The UN, US and Iraq IV

-- Josh Marshall
(November 14, 2003 -- 07:56 PM EDT // link // print)
A number of folks have raised a ruckus over a point I made Thursday night about the strained relations between the United States and South Korea (ROK).

Their beef is with this passage …

the deep strains in US-ROK relations … have deep roots. Much of it stems from difficulties adjusting to the end of the Cold War and Korean democracy itself, which is fairly new. But in no small measure the stance of the current South Korean government is the result of the Bush administration's aggressive and unilateral policies toward the Korean Peninsula.
How can I call White House policy unilateral, these folks ask, when the US has been trying to get six-party negotiations underway for months?

How? Easy.

Through the second half of the 1990s the situation on the Korean peninsula was governed by what the South Koreans called the ?'sunshine policy,' one of rapprochement with the North, and the so-called Agreed Framework. The latter was basically our deal to give the Koreans various stuff if they would shutter their plutonium-based drive for nuclear weapons.

Though imperfect and requiring revision, this approach was widely supported by our allies and sometime-allies in the region. Bill Clinton supported it. Colin Powell supported it, and wanted to continue it. But the White House didn't support it. And it got deep-sixed for that reason.

The defining encounter came in March 2001 when then-President Kim Dae Jung visited the White House only to be told by the president that we were withdrawing support for his policy. As Jessica Matthews, head of the Carnegie Endowment put it, President Bush took "the architect of the North-South reconciliation and … publicly humiliate[d] him."

For almost the next two years the White House pursued a bellicose and uncompromising policy vis-à-vis the North. Another defining moment came when the president labeled North Korea one of three members of the ?'axis of evil' in January 2002.

Now, first for ?'aggressive.'

There's a lively and complex debate about whether it was a good tactical move to apply this ?'axis of evil' label to North Korea. But however you come down on that point, so long as you have your brainstem securely attached, I do not see how you can say this does not constitute an 'aggressive' approach.

Now, as to 'unilateral'.

As I was saying, the administration pursued this policy pretty much against the wishes of everyone in the region for almost two years --- all the while salting it with invidious contrasts between Clintonian appeasement and President Bush's steely resolve.

Finally, in late 2002, the North Koreans called our bluff and it became clear we had little to back up our tough talk. Since then -- roughly since the spring of this year -- we've been trying to get everyone else in the region together to help us out of the jam. And for most of this year we've been slowly but surely making offers of various things that we said we'd never offer.

For much of that time, the response from other countries in the region has been that there's not that much to talk about until we put something on the table -- probably some offer of a security guarantee for the North Koreans. And the progress has been slow.

Now, just because our allies in the region didn't agree with our policy doesn't mean it wasn't the right policy. Similarly, just because we pursued the policy in defiance of their wishes doesn't mean it was a bad policy. But such an approach is pretty much the definition of a 'unilateral' policy.

What happened is that since the administration's unilateral policy hit a brick wall we've been trying to get the same regional allies on board to work our way out of the jam.

You don't need to know too much about foreign affairs to know that the term for such an approach isn't multilateralism but desperation, or perhaps multilateralism used in desperation after unilateralism has created grave damage.

Unilateralism has its place in limited situations. But let's not lie about it after the fact.

There is of course a telling and unfortunate parallel with the current situation in Iraq. Now that things are going south we're looking for help from anyone and everyone there too. But, again, that's desperation, not multilateralism. Does trying to get the South Koreans to send us a few troops change the fundamental character of our policy? Of course not. Everybody goes begging for help when they run out of options. That's human nature. The key is to avoid pursuing a policy based on recklessness and swagger that gets you into such a position in the first place.

In Iraq that is certainly where we are right now.

The president loaded us all into the family van, revved the thing up to 70 MPH, and slammed us into a brick wall called Reality.

