international politics: What Did Obama’s Inaugural Address Say About Foreign Policy?

What Did Obama’s Inaugural Address Say About Foreign Policy?

by James M. Lindsay 

January 22, 2013

U.S. President Barack Obama delivers his inaugural address in Washington on January 21, 2013 (Brian Snyder/Courtesy Reuters).

Conventional wisdom has it that second-term presidents inevitably concentrate on foreign policy because they can’t get much done on domestic policy. To judge by President Obama’sinaugural address yesterday, he’s not convinced that the pundits have it right.

Unlike George W. Bush, who devoted his second inaugural address eight years ago to arguing that “survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands,” Obama largely talked about creating a more perfect union at home. He warned that growing economic inequality threatens America’s promise. He hailed the country’s social safety net for enabling Americans “to take the risks that make this country great.” And he called for continuing the “journey” toward ensuring that all Americans enjoy equality under the law.

When Obama turned to foreign policy, he surprisingly led with the need to battle climate change. He campaigned in 2008 on ambitious plans to curb the emission of heat-trapping gases. Those efforts mostly fell by the wayside during the first term in the face of Republican opposition, and Obama seldom mentioned climate change during the 2012 campaign. With memories of Superstorm Sandy still fresh and the public worried about jobs, he apparently sees a political opening to jumpstart action. He portrayed efforts to develop sustainable energy as essential for avoiding catastrophic weather and ensuring America’s “economic vitality.”

Obama used the rest of his brief foreign policy remarks to make the case for the benefits of diplomacy—and to signal that his appetite for foreign interventions is low. While acknowledging the value of “strength of arms,” he warned against “perpetual war”—no doubt alluding to his plans to scale back America’s commitment in Afghanistan substantially. He pledged to strengthen “institutions that extend our capacity to manage crisis abroad” and to “show the courage” to resolve differences with others peacefully. And like virtually every president in living memory, he pledged his commitment to strengthening America’s alliances and to supporting democracy around the world.

Obama left it to his audience to speculate how these general observations might translate into specific foreign policy choices. Inaugural addresses are, after all, a time for broad themes rather than detailed programmatic agendas. But the president could find it difficult to follow his own advice. Enthusiasm on Capitol Hill for tackling the causes of climate change (as opposed to dealing with its consequences) remains low. His administration’s reliance on drone strikes in battling al-Qaeda suggests that perpetual war might be a reality, and budding crises in the East China and South China seas could test America’s strength of arms. Diplomacy requires having a willing diplomatic partner, something that might be absent on critical issues such as Iran and Syria. And it is easy to call for better institutions; it is hard to build them.

The hope implicit in Obama’s inaugural address is that world events will not force him to make tough foreign policy choices but rather give him the time to move forward with his domestic agenda. Perhaps they will. But even then, the basic reality of American politics remains unchanged from Obama’s first term: he faces a Republican Party adamantly opposed to much of what he hopes to accomplish at home, and with its control of the House of Representatives, fully capable of stopping legislation in its tracks.

So either way the pundits might have it right after all—Obama could be spending much more time on foreign policy during his second term than his second inaugural address suggests.

source:

blogs.cfr.org

Robert Jervis - Getting to Yes With Iran : The Challanges of Coercive DIplomacy

Getting to Yes With Iran

The Challenges of Coercive Diplomacy

By Robert Jervis

January/February 2013z

It might be wise for the United States to resign itself to Iran's development of nuclear weapons and to focus on deterring the Islamic Republic from ever using them. But U.S. leaders have explicitly rejected that course of action. "Make no mistake: a nuclear-armed Iran is not a challenge that can be contained," U.S. President Barack Obama told the UN General Assembly last September. "And that's why the United States will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon." U.S. officials have also made it clear that they consider direct military action to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon an extremely unattractive option, one to be implemented only as a regrettable last resort.

In practice, then, that leaves only two tools for dealing with Iran's advancing nuclear program: threats and promises, the melding of which the political scientist Alexander George labeled "coercive diplomacy." To succeed in halting Iran's progress toward a bomb, the United States will have to combine the two, not simply alternate between them. It must make credible promises and credible threats simultaneously -- an exceedingly difficult trick to pull off. And in this particular case, the difficulty is compounded by a number of other factors: the long history of intense mutual mistrust between the two countries; the U.S. alliance with Iran's archenemy, Israel; and the opacity of Iranian decision-making.

