Kim Jong Il has always been pretty wacky, with his bouffant hair and awkward habit of kidnapping actresses while starving his people, but at least the diminutive Dear Leader was someone you could talk with now and then. Today, with a stroke-damaged Kim apparently in eclipse and North Korea erupting out of control again, Barack Obama has a serious problem. As much as he might like to, it doesn't look as if the president has anyone to engage with, even in North Korea's traditional language of blackmail.
The puzzle in Pyongyang is bad enough for Obama, but it's just one part of a larger problem now facing Washington.
On a number of perilous fronts -- Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Mideast -- this most diplomatically oriented of American presidents, who came into office four months ago eager for "engagement," has few responsible or dependable parties with whom he can negotiate. As a result, despite Obama's best intentions, each of these foreign-policy problems is likely to grow much worse"”possibly disastrously worse"”before it gets any better.
Kim's on-again, off-again receptiveness proved especially useful after North Korea's 2006 nuclear test; his willingness to talk led to two years of welcome calm and a near agreement between Washington and Pyongyang. That calm has been dramatically shattered by North Korea's sudden spate of nuclear and missile tests and its recent burst of rhetorical belligerence. The emerging consensus is that both are signs of a power struggle in the Hermit Kingdom, with the half-century-old family business that is North Korea going through some kind of rocky transition.
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"My gut sense is, all this is being driven from the inside," says Victor Cha, a North Korea expert at Georgetown who served on George W. Bush's second-term National Security Council. "The thing we don't know right now is where this [succession] process is taking place. Is it at the beginning or the end?"
The series of threats from the North has been without precedent in its swiftness and has not been a response to any U.S. action, says Cha, indicating that regime insiders are trying to outdo each other in demonstrating their hardline credentials. Whereas in 2006 the nuclear standoff was resolved in part because of Chinese contacts with the North, now "maybe the Chinese don't know who to talk to," Cha says.
1 2 Next Page » Share: newsweek:http://www.newsweek.com/id/199668 var url = 'http://content.pulse360.com/ABECBB72-0E78-11DE-86AA-F5793FF5047F'; url += '?CommercialNode=' + commercialNode; // NOTE :: The "scr" + "ipt" break is essential, presumably to bypass loose // js/DOM safeguards against doing what we want to do here. document.write('"); var isAuthenticated = false; Discuss Enter Your Comment NWK.widget.CommentsSubmit.form = $('#comment-form'); NWK.widget.CommentsSubmit.init(); placeAd2('comments/'+commercialNode,'88x31|2',false,''); Sponsored by Member Comments Reply Report Abuse Posted By: concerned liberal @ 05/28/2009 11:11:26 AM
N. korea is always willing to talk if the talk is about something that will be given to him for saying he will not do something that of course he will remain doing, you know the American specialty of flushing tax dollars!
Reply Report Abuse Posted By: OutsideLookInside @ 05/28/2009 10:11:24 AM
Engagments with rogue states does not happen over night, Obama has already engaged Chavez, Iranian people (he sent them a new year message), and also engaged Turkey, he is engaging Mahmood Abbas for negotiations in Isreal-Arab peace... he has not been in the office for even 6 month yet. Regards
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On a number of perilous fronts"”Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Mideast"”this most diplomatically oriented of American presidents, who came into office four months ago eager for "engagement," has few responsible or dependable parties with whom he can negotiate. As a result, despite Obama's best intentions, each of these foreign-policy problems is likely to grow much worse"”possibly disastrously worse"”before it gets any better.
Kim's on-again, off-again receptiveness proved especially useful after North Korea's 2006 nuclear test; his willingness to talk led to two years of welcome calm and a near agreement between Washington and Pyongyang. That calm has been dramatically shattered by North Korea's sudden spate of nuclear and missile tests and its recent burst of rhetorical belligerence. The emerging consensus is that both are signs of a power struggle in the Hermit Kingdom, with the half-century-old family business that is North Korea going through some kind of rocky transition.
"My gut sense is, all this is being driven from the inside," says Victor Cha, a North Korea expert at Georgetown who served on George W. Bush's second-term National Security Council. "The thing we don't know right now is where this [succession] process is taking place. Is it at the beginning or the end?"
The series of threats from the North has been without precedent in its swiftness and has not been a response to any U.S. action, says Cha, indicating that regime insiders are trying to outdo each other in demonstrating their hardline credentials. Whereas in 2006 the nuclear standoff was resolved in part because of Chinese contacts with the North, now "maybe the Chinese don't know who to talk to," Cha says.
N. korea is always willing to talk if the talk is about something that will be given to him for saying he will not do something that of course he will remain doing, you know the American specialty of flushing tax dollars!
Engagments with rogue states does not happen over night, Obama has already engaged Chavez, Iranian people (he sent them a new year message), and also engaged Turkey, he is engaging Mahmood Abbas for negotiations in Isreal-Arab peace... he has not been in the office for even 6 month yet. Regards
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