-- Josh Marshall

Cheney ignored war chaos alert

British warnings that America was failing before the war to prepare properly for a crumbling security situation in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was ousted were ignored by Vice President Dick Cheney and the Pentagon.
In some of the first direct evidence of serious divisions between the key allies in the run-up to the conflict, the former British Ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, said the US had failed to focus on what might happen after Saddam had been overthrown...

In an interview with The Observer, Meyer, who was ambassador just before the war began, said there were a series of meetings between British and American officials between the signing of the United Nations Resolution 1441 last November and the start of the war in March.

The British regularly raised their concerns about how much planning was going on to secure the country after Saddam, but the issue was largely ignored.

MARC COOPER: Your new book focuses on Washington, Adams and Jefferson, but it seems from reading closely that it was actually Ben Franklin who turned out to be the most prescient regarding the future of the republic.

GORE VIDAL: Franklin understood the American people better than the other three. Washington and Jefferson were nobles ?- slaveholders and plantation owners. Alexander Hamilton married into a rich and powerful family and joined the upper classes. Benjamin Franklin was pure middle class. In fact, he may have invented it for Americans. Franklin saw danger everywhere. They all did. Not one of them liked the Constitution. James Madison, known as the father of it, was full of complaints about the power of the presidency. But they were in a hurry to get the country going. Hence the great speech, which I quote at length in the book, that Franklin, old and dying, had someone read for him. He said, I am in favor of this Constitution, as flawed as it is, because we need good government and we need it fast. And this, properly enacted, will give us, for a space of years, such government.

But then, Franklin said, it will fail, as all such constitutions have in the past, because of the essential corruption of the people. He pointed his finger at all the American people. And when the people become so corrupt, he said, we will find it is not a republic that they want but rather despotism ?- the only form of government suitable for such a people.



But Jefferson had the most radical view, didn't he? He argued that the Constitution should be seen only as a transitional document.

Oh yeah. Jefferson said that once a generation we must have another Constitutional Convention and revise all that isn't working. Like taking a car in to get the carburetor checked. He said you cannot expect a man to wear a boy's jacket. It must be revised, because the Earth belongs to the living. He was the first that I know who ever said that. And to each generation is the right to change every law they wish. Or even the form of government. You know, bring in the Dalai Lama if you want! Jefferson didn't care.

Jefferson was the only pure democrat among the founders, and he thought the only way his idea of democracy could be achieved would be to give the people a chance to change the laws. Madison was very eloquent in his answer to Jefferson. He said you cannot [have] any government of any weight if you think it is only going to last a year.

This was the quarrel between Madison and Jefferson. And it would probably still be going on if there were at least one statesman around who said we have to start changing this damn thing...

How do you think the current war in Iraq is going to play out?

I think we will go down the tubes right with it. With each action Bush ever more enrages the Muslims. And there are a billion of them. And sooner or later they will have a Saladin who will pull them together, and they will come after us. And it won't be pretty.

Besides, what do you think of all the US-wishes for this visit, e.g. closure of tube, imminity for US-agents in the case of the accidental shooting of a protester, demands for the US air force to patrol above London with fighter aircraft and Black Hawk helicopters and the shipping in of battlefield weaponry to use against rioter? (These extraordinary US demands have been turned down, however, by Ministers and Downing Street during preparations for the Bush visit. )

A new study by an independent military and intelligence expert who toured Iraq recently found no evidence that Saddam Hussein tried to transfer weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, met with top U.S. officials in Iraq, including David Kay, the CIA representative leading the search for chemical, biological and other unconventional weapons.

President Bush, in justifying the invasion and occupation of Iraq, said he feared Saddam, then Iraq's authoritarian president, would supply weapons of mass destruction to terrorist organizations such as al-Qaida.

"No evidence of any Iraqi effort to transfer weapons of mass destruction technology or weapons to terrorists. Only possibility was Saddam's Fedayeen, and talk only," Cordesman wrote of his briefing with Kay. The Fedayeen is the deposed leader's former paramilitary force.

"They're a wonderful medication -- not medication. How would you call it? They're called Ambien, which is very good. You don't use Ambien? Everybody here uses Ambien."