The odds of overcoming all these obstacles are long. If Washington truly wants to avoid both deterrence and military action, therefore, it will need to up its game and take an unusually smart and bold approach to negotiations.

WHY COERCIVE DIPLOMACY IS HARD

The United States' recent record of coercive diplomacy is not encouraging. A combination of sanctions, inspections, and threats led Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to freeze his weapons of mass destruction program after the Gulf War, but it did not coerce him into accepting a long-term agreement. The reasons, as researchers have learned since Saddam's ouster, had to do with his motives and perceptions. The Iraqi leader not only sought regional dominance and the destruction of Israel but also worried about appearing weak to Iran, saw his survival in the wake of the Gulf War as a victory, and was so suspicious of the United States that a real rapprochement was never within reach. All this rendered ineffective the threats issued by the George W. Bush administration during the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and would likely have made promises of a reasonable settlement ineffective as well.

The Iraq case, moreover, is less an exception than the norm. Coercive diplomacy has worked on a few occasions, such as in 2003, when the Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi chose to stop developing weapons of mass destruction partly as a result of pressure and reassurances from the United States. More often than not, however, in recent decades the United States has failed at coercive diplomacy even though it has had overwhelming power and has made it clear that it will use force if necessary. A succession of relatively weak adversaries, including Panama (1989), Iraq (1990 and 2003), Serbia (1998), and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan (2001), did not respond to American attempts at pressure, leading Washington to fall back repeatedly on direct military action. Coercive diplomacy did convince the military junta that ruled Haiti to step down in 1994, but only once it was clear that U.S. warplanes were already in the air. And today, Iran is hardly alone in its defiance: despite issuing many threats and promises, the United States has been unable to persuade North Korea to relinquish its nuclear arsenal or even refrain from sharing its nuclear expertise with other countries (as it apparently did with Syria).

The threats and promises the United States has used with Iran are not inherently incompatible: Washington has said it will punish Tehran for proceeding with its nuclear program but is willing to cut a deal with it should the program be halted. Logically, these components could reinforce each other, as the former pushes and the latter pulls Iran toward an agreement. But the dreary history of coercive diplomacy shows that all too often, threats and promises undercut, rather than complement, each other. 

Threats can prove particularly troublesome, since if they fail, they can drive the threatening party onto a path it may not actually want to follow. U.S. President John F. Kennedy learned this lesson during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy was mostly, but not completely, joking when he said, on learning that the Soviet Union had stationed warheads in Cuba, "Last month I said we weren't going to [allow it]. Last month I should have said we don't care." More important, ramping up threats can undermine the chances that promises will be taken seriously. Inflicting increasing pain and making explicit threats to continue to do so can also raise questions about whether the party inflicting the pain really wants a deal and raise the domestic costs to the suffering government of making concessions.

When the United States suggests that it is willing to bomb Iran if it does not negotiate away its weapons program, it implies that the Americans believe that the costs of military action are tolerable. Although this increases the credibility of the threat, it could also lead Iran to conclude that the United States sees the costs of bombing as low enough to make military action more attractive than any outcome short of a complete Iranian surrender. Moreover, because Iran's nuclear program is at least in part driven by the Islamic Republic's desire to be able to protect itself against attack, this U.S. threat is likely to heighten the perceived danger and so increase Iran's determination not to be swayed from its current course.

This does not mean that pressure is always counterproductive. According to U.S. intelligence agencies, the Iranians halted their development of nuclear weapons in 2003, presumably in response to the menace created by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It appears that what a U.S. diplomat once said of North Korea also applies to Iran today: "The North Koreans do not respond to pressure. But without pressure they do not respond."

WHY THIS CASE IS EVEN HARDER

Even if pressure can work, and despite the fact that threats do not need to be completely credible in order to be effective, Washington faces daunting obstacles in trying to establish the credibility of its threat to strike Iran. What is most obvious, bombing would be very costly for the Americans (which is one of the reasons why it has not yet been done). As Tehran surely understands, Washington knows that the likely results include at least a small war in the region, deepening hostility to the United States around the world, increased domestic support for the Iranian regime, legitimation of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, and the need to strike again if Iran reconstitutes it. Given such high costs, Tehran might conclude that Washington's threat to bomb is just a bluff, and one it is willing to call.

