades.  He and his analysts may be on to something.  However, Pyongyang promises should be taken with a spoonful of salt.     Meanwhile, rather than giving in to usual pattern of blackmail, U.S. high level visits, we should firmly say no to” Waltz me Around Again Willy."

  Let us explore policies leading to the eventual unification of the Korean peninsula as proposed by brilliant, former CIA analyst,  Sue Mi Terry in “A Korea Whole and Free,” “Foreign Affairs, July-Aug., 2014.   New, bold , hard-nosed initiatives, void of providing legitimacy for the North Korean regime, are very much in order.   We must encourage  political, economic and human rights ideas  towards  peaceful reunification,  this blog is written on a day when we celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the destruction of the Berlin Wall.  Days before that event, nobody anticipated Germany´s unification.  It came within  months of the fall of the wall.  No more “Waltz Me Around Again Willy!”

A graduate of the  School of Nuclear Techniques, Prague Czechoslovakia, and Ph.D. recipient from  Johns Hopkins SAIS, 1976, Dr. Jiri Valenta is a President of the Institute of Post-Communist Studies and Terrorism. Among others, his book on Soviet Decision-Making for National Security was translated into Chinese and published by the Chinese People’s Army.  He has been twice invited to lecture by both the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing, but also by the Institute of international Relations in Taipei, Taiwan.