Finally some sanity on North Korea and Iran...
Two excellent op-eds in the Washington Post, today, that point us in a better direction for both North Korea and Iran...
Donald Gregg, the former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, and Don Oberdorfer, chairman of the U.S. Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, write brilliantly about the central problem in dealings with North Korea (and with Iran): recognizing the obvious failure of the current policy...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090501144.html
"Why, at such a time, choose sanctions, a policy option whose historical record is overwhelmingly one of failure? One possible reason is that sanctions give vent to the visceral hostility that senior Bush administration officials feel toward North Korea. Another is that sanctions could be a defense, however inadequate, against political charges that the administration has done little or nothing to slow North Korea's nuclear programs. But a sanctions-based policy ignores the damage it would do to those in North Korea seeking transformational change and greater openness. Some longtime foreign observers believe such trends are gathering force.
Some high in the Bush administration have argued that dangerous actions by North Korea are likely whether or not the United States undertakes new sanctions against Pyongyang. Perhaps so, but they are much more likely if, instead of carrot-and-stick negotiations, the administration withdraws all previous carrots and multiplies the sticks. In this case a U.S. administration will have to share the blame with North Korea if a new international crisis erupts."
I disagree with the notions that negotiations of carrots and sticks are the best negotiation...they can have impact, carrots especially...but the best policy would be a policy of engagement where Bush Administration and U.S. leadership makes an honest and convincing case of the threat of nuclear proliferation and of hostility between the U.S. and North Korea to the interests of the North Korean and the American people (which is the most honest and obvious reason to end nuclear proliferation)...
As these two very astute authors note, more sticks will get more of the same problem we have currently...and communication and negotation are the only way out of this mess...
But more than communication, what needs to change is the motivation for the U.S. government and any other governments in approaching these talks...they need to happen for the good of both the American and the North Korean people, and both governments need to be working toward that end...the Bush Administration and any Administration cannot work toward that end until they genuinely believe that end...so they must face, honestly, their more selfish impulses, and be led by a more honest concern for the North Korean people as well as for the American people...absent that, the North Korean government and the North Korean people will always feel manipulated by the machinations of the American government and the American people, and no sustainable resolution to the proliferation issue can result...it will always be contigent on carrots and sticks because we never worked for something better...so if we want something better, then we need to expect better from ourselves and then lead in that direction rather than leading down the more self-centered path that we have taken in international policy for the last 6 years...
Post columnist David Ignatius writes a similar, less strategic, but still more constructive article than most of what is written about or said and done with the Iranian government from any of the parties involved, right now, which is looking for common ground and trying to understand the Iranian position...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090501134.html
As Gregg and Oberdorfer describe for North Korea, threats of military action, sanctions, and other approaches that have clearly failed demonstrate, such actions only threaten these two far from trustworthy regimes and make them more likely to pursue weapons as an act of defiance, but I would add as a perceived need for self-defense...if a government links three governments as an Axis of Evil, invades one, and then orders the others to give up weapons regarded by themselves as needed for self-defense, it makes it all the more likely that those governments will act both defiantly -- since they don't recognize the Western Powers or the United Nations as legitimate authorities, rightly or wrongly -- and act on behalf of their self-defense when they have reason to believe they might be attacked, which every threat of military action or ever time that military action is mentioned as not being off the table clearly gives them rational reason to believe that they need to pursue...
We point a gun at Iran and North Korea and tell them to do what we say or be shot...they're first thought, get a gun...
So that's what they're doing...and we are so stupid and arrogant in our swagger that it doesn't even occur to us, "Oh, yeah...if I had a gun pointed at me, my first thought would be to get a gun..."
"...unless...unless I trusted the person with the gun"...which they clearly don't...and we want them to trust us, then we need to earn that trust...
And if we don't earn that trust, then we can expect that we will get both defiance and a very logical sense of a need for self-defense...we've made threats about invading their countries...what did we expect?
Arrogantly, we expected nothing...because we aren't concerned with the Iranian and North Korean people genuinely enough...because we are far more self-involved and self-concerned than we would like to admit...
And self-absorption and self-centeredness has consequences...
And understanding others and their motivations has consequences, as well...which is exactly the point of these authors...understanding, and building understanding through communication and engagement, has better consequences than does threats and force, as a general rule...threats and force can have short term favorable consequences, which desolve over time, since the threat dilutes itself the more it is used...
Thought, engagement, communication and mutual understanding are far more effective and do far less harm...to others and to their sense of safety in a world that is far too dangerous, as it is, notwithstanding our constant threatening, bullying, and forceful efforts...
You want to see how dysfunctional a forceful environment can be, go to Palestine or Iran or North Korea or Cuba or a million more autocratic places in the world where force is proscribed -- as it has by the long trend of humanity's history, unsuccessfully, which is why humanity gives it up to make movements forward, meaning to more authentically progress -- and where fear and threat are more the norm in the world...
It's an awful way to live...and the sad, sad tragedy of the whole thing is that is doesn't do a lick of real good...it just suppresses problems and leaves them in hiding, rather than dealing with them more honestly...
Ever wonder why so many awful things like murder (in the case of Abraham of his son Isaac) or incest (in the case of Lot with his two daughters) are rationalized by the Bible as if they are better than they really are?
I don't...because awful realities have been rationalized from the beginning of time to account for our terrible inability to face our failures...not just our moral or personal or political failures...but our failures as people to teach limits effectively...
Aggression typically surpresses social realities, it does not make them go away...people have always done bad...they just did it more undercover in the past...and the more we try to repress peoples' need for freedom and to make choices, as in the case of alcohol or drug prohibition, the more we likely we make it that they will identify with those who make even the most dangerous choices, like murder or rape, and the more we create underground cultures that subvert our highest values...
The highest murder rates in the United States have occurred when alcohol prohibition was at its height, in 1933, and when the drug war was at its height, in the early 1980's through the early 1990's...
The reason...because prohibition created an underground and popular illegal trade that was then, because it was illegal, enforced by the illegal vendors in that trade...organized crime and the mafia with alcohol at the beginning of the 20th century...and organized crime and gangs at the end of the 20th century...
And like the Iranian and North Korean leaders, the more we threaten those involved in that trade, rather than deal with force only when real physical threats present themselves and make appeals to conscience with them and with those involved with genuine leadership that is genuinely concerned with their well-being, the less they will play ball and the more they will be defiant...
Threats and force only work in the short term...and they have costs when they are used for more self-centered ends and ends less genuinely concerned with others...
And one of the most important costs is that they generally and often make our goal harder, not easier, to achieve...
It's a lesson to be learned from Iran and North Korea...
And these two articles (as well as David Broder's Washington Post column on Karl Rove, today) are two good signs that some people are starting to learn the lesson...
Love,
Ben