Ironically, the success of economic sanctions could further diminish the credibility of the U.S. threat of a military strike. Iranian leaders might judge that their U.S. counterparts will continue to stick with sanctions in the hopes that the pain will ultimately yield a change in Iranian policy, or they might think that U.S. officials will hold off on the unpopular and unilateral military option to avoid disrupting the relatively popular and multilateral sanctions regime.

The credibility of Washington's threat to bomb is also affected by the perceptions and intentions of Iran's rulers. Iranian leaders might fall into the trap of basing their predictions about U.S. policy on their own expectations, which might differ from the Americans'. Those Iranians with relatively benign intentions toward the United States might expect that it would be fairly easy for the Americans to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, assume their U.S. counterparts will think similarly, and thus think a preventive U.S. military strike is unlikely. More aggressive Iranian leaders, on the other hand, might take the U.S. threat to bomb more seriously, since they themselves see Iran's acquisition of a bomb to be significant and assume their American counterparts will, too. These Iranian hawks might thus see U.S. preventive military action as plausible and expect it, moreover, to be aimed at broader goals, such as regime change, rather than simply setting back the Iranian nuclear program.

The history of U.S. policy toward Iran over the past decade will also complicate the credibility of American threats. On the one hand, the United States has imposed unilateral sanctions and skillfully mustered support from the Europeans for severe international sanctions. Many Western observers were surprised by this, and the Iranian leadership probably was, too. On the other hand, the United States has not bombed Iran despite continuing Iranian defiance of UN resolutions and U.S. policies. Iran also cannot have failed to notice that the United States did not attack North Korea as it developed its nuclear weapons, even after having repeatedly issued strong threats that it would do so. Moreover, Washington has been trying to coerce Iran into giving up its nuclear program for ages now, to little avail, making it hard to instill a sense of urgency in its current efforts.

Of course, threatening to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities is not the only form of pressure the United States can exert. Washington can maintain the current punishing sanctions regime indefinitely or even strengthen it. It could conduct additional covert actions, especially cyberattacks, to slow down the Iranian nuclear program. Because these actions are less costly to pursue than a military strike, threatening them might be more credible. But it can be more difficult to make such threats effective. The Iranians understand that they will pay a price for moving forward on the nuclear front. To change their minds, therefore, outsiders will have to threaten or inflict even greater pain than the Iranians are expecting.

HOW TO MAKE CREDIBLE THREATS

There are various ways the United States can make its threats more credible. The first is to voice them publicly and unambiguously. Obama has already gone quite far in his public statements, so the low-hanging fruit in this area has been picked. If the confrontation continues, however, a concerted campaign to inform the American public about the impending risk of war would resonate strongly, especially if capped by a congressional resolution authorizing the possible use of force against Iran. If those steps failed to sway the Iranians, the United States could issue an ultimatum, sending a clear signal to all parties that time was running out for a peaceful solution to the crisis, although doing so would be highly controversial at home and abroad and would mean giving up the military advantages of surprise.

U.S. policymakers could also stop publicly expressing their reluctance to use force and instead emphasize that they think an attack on Iran would benefit the United States. They could claim to expect that a U.S. strike would deal a dramatic blow to Iran's nuclear effort, serve as a powerful warning to other potential proliferators, strengthen the United States' global reputation for resolve, and possibly even trigger an Iranian revolution.

Private threats at this point would probably add little, but threats delivered confidentially by third parties close to Tehran, such as China and Russia, might have more credibility, and these states might carry the message if they were convinced that the only alternative was U.S. military action. Conversely, Israeli statements expressing skepticism that the United States will ever bomb Iran have undercut Washington's position. If Israeli leaders were to stop such talk and start claiming that they are now confident that the United States is willing to strike if necessary (albeit not on the timetable that Israel would prefer), such a shift would be duly noted in Tehran.

The United States could also increase the credibility of its threats by specifying the Iranian actions that would trigger an attack. The fact that Obama has resisted calls to announce such "redlines" does not mean that he does not have them. It seems likely that the decision for a strike would be made if Iran got close enough to producing a nuclear weapon that it could do so quickly and stealthily, or began producing highly enriched uranium, or expelled the International Atomic Energy Agency's inspectors. Still, even if announcing specific redlines such as these would enhance U.S. credibility, it would have downsides as well. Specifying what would be prohibited would mark out what would be permitted, and Iran could take that as an invitation to move right up to the redlines.

