Please refer to my previous postings (http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20180413) (http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20180414)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20180415). (Lily)
TAI: As it turned out, we did not walk away decisively from the Agreed Framework. We said we were temporarily suspending fuel shipments until the matter on the table—the uranium enrichment issue—was settled. It was the North Koreans who walked away by expelling the IAEA inspectors and breaking the seals, right?
John Bolton: I think the North Koreans walked away from the Agreed Framework long before that, because they were clearly violating it from sometime in the mid- to late 1990s. It’s therefore not a question of whether we or they walked away in the autumn of 2002. If a major violation constitutes walking away—and I can’t understand an argument that it doesn’t—then they walked away first, well before 2002.
TAI: That’s not what the Administration said at the time, however, was it?
John Bolton: It took a while for us to make a break with the Agreed Framework. Eventually the line was that the North Koreans have walked away. I would have drawn the distinction much more starkly, that the North Koreans have violated it and therefore the Agreed Framework was finished. I think we should have moved then to do, in effect, some of the things we’ve done now: move more aggressively in the Proliferation Security Initiative, through some of the financial sanctions we’ve imposed, and I would not have gone the route of the Six-Party Talks.
TAI: But the President decided otherwise. He wanted to negotiate, potentially, in a multilateral framework.
John Bolton: That was the first issue, and this is a very significant debate: Do we negotiate directly with North Korea or do we negotiate in a multilateral context? And Bush, derided by his critics for being a unilateralist cowboy, says “Let’s negotiate multilaterally.” Persistently since then—Senator Kerry and I had a little exchange in my last confirmation hearing—critics have asked why the President refused to negotiate directly with North Korea. It’s like being in an episode of The Twilight Zone to listen to this, after critics had blasted him for not engaging in multilateral diplomacy in other contexts.
TAI: Granted that’s been pretty breathtaking, but I disagree with you about the Six-Party Talks. They haven’t succeeded yet, but I don’t think they’ve failed either. These talks are not just an exercise about Korea and North Korea’s weapons, but a larger and arguably more important exercise in Sino-American relations. Clearly, the only country with the power to curtail or even end what North Korea’s up to short of using force is China, and this diplomatic exercise could still yield good results ultimately through the Chinese. I’m happy to pursue it because I can’t see any other way to get at the problem, particularly since we don’t have attractive military options or regime-change options to turn to. Therefore, it seems to me that opposing the Six-Party Talks is an example of the unattainable best becoming an enemy of the possibly better.
John Bolton: I don’t disagree that this is a critical moment in Sino-American relations. The issue with respect to the Six-Party Talks is how much, in effect, we deferred to the Chinese in the leadership of those talks, and I think we’ve deferred too much.
Moreover, couldn’t we have done more with the Chinese to convince them that the diplomatic route ultimately couldn’t succeed? I think there’s a real confluence of Chinese and American interests for the proposition that North Korea must not have a nuclear weapon. That cannot be to China’s advantage because of the instability it creates in Northeast Asia in leading other countries to consider having nuclear weapons. The most effective way to accomplish that objective is through regime change in North Korea. I think the Chinese could produce regime change.I think the Chinese could produce regime change. That, rather than the Six-Party Talks, is the way to stop North Korea from having nuclear weapons.
TAI: But the Chinese can’t be brought even to consider that, it seems to me, except through the Six-Party mechanism. They won’t ever push hard on the regime in Pyongyang unless they have a regional understanding first about how to pick up the pieces.
John Bolton: Well, the Chinese do fear that if they push hard on the North Korean regime, they would not only end the regime but they would also collapse North Korean society with it, and then have to face a huge refugee problem. Worse, it might also produce a reunited Korea, which the Chinese don’t want either. And that’s where the disjunction in Sino-American perception occurs. I still think we could do more and I think, given the present lay of the land after the last unsuccessful go-round of the Six-Party Talks, it’s time to say privately to the Chinese: “You put forth a great effort, but it didn’t work. The North Koreans have publicly tested a nuclear weapon, so now it’s time to get serious.”
TAI: Let’s move from the State Department “T” days back to the UN. Many say you were trying to harm the UN by stealth, taking positions and stances that would ensure failure to resolve certain issues and then pointing a finger and saying, “See, this place doesn’t work.” But of course the UN is a big place. There’s the Security Council and the General Assembly and Secretary-General’s office itself and the many functional agencies. Does any of this work to serve any U.S. interests? Do different aspects of the UN system require different policy approaches?
John Bolton: The UN is an instrument of U.S. policy, and it has a lot of different parts, as your question makes clear. Some are more successful than others. Among all the political organs, the one part that works is the Security Council. It’s for that reason that I cared a lot about not messing up the composition of the Security Council and thus interfering with the one institution that worked halfway decently. As it happened, there were a lot of people in New York who just couldn’t wait to change the composition of the Security Council, even though that would have risked turning it into an organ almost as ineffective and irrelevant as the General Assembly.
I think the specialized functional agencies, in many respects, work quite well, especially the ones funded by voluntary contributions as opposed to those funded by assessed contributions.
TAI: Because they’re more accountable?
John Bolton: Exactly. The World Food Programme, UNICEF, the UN High Commission for Refugees are all funded primarily by voluntary contributions. I think what the failed effort at UN reform shows is that marginal, incremental management reforms are never going to be enough to make the UN the organization it could be. What we need to focus on now are more sweeping reforms to change what is basically a system of assessed contributions to one that is based on voluntary contributions. Looking at the UN as an instrument for helping to advance U.S. foreign policy, this means that if we’re not satisfied with it we can either try to fix it or go someplace else. I think competition in the marketplace for international problem solving is a good thing. Of course, that is anathema to many people at the UN, but from the U.S. point of view it’s the only outcome that’s acceptable to us. I was never out to harm the UN; I was out to solve problems and advance U.S. interests.
(To be continued.)
