JVLV: TOWARDS A NEW, BOLD TRUMP APPROACH TO NORTH KOREA, by Jiri Valenta with Leni Friedman Valenta

                 Unafraid, Bi-partisan, Uphold U.S. and Freedom



 

  “Waltz Me Around Again Willy!”



This old song comes to mind while assessing the 9-page letter, full of threats, unwarranted accusations and pathetic demands, sent to  President-elect Donald Trump by North Korean leader Kim-jong-UN, on November 22, 2016. In a televised statement, dictator announced his military is about to test its first intercontinental ballistic missile: a rocket that can be equipped with nuclear weapons and can  reach the continental United States. 

 Don´t we know the steps of this U.S. - North Korean 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, and when a new one is about to take office.  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 both 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, 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 invoke a presidential visit to  the “hermit kingdom.”   But the intended goal of verifying U.N. inspections of nuclear development and turning over spent fuel rods was not achieved.   



 

Condi, after she became Secretary of State,  dittoed the mistake.  In October 2008, before the presidential election, the North Korean dictator tried to lure another high envoy into his hermit kingdom.    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  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!



 

  “It was a sad moment,” commented Cheney, “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.”  It appears that pie in the sky is  much less visible than missile tests.   The administration couldn’t even achieve agreement within its own ranks. As Rumsfeld also noted, Rice and Hill made clear, “that North Korea was the State Department´s turf alone, and that the views of the Defense Dept. would carry little weight.”



 

Obama also sent DNI James Clapper on a secret, 2014 mission to North Korea, ostensibly to secure the release of two hostages, which he did.  But we still don´t know all the details of the presidential message. Perhaps Obama or Clapper will tell us at one point. Meanwhile,  Pyongyang promises should be taken with a spoonful of salt. Lesson? Rather than giving in to usual pattern of blackmail, hostage-taking, promises, withdrawal from negotiations, U.S. high level visits, resumption of negotiations, more lies and more threats, we should firmly say "no" to another waltz with Willy.



 

It seems that our new president will be taking this path.  He and Defense Secretary “Mad Dog” Mattis, and NSA General Mike Flynn, are surely busy looking at their options, while they sit out this dance.  We hope they are considering appropriate military plans ift he dictator goes ahead with his threats, something similar to what  Bill Clinton seriouosly considered before he sent Madeleine Albright to waltz with Willy.



 

 

 But whatever the last resort option might be, the new one has to be framed within the new doctrine of a political solution 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.   We must encourage  political, economic and human rights policies in North Korea, with both the strategic and tactical backing of above all South Korea, but also Japan. Let us also hope for at least the acquiescence of China in coping with a major threat to world peace.  



 

No more waltzes please, Willy.