Washington could lend its threats credibility through actions even more than through words. It could bolster its military capabilities in a way that demonstrated its seriousness, including making expensive preparations to deal with retaliation by Iran after an American attack. It could even begin military maneuvers that have some risk of provoking Iran and leading to escalation, thus showing that Washington is not frightened by the prospect of a fight developing accidentally.

U.S. threats could also be made more credible if Washington developed plans for a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities and then deliberately allowed Iranian intelligence services to learn the details. In this scenario, the Iranians would have to believe they discovered something the Americans had sought to hide from them, lest they conclude it was simply a ruse designed to impress them. This kind of maneuver is tricky: although sound in principle, in practice it has generally proved too clever by half. During the 1961 Berlin crisis, for example, the Kennedy administration provided West Germany with its plans for a military response to the standoff, knowing the West German government had been penetrated by Soviet intelligence. And in 1969, the Nixon administration staged an ostensibly secret nuclear-alert exercise designed to convey the strength of the U.S. commitment to South Vietnam. In both cases, however, the Soviets hardly noticed.

One might assume that the United States could increase the credibility of its threats in Iranian eyes by building up its defenses, seemingly in preparation for a possible conflict. But bulking up U.S. capabilities against Iranian missiles in the eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf might also send the opposite signal -- that the United States is preparing not to attack but rather to live with (and deter) a nuclear-armed Iran. Canceling the deployment of systems designed to defend against Iranian missiles, in fact, would be a strong and dramatic signal that the United States has no intention of allowing a nuclear Iran and is willing to strike preventively to head off such a prospect.

WHY IT'S HARD TO MAKE CREDIBLE PROMISES

In general, making promises credible is even harder than making threats credible, and that is especially true in this case because of the history of mutual mistrust and the conflicting historical narratives that each side tells itself. U.S. promises to Iran are complicated by other factors as well. There are multiple audiences listening in on anything Washington says to Tehran: domestic constituencies, Arab states, North Korea, other states that might seek nuclear weapons, and, of course, Israel. The fear of an Israeli attack may provide a useful source of extra pressure, but Iranian perceptions of U.S.-Israeli collusion can make U.S. signaling to Iran more difficult. American promises must be seen to cover Israeli actions as well, and some promises designed to reassure Israel of U.S. protection might conflict with conciliatory messages Washington wishes to send to Tehran.

U.S. policymakers also have limited knowledge of Iranian perceptions and domestic politics. It is generally agreed that Iran's nuclear policy rests in the hands of the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But it is hard to know just what his goals are, how he perceives U.S. messages, and even which messages are accurately conveyed to him. If history is any lesson, the likelihood is that he interprets much American behavior, including promises, in ways that Americans would find utterly bizarre.

Just what various Iranian actors would perceive as a reward, moreover, might be hard to determine. Some figures in or close to the regime, for example, have built fortunes and political power bases around adapting to sanctions, so removing or loosening sanctions might actually harm rather than help them. Even the most valuable prize the West could offer -- the normalization of relations and the integration of the Islamic Republic into the world community -- could conflict with the worldview of dominant actors in Iran, undercut their power, and be seen by them, quite possibly accurately, as a step toward eventual regime change.

All these gaps in knowledge and trust stand in the way of the United States' ability to make credible promises of any kind to Iran, whether minor assurances intended to serve as confidence-building measures or the more substantial promises that could lead to a durable diplomatic settlement. In the most likely deal, Iran would agree to stop designing warheads and to refrain from enriching uranium above the 20 percent level. It would retain only limited stockpiles of uranium enriched to 5–20 percent, accept limits on the capacities of its enrichment facilities, allow robust inspections of its nuclear facilities, and agree to refrain from building facilities that the United States could not destroy. (Such a deal would permit the heavily fortified underground Fordow enrichment plant to remain open, since it is vulnerable to a U.S. strike -- something that would displease the Israelis, whose own capabilities are insufficient to overcome Fordow's defenses.)

