Obama, Tested?

Prior to Obama being elected, I wrote that his foreign policy “scares me,” referring specifically to North Korea. Vice presidential candidate Biden said that Obama would be “tested” in his first year in office. Kaplan wrote that, if elected, Obama would have to send a message that, “I’m not Jimmy Carter or even Bill Clinton… I’m not the candidate who had a tepid response to the Russian invasion of Georgia.”

This is all relevant because over here in the Far East, there is intelligence that North Korea is on the brink of firing a ballistic missile, possibly towards Japan, and possibly towards the United States. The goal? Analysts say it is meant to intimidate conservative South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and grab the attention of President Obama.

Before the election, this was Obama’s stance on North Korea, according to CFR:

President-elect Obama advocates for developing an “international coalition” to handle nuclear North Korea, calls the Six-Party Talks “ad hoc,” and says he supports “sustained, direct, and aggressive diplomacy.” In a September 2008 presidential debate, Obama said a lack of diplomatic engagement with North Korea led the country to significantly increase its nuclear capacity, and said the Bush administration’s eventual reengagement with the regime led to “some progress.”

Within weeks of Pyongyang’s October 2006 nuclear test, Obama appeared on Meet the Press and said the United States had no leverage over North Korea because of Washington’s refusal to hold bilateral negotiations. He also clarified a passage from his book Audacity of Hope (in which he posed the question “Why invade Iraq and not North Korea or Burma?”) and said he did not consider invading the communist country an option to resolving the nuclear issue.

In May 2005, Obama named North Korea as one of the “biggest proliferation challenges we currently face.” Obama has called for the strengthening of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty so that countries like North Korea “that break the rules will automatically face strong international sanctions.”

Obama said in September 2008 he believes the United States needs a missile defense system in part because of the nuclear threat North Korea poses.

Pyongyang knows exactly what it is doing. It knows the US watches its activities with spy satellites. It knows there are ROK and Japan intelligence units with sources in the country. It knows that Obama became president on an anti-Bush mandate. And it’s goal here is to act with its typical brinkmanship, and try to get something in exchange. In other words, Obama is being tested—just two weeks after his inauguration.

Marmot expects Pyongyang is trying to push Seoul out of the six party talks (relations between Pyongyang and Seoul are at present pretty darn bad) and push Obama into “bilateral mode.” All this will give Obama the chance to show the world what he means by “sustained, direct, and aggressive diplomacy.” I had no clue what he was talking about then, and am no closer to understanding how those rules would apply to this situation not that we have a hard fact pattern. And frankly, while I’m no sore loser, I still think McCain had it right.