Failed Diplomacy: The Tragic Story of How North Korea Got the Bomb | 
|  | | | Title: | Failed Diplomacy: The Tragic Story of How North Korea Got the Bomb | | Author: | Charles L. Pritchard | | Publisher: | Brookings Institution Press | | Type: | Book / Hardcover | | Publication Date: | 11 May, 2007 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0815772009 / 9780815772002 | | List Price: | $26.95 | | You Save: | $5.39 | | Amazon Price: | $21.56 | |
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Product Description
North Korea's development of nuclear weapons raises fears of nuclear war on the peninsula and the specter of terrorists gaining access to weapons of mass destruction. It also represents a dangerous and disturbing breakdown in U.S. foreign policy. Failed Diplomacy: The Tragic Story of How North Korea Got the Bomb offers an insider's view of what went wrong and allowed this isolated nation--a charter member of the Axis of Evil--to develop nuclear weapons. Charles L. "Jack" Pritchard was intimately involved in developing America's North Korea policy under Presidents Clinton and Bush. Here, he offers an authoritative analysis of recent developments on the Korean peninsula and reveals how the Bush administration s mistakes damaged the prospects of controlling nuclear proliferation. Although multilateral negotiations continue, Pritchard proclaims the Six-Party Talks as a failure. Pritchard's chronicle begins in earnest with suspicions over North Korea's uranium enrichment program in 2002, leading to the demise of the Clinton-era Agreed Framework. Subsequently, Pyongyang kicked out international monitors and restarted its nuclear weapons program. Pritchard provides a first-hand account of how the Six-Party Talks were initiated and offers a play-by-play account of each round of negotiations, detailing the national interests of the key players—China, Japan, Russia, both Koreas, and the United States. The author believes the failure to prevent Kim Jong Il from "going nuclear" points to the need for a permanent security forum in Northeast Asia that would serve as a formal mechanism for dialogue in the region. Hard-hitting and insightful, Failed Diplomacy offers a stinging critique of the Bush administration's manner and policy in dealing with North Korea. More hopefully, it suggests what can be learned from missed opportunities.
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Customer Reviews:
• How Refusal To Negotiate Led To Worst Outcome 27 December, 2007
This book comprises three distinct essays, written at some months' intervals and taking stock of the Bush administration's policy toward North Korea. The first essay is a personal account of the author trying to establish bilateral discussions with Pyongyang in his capacity as the special envoy for negotiations with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, only to be rebuffed by hard-liners of the Pentagon and the National Security Council, arguing, as vice president Cheney once did, that "We don't negotiate with evil, we destroy it".
This is a very frustrating story because the essence of diplomacy is negotiation but the author spent more time negotiating wit his own administration than communicating with North Korea, which he could only do through circumvoluted routes. One of the problems was that there was no Korea hand advising the Bush team, and State Department officials (including the author, although he came from an army background) were regarded with distrust by other members of the government apparatus, who tended to have the upper hand in setting policies.
Another problem was the inflammatory rhetoric and personalization of attacks that made the US cast North Korea in the "axis of evil" and North Korea reciprocate by escalating its nuclear program. One is struck by the very undiplomatic and aggressive nature of the libels traded between the two countries' leaders. Says Bush: "Look, Kim Jong-il is a dangerous person. He's a man who starves his people. He's got huge concentration camps". Answers Pyongyang in the party's newspaper: "Bush is the world's worst fascist dictator, a first-class warmaniac and Hitler, Jr, who is jerking his hands stained with blood of innocent people".
The second, shorter part is an analysis of the key countries that were to take part in multilateral talks with North Korea. We learn that Russia's participation in the six-party talks was rather accidental: it was added to the group after the Russian foreign minister had asked Colin Powell "whose idea it was to exclude Russia" from the negotiating table. We also learn that Japan always kept its own agenda regarding North Korea, and refused to inform the US of its contacts ahead of prime minister Koizumi's first trip to Pyongyang in September 2002.
President Bush was off to a bad start with South Korea, interrupting his first phone call to president Kim Dae-jung by asking his aide: "Who is this guy? I can't believe how naive he is". Seoul's conciliatory policy toward Pyongyang and its efforts to moderate Washington come from its geopolitical position: next to conflict on the peninsula, Koreans most fear a division of Northeast Asia into hostile camps that would pit the US and Japan against China and North Korea. As one Korea hand veteran confides to the author, "Korea is always the loser when larger nations quarrel".
China's highest concern regarding the DPRK is to maintain stability along its border and to prevent a collapse of the regime. Exerting restraint on the North Korean regime and preventing its ally to play nuclear blackmail against the US comes only second. The author notes that even at the height of international pressures on North Korea after the country declared itself a nuclear weapons state in 2005, China actuall increased its exports of oil and food to its neighbour.
The last part establishes a scorecard of the first rounds of six-party talks. It is based mostly on press coverage and official communiques, although the author (who had resigned from his position by then) also had direct access to North Korean officials during a second track diplomacy mission to Pyongyang. One major change came with the appointment of ambassador Christopher Hill a the assistant secretary for East Asia and Pacific affairs at the State Department and as the head of delegation for discussions with North Korea. His predecessor is described as a wimpy character, arguing for instance that "'Peace Talks' is a Democratic term. This is a Republican administration; we need to think of something different to use". By contrast, ambassador Hill was given more latitude to negotiate, which resulted in the first-ever bilateral discussions between the two countries during the Bush administration.
But the author's final indictment of the Bush administration's policy toward North Korea is devastating. "US policy toward North Korea has been a failure. North Korea has succeeded in restarting its nuclear facilities, extracted significant amounts of plutonium, openly declared that it possesses nuclear weapons, by some accounts outmaneuvered the United States diplomatically, advanced its missile program, and exploited the differences in policy approach between the United States and South Korea. The inexperience of most administration officials in dealing with North Korea and the discrepancy between the administration's stated goal of negotiating a peaceful resolution and its desire to see the regime collapse have been significant contributors to policy failure. As a result, the United States is less safe now than it was at the beginning of 2001 and the alliance with South Korea is in worst shape".
In the end, the reader doesn't know how North Korea got the bomb: it is a story that is left for future historians to uncover, and this will not happen before the two Koreas reunite and open secret archives to researchers. The story that is told only covers a limited period of negotiations with the US, and presents a rather partial veiwpoint, as the author obviously has an axe to grind with the Bush administration. One only hopes that the next administration will take on the job with less preconceived ideas, and that it will achieve better results.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3IKQVN8N8AKRY
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