In return, the United States would accept a limited Iranian enrichment program, promise not to try to overthrow the regime (and maybe not to undermine it), and suspend sanctions that were imposed specifically in response to the nuclear program. The United States might also restore normal diplomatic relations with Iran -- although taking that step, along with lifting other sanctions, might require a larger grand bargain involving Iran's ending its support for Hamas and Hezbollah.

To convince Iran that such a deal is possible, the United States would have to surmount four barriers. It would need to gain some measure of Israeli acquiescence, both to satisfy influential pro-Israel constituencies in the United States and to convince Iran that the deal would not be undercut by Israeli sabotage, assassinations, or attacks. Accepting a civilian nuclear program in Iran would necessitate repealing or carving out some sort of exception to various UN Security Council resolutions, because the original sanctions were applied in response to the establishment of the nuclear program itself, not to the subsequent progress Iran has apparently made.

Washington would need to convince Tehran that negotiations were not designed to weaken it and that a settlement would end American efforts at regime change. Security assurances would have to be part of any deal, and they would be hard to craft. The fact that the United States helped overthrow Qaddafi in 2011 despite his earlier agreement to abandon his weapons of mass destruction program would surely be on Iranian minds.

Finally, the United States would have to find some way of offering Iran intangible goods it truly craves: respect and treatment as an equal. Not only can the process of hard bargaining get in the way of respectful treatment, but so can even the imagery used to think about such bargaining -- such as talk of "carrots and sticks," which implies that Iran is an animal that the West is trying to manipulate. On the other hand, showing respect to Iran would not cost the United States a great deal.

GETTING TO THE TABLE

Although the United States and its European allies are talking with Iran now, these conversations seem to involve little more than recitations of unyielding opening positions. Distrust is often highest at the beginning of a negotiation process, since both sides fear that any preliminary concessions will not only be pocketed but also be taken as a sign of weakness that will embolden the other side to hold out for more.

There are standard, if imperfect, ways to deal with this problem, such as by using disavowable third parties who can float enticing ideas without exposing actual negotiating positions. Ambiguous "feelers" are also useful, since they require the other side to respond to a message before its true meaning is revealed and so limit the first state's exposure. But the distrust between the United States and Iran runs so deep that the normal playbook is unlikely to work here. Getting through to the supreme leader and convincing him that serious negotiations are in his interest will be difficult. Appealing to him personally and directly, in both public and private, might be effective, as might sending a high-level emissary (although such steps should be reserved until close to the last possible minute, to avoid undue humiliation should they fail).

A dramatic (if unlikely) approach would be for the United States to unilaterally suspend some of its sanctions against Iran, halt all its military preparations related to Iran, or declare that the option of using force is no longer on the table. A more plausible scenario would be for U.S. leaders to try to communicate that they are ready for an agreement by letting the Iranian regime know that they are studying how to suspend sanctions in stages and developing various forms of security guarantees.

The normal negotiating procedure would be to start with small confidence-building measures and put off dealing with the central and most difficult issues for while, until some progress and mutual trust have been achieved. It is probably too late for that, however, especially since many of the standard smaller steps have been removed from consideration by the recent application of even tougher international sanctions on Iran. Until recently, for example, a freeze-for-freeze approach to confidence building might have been possible: a U.S. offer to take no further aggressive steps in exchange for a comparable Iranian move. But at this point, given the pain the sanctions are currently inflicting, modifying them or suspending them would probably be required, which would be a much bigger concession on the part of the United States and Europe.

It will probably be necessary for Washington to sketch the broad contours of a possible final agreement before talks begin. Entering serious negotiations would carry high political costs for the White House and spark a major political struggle in Tehran -- risks the leaders on each side would take only if there seemed to be good prospects of an acceptable solution. And any agreement, of course, would have to be carried out incrementally in order for each side to guard against the other's reneging.

Still, the United States may need to put more of its cards on the table at the start. It will have to convince Khamenei that successful negotiations would greatly reduce the threat to his country posed by the United States and that Washington would be willing to accept an appropriately safeguarded Iranian civilian nuclear program. There will be a strong temptation in Washington to reserve such inducements for the final stage of hard bargaining, but holding them back is likely to greatly decrease the chance that the negotiations will reach that stage at all.

