CQ HOMELAND SECURITY
July 2, 2008 – 9:09 p.m.
Bush’s North Korea Decision Twists the Partisan Divide
By Matt Korade, CQ Staff
What some are hailing as a largely symbolic gesture by the Bush administration toward North Korea has a political mix of lawmakers in Congress plotting opposition.
In a partisan twist, Democrats on key committees are cautiously supportive of the administration’s decision to ease trade sanctions on North Korea and remove it from the terrorism blacklist in return for information on its nuclear programs.
Republicans, on the other hand, have been joined by hawkish counterparts across the aisle in publicly and privately expressing outrage.
In a statement, California Democrat Howard L. Berman , chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the agreement “encouraging.”
The Bush administration, he said, “has wisely chosen to assess Pyongyang’s sincerity” in moving forward with verifying North Korea’s nuclear program disclosures.”
“You can be sure Congress will also closely monitor North Korea’s actions. For now, the ball is squarely in Pyongyang’s court,” he said.
Rep. Silvestre Reyes , D-Texas, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement it was not clear to him why the administration would choose to lift sanctions on Kim Jong Il’s regime just weeks after publicly confirming North Korea’s assistance in developing a covert nuclear reactor in Syria — and while the press was reporting the regime may also have a covert uranium enrichment program.
Information compromising North Korea’s credibility reached his committee just hours after the president’s announcement, he said. “I intend to work with my colleagues over the next 45 days to examine whether the Congress should intercede and block the president from removing North Korea from the state sponsors of terror list.”
The ranking Republican on Reyes’ panel, Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, had even harsher words for Bush.
“A decision seemingly has been made that it is more important for the White House to reach a legacy agreement than to get to the bottom of North Korea’s nuclear efforts,” he said in a statement. “The administration has repeatedly delayed briefing Congress on North Korean proliferation because it knows any deal reached would not likely survive the scrutiny of Congress. It has never sought to hold North Korea accountable for its nuclear weapons test, its known nuclear proliferation activities or its willingness to sell arms to any nation or group that can pay.”
The most vocal opponents may be Reps. Brad Sherman , D-Calif., and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen , R-Fla.
Sherman, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Human Rights, has introduced — with Ros-Lehtinen as a cosponsor — legislation (
“The president has caved, he’s desperate to tell voters that the Republicans have accomplished something, and even more desperate to get something good in the history books, and he just took whatever they could get out of North Korea, which is pitiful, as far as a declaration,” Sherman said.
Bush’s North Korea Decision Twists the Partisan Divide
The declaration, he added, is the diplomatic equivalent of a chocolate-chip cookie — deceivingly tasty, but possibly lethal if swallowed whole.
“So the State Department Web site says they’re going to verify the hell out of the chocolate-chip recipe,” he said. “How about starting with a declaration that covers the issues?”
Rather than reflect concerns over nonproliferation, the White House’s actions showed a subservience to multinational corporations, which also is reflected in the administration’s refusal to make China’s currency manipulation a leverage point for cooperation in the six-party talks, Sherman said.
“I would think that the folks in Tehran are just giggling right now,” Sherman said. “I think they may be a little worried about what Jerusalem does, but it’s real clear that the multinational corporations have won big-time, year after year, action after action, and any statement by this administration that they care about proliferation — yes, but only at a distant second to letting these multinationals do whatever they want, and not just U.S.-based multinationals, but international multinationals. This president is very ecumenical when it comes to multinational corporations.
“That combined with fooling the American public that something has been accomplished, and maybe fooling the historians as well, is the only explanation for why a president who is world famous for his bellicose rhetoric has, when the rubber meets the road, put us on the road to capitulation.”
Ros-Lehtinen, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a release that the decision was cause for “profound concern.” In rewarding North Korea for providing a limited nuclear-program declaration that left out much of what it was asked, the administration risked abandoning allies such as Japan while sending a message to Syria and Iran that the United States is willing to betray its own interests.
“Serious verification questions linger,” Ros-Lehtinen said, “and I would have hoped that the administration would have shown more caution, and less haste, on a matter of this gravity.”
Meanwhile, the United States is giving up valuable leverage without any certainty North Korea will offer a complete, verifiable accounting of its nuclear activities, said Ros-Lehtinen, who introduced earlier legislation (
From the administration’s perspective, the decision was premised on North Korea’s agreeing to dismantle its plutonium reactor at Yongbyon and provide details about its nuclear programs, which entitled it to removal from the “Trading with the Enemy Act” (PL 65-91) and the state sponsors of terrorism list, said national security adviser Stephen Hadley after Bush’s announcement.
The bilateral trade sanctions to be lifted, Hadley said, were “relatively minor,” including some licensing requirements for goods imported from North Korea, U.S. citizens’ involvement in third-party shipments to the communist nation, and some prohibitions on financial transfers by its government.
Meanwhile, removal from the terrorism blacklist would entitle North Korea to international aid, such as loans from the World Bank. But easing these restrictions was minimal in the scheme of things, because North Korea remained one of the most sanctioned countries in the world, both from the United States and the international community, Hadley said.
Although the United States had some concerns over how much plutonium North Korea has produced, the existence of its uranium-enrichment program, and its building of a nuclear reactor in Syria, the six-party talks with the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia, over time will allow both verification of this information and preventive monitoring, Hadley said.
Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow for foreign policy at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution, supported the administration’s view. One of the main benefits of the administration’s decision was that it would allay criticisms from China and Russia that the United States has been stubbornly inflexible in its dealings with North Korea while setting up an ironclad rationale for further punishment if North Korea fails to follow through on its promises, O’Hanlon said.
Bush’s North Korea Decision Twists the Partisan Divide
China and, to a lesser degree, South Korea, have kept North Korea afloat and have been unimpressed with blunt U.S. demands to squeeze the country over nonproliferation issues, he said, while Russia sits on the U.N. Security Council and problematically sides with China in the six-party talks.
The general goal, O’Hanlon said, should be to move North Korea in the direction of Vietnam, making aid and diplomacy contingent on such things as denuclearization and improved human rights. But while the current deal opens the door to aid, it doesn’t provide that aid.
“I think it’s a smart step, but it’s not a huge accomplishment in and of itself,” O’Hanlon said.
By law, Bush must give Congress 45 days’ notice before removing a country from the terrorism blacklist. The Sherman-Ros-Lehtinen bill would freeze the 45-day notification period, preventing removal from the list, until Pyongyang supplies the declaration it originally promised. This includes a full accounting of its uranium enrichment programs, existing nuclear weapons, and proliferation to countries such as Syria and Iran.
If floor votes were counted by zeal, the legislation would sail to passage. Right now, however, Sherman isn’t so sure.
“I would think that the president will veto any bill that does pass, that he will be able to stymie in the Senate any bill that he does veto,” Sherman said. “The president does not have the capacity to get a declaration out of North Korea that means anything, but he does have enough support in a very partisan year to disenfranchise Congress on this issue.”
One Senate aide who has followed the issue closely said legislative action might be a possibility.
“Supporters of this policy have been attempting to marginalize the opposition in Congress by saying it’s only conservative Republicans, but that’s just not true,” the aide said. On the controversial issue of waiving sanction restrictions to spend money on dismantling North Korean nuclear reactors, as well as on other, related legislation, the administration was dealt setbacks from both sides of the aisle, the aide said.
“The most vocal opponents have been Republicans for sure, but you’ll see that there’s skepticism and push-back from Democrats as well.”
Matt Korade can be reached at mkorade@cq.com
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