The U.S. State Department of North Korea
In the Six-Party Talks with North Korea, it gets ever more difficult to tell which side of this erstwhile hexagon Condi Rice’s State Department is negotiating for. On Feb. 6, the U.S. special envoy to these talks, Chris Hill, gave the Senate Foreign Relations Committee an update on the North Korea denuclearization agreement reached almost a year ago, which keeps running into snags such as North Korea’s insistence on first receiving a refund of some $25 million in allegedly crime-tainted funds frozen in Macau (which Hill arranged for Kim Jong Il to receive last spring, but Hill did not bother to mention that in his testimony), and North Korea’s missing the Dec. 31, 2007 deadline for giving a full declaration of its nuclear program (which Hill did mention, but he doesn’t want that to get in the way of the deal with North Korea).
Glance down in this link for a video of Hill’s spoken testimony, now posted prominently on the State Department web site. It’s about 23 minutes long, so if you have better things to do than watch the entire performance, the part to catch is the opening statement in which Hill mentions the Dec. 31 deadline missed by North Korea. Except he doesn’t put the blame squarely on North Korea, where it belongs. What he says is: “We have not met that deadline.”
Stop that tape. Who is “we”…?
Later in Hill’s testimony, he does it again. “We are not at all happy that we’ve missed our deadline.”
Right-o, but who is “we” working for?
That’s just a sample of the statements here that start to sound like out-takes from The Manchurian Candidate. There are such stunning moments as Hill’s mention in passing that North Korea needs to improve its human rights record -which is true in spades. But then, presumably lest he offend what is arguably the world’s most brutal regime, Hill adds, in that same spirit of “we” (yes, you, me, America, North Korea, and perhaps any future nation state established on Mars, all of us striving together): “Every country needs to improve its human rights record.”
There are also such gems as Hill’s mention of signs that North Korea, most inconveniently, has a clandestine uranium enrichment program, and (get ready for it): “Obviously, if it continues, we need to ensure that it is terminated.”
Thus, the latest utterances of the main man of the Condi Rice State Department for dealing with the veteran nuclear extortionists of Kim Jong Il’s North Korea. Meanwhile, the speech in which the U.S. special envoy for human rights in North Korea, Jay Lefkowitz, courageously — and accurately — noted that the Six-Party Talks have been a failure, remains erased from the State Department web site. Of course, Lefkowitz was clearly way off message. Not once did he refer to the regime of Kim Jong Il as “we.”
Dear Ms. Rosett,
Your report on “The US State Department of North Korea” is an excellent and enlightening piece on the Bush administration’s current policy toward North Korea. If Bush is a wise president, he should have fired Condi Rice along with Chris Hill for their complete failures on North korea. Rice and Hill are so naive on North Korea and Kim Jong-Il, and we Americans are unfortunate to have them conducting
Amercian foreign policy. We should have many John Boltons in the State Department.
Chuck Hahn
New Jersey
OK, Claudia,
Where did we get this guy? This is down right embarrassing. Six party talks? DPRK is the only one partying.
When will our country stand up and not put up with this BS? We no longer are a super power, but a Paper Tiger.
Help us Claudia, help us. Where is John Bolton when you need him. We could have put Mr. Hill on Sat Night Live.
cs
Claudia,
I agree w/ Mr Hahn. Condi would make a great best friend, wonderful personality, a good jogger, an excellent pianist, but a terrible negotiator. She should go out w/ whatever grace she has left.
“Negotiating w/ a terrorist is like arguing w/ a fool.”
“When will we ever learn?”
Ms. Rosett,
This is all very disheartening, especially given Bush’s intial (and correct, in my view) approach to North Korea, but I thank you for identifying the seemingly innocuous, though critical, lines that serve to illustrate what is going on in the minds down at Foggy Bottom. It paints a very scary picture.
Bush is going to leave office with 2/3rds of the Axis of Evil stronger and growing …
Silver Lining: The article was a really fun read. Quick. Appropriately sarcastic. To the point. (There’s no silver lining for State, or this fiasco of a foreign policy.)
Just what was in the tea Kim served our Chris Hill during his visits to the Hermit Kingdom? While Ambassador Hill’s presentation seemed intelligent and skillful, just below the smooth surface one finds the confused thinking of which the “we”isms are a notable feature. Ambassador Hill’s whole meander, if you consider its odd internal logic and assumptions, would fit right into a Jefferson Airplane song from the bad old days. I expected, at any moment, to hear him, “Tell ‘em a hookah-smoking caterpillar had given him the call.” It was peculiar. How long will it take the State Department to yank this gem off their website? It would be a pity to see it go. We should be able to view our tax dollars at work.
But, in a way, doesn’t Hill’s cozy “we” fit into the diplomacy as therapy construct that seems prevalent at the moment? (Listen to Condi gas on about “doing diplomacy”, or Mohamed ElBaredi, the shrink-in-charge at IAEA, muse about soothing the bruised sensibilities in Tehran.) Confidence building, relationship building, creating the correct atmospherics for progress, et gruesome cetera. The diplomacy of feelings is in full bloom. Ye Gods, we’re doomed! In the “helping professions”, can there not occur a tendency for the practitioner to slide into the team spirit with the patient who is to be convinced that, just chums together, they share a common attainable goal of cure? Thus, the therapeutic “we”. Worse still, might Hill’s “we”ness bespeak some strange diplomatic perversion of a latter-day gestalt dialogical relationship therapy of inclusion where Hill and Kim end up as “we”? Who knows! In the end, they seem, to me, like the words of an exhausted, desperate, and confused man who has been repeatedly mugged by reality while going through the Kim treatment for (how many?) years. He’s at the point where all he sees is “the process”, and no longer its strategic ramifications.
Today there is reason to fear that this contagion of “we” has escaped the confines of our diplomatic enclaves and is now infecting one of the other yammering classes: genus politico. Howard Wolfson, communications director for the Clinton (who knows which one?) campaign, is quoted in The New York Sun as saying that Mrs. Clinton would emerge victorious. “We will be the nominee.” One is left to wonder whether this is the royal, papal, or Borg “we”, though there remains a sense in the atmospherics that more unpleasant surprises may lurk for She Who Must Be Obeyed.
Seems like the State Department is confusing diplomatic negotiation with group therapy.
Because, as we all know, group therapy is universal and applies to all people all over the world regardless of their culture.
Why, it’s a panacea!