The obstacles to successful negotiations may be so great that the best the United States can achieve is a form of containment that would maintain something like the status quo, with Iran remaining at some distance from a weapon. Such a situation might not be stable, however, and what Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev told Kennedy at the height of the Cuban missile crisis could also prove relevant to the U.S.-Iranian confrontation: "Mr. President, we and you ought not now to pull on the end of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more the two of us pull, the tighter the knot will be tied. And a moment may come when that knot will be tied so tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it. And then it will be necessary to cut that knot."

Looking carefully at the challenges of coercive diplomacy in this case is sobering. Using threats and promises to successfully manage the problems posed by Iran's nuclear program will be difficult at best, requiring extraordinary levels of calmness, boldness, creativity, and forbearance. But if Washington is determined to avoid both military action and deterrence, those are the qualities it will need to summon.

source:

foreignaffairs.com

security issue in east asia: U.S. envoy warns N. Korea against conducting nuclear test

(3rd LD) U.S. envoy warns N. Korea against conducting nuclear test

SEOUL, Jan. 24 (Yonhap) -- A special envoy from Washington warned Pyongyang Thursday against conducting a nuclear test, minutes before North Korea threatened to carry out an atomic test and more rocket launches directed at the United States in retaliation to toughened U.N. sanctions.

   "Whether North Korea tests or not, it's up to North Korea. We hope they don't do it, we call on them not to do it. It will be a mistake and a missed opportunity if they were to do it," said Glyn Davies, the U.S. special envoy on North Korea policy, when asked about the possibility of a nuclear test by North Korea.

  

"This is not a moment to increase tensions on the Korean Peninsula. This is the opportunity (for North Korea) to seize the moment" to engage with the outside world, Davies said.

   Davies spoke to reporters in Seoul after meeting with his South Korean counterpart, Lim Sung-nam, Seoul's chief envoy to the stalled six-party talks aimed at persuading the North to give up its nuclear weapons ambition.

   Before the meeting, Lim told Davies that a "close consultation between you and me, between Seoul and Washington, will be very important in this period of political transition here and beyond, and that will be our common asset in dealing with North Korea and the North Korean nuclear issue."

   Asked whether South Korea and the U.S. were considering additional bilateral sanctions against North Korea, Davies replied that the allies will focus on "implementing provisions of sanctions by the U.N. Security Council, and then, we will take a look at what further steps might be necessary."

   Minutes after Davies' remarks, the North's powerful National Defense Commission ratcheted up its threat of a nuclear test.

   "We do not hide that the various satellites and long-range rockets we will continue to launch, as well as the high-level nuclear test we will proceed with, are aimed at our arch-enemy the United States," the North's defense commission said in a statement carried by KCNA.

   It didn't say when it would detonate a nuclear device or what a "high-level" nuclear test might be, but Seoul's intelligence officials said Wednesday that North Korea has completed all technical preparations for a nuclear test and one could be carried out in a few days if the communist country makes the decision to do so.

   Seoul's foreign ministry spokesman Cho Tai-young expressed deep regret at the North's threat of conducting a nuclear test.

   "The government deeply regrets that North Korea made such a statement and we again strongly urge North Korea not to make any further provocations, including a nuclear test," Cho told reporters in a regular press briefing.
North Korea angrily responded to the U.N. resolution that widened sanctions in response to the North's December rocket launch, saying it will strengthen its "nuclear deterrence."

   Intelligence officials said North Korea had dug a tunnel for a test at its Punggye-ri nuclear test site, but the tunnel has now been plugged with dirt and concrete, suggesting that all measuring and other equipment has already been installed inside.

   North Korea had detonated nuclear devices at the Punggye-ri test site in 2006 and 2009, following long-range rocket launches.

   Professor Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul said the Thursday statement by the North's top military body might be interpreted as a notification that it could soon conduct a third nuclear test.

   "I believe that the statement by the North's National Defense Commission was a forewarning that it could conduct a nuclear test within one month," Yang said.

   Some analysts have speculated that North Korea could use a uranium device for the first time after two previous tests with plutonium devices. North Korea surprised the world in late 2010 by showing its modern uranium enrichment facility to a U.S. scientist, a facility that could be easily modified to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU).

   North Korea claims the uranium enrichment program is for peaceful energy development but outside experts believe that it would give the country a new source of fission material to make atomic bombs, in addition to its widely known plutonium-based nuclear weapons program.

   Asked about the North's allusion to a "high-level nuclear test," an intelligence source in Seoul said, "I think it is highly likely that North Korea would conduct a third nuclear test with HEU."

   Despite the North's rare threat of a nuclear test and more missile launches, the U.S. envoy Davies reminded North Korea that the Washington is "still open to authentic and credible negotiations to implement the September 19, 2005 joint statement."

   "We are willing to extend our hand if Pyongyang chooses the path to peace and progress by letting go of its nuclear weapons and its multi-stage missiles," Davies said.

   "If North Korea comes into compliance with Security Council resolutions and takes irreversible steps leading to denuclearization, the United States and, we believe, other partners in the six-party process will do the hard work with the DPRK (North Korea) of finding a peaceful way forward," Davies said.

   "It is very much up to Pyongyang to decide," the U.S. envoy said.

   kdh@yna.co.kr
(END)

source:

english.yonhapnews.co.kr

Security Issue in East Asia : 2nd LD) S. Korea, U.S. ponder 'additional sanctions' against N. Korea

(2nd LD) S. Korea, U.S. ponder 'additional sanctions' against N. Korea

SEOUL, Jan. 23 (Yonhap) -- South Korea and the United States are considering slapping their own "additional sanctions" on North Korea in addition to a new U.N. resolution that increased sanctions against the North for its December rocket launch, a senior Seoul diplomat said Wednesday.

   The idea of Seoul and Washington imposing their own sanctions against Pyongyang will be one of the topics for the Thursday talks in Seoul between Glyn Davies, Washington's special representative for North Korea Policy, and South Korea's chief nuclear envoy Lim Sung-nam.

   Davies is due to arrive in Seoul on Wednesday after the U.N. Security Council ordered new sanctions against North Korea's December rocket launch and vowed to take an unspecified "significant action" if the North carries out another rocket launch or a nuclear test.

   "We have been in discussions with the U.S. side about additional bilateral sanctions against the North following the U.N. resolution," the diplomat said on the condition of anonymity.

   Possible options would include making it more difficult for North Korean ships to travel in waters near the Korean Peninsula and strengthening inspections of North Korean ships suspected of engaging in weapons trafficking in accordance with U.N. sanctions, the diplomat said.

   South Korea has also been "in negotiations with other relevant countries about additional bilateral sanctions against North Korea," the diplomat said.

   In a swift response to the U.N. resolution, North Korea's foreign ministry threatened to strengthen its "nuclear deterrence," in an indication that it could conduct another nuclear test.

   The diplomat said South Korea has been monitoring activities at a possible nuclear site in North Korea to determine if the North's third nuclear test is imminent, but said that "so far there has been no imminent sign of a nuclear test," adding that they are taking precautions and will be prepared to deal with all possible situations.

   North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 when it conducted its first nuclear test. The sanctions were tightened in 2009 after its second nuclear test.

Later Wednesday, Seoul's foreign ministry spokesman Cho Tai-young said South Korea will "review bilateral measures against North Korea with relevant countries while focusing on implementing the U.N. resolution."

   Cho labeled the North's indication of a nuclear test as "very regrettable," while South Korea is closely monitoring activities at the North's nuclear test sites.

   The spokesman also ruled out a meeting between Davies and South Korean President-elect Park Geun-hye.

   kdh@yna.co.kr

(END)

source:
english.yonhapnews.co.kr

your window to the international issues: How Chavez Does Business

by: Javier Corralles

A mural depicting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Caracas.(Carlos Garcia Rawlins / Courtesy Reuters)

These days, the Venezuelan government is busy preparing for the re-inauguration of the country's beloved president, Hugo Chávez, and also for his funeral. Chávez, who has been in office for 14 years, was re-elected for a third time in October 2012. He is scheduled to take the oath of office once more on January 10. But Chávez has been sick with an undisclosed form of cancer since at least 2011 and, after months of press releases that said he was getting better by the day, the government announced on December 30 that new complications had emerged during the leader's fourth surgery in Havana. Chávez, still in Cuba and presumably still alive, might not make it back for his swearing-in ceremony.

Venezuela's constitution offers some guidance on what to do. If the president dies, the vice president (in this case, Nicolás Maduro, an avowed communist) will take office. He will call a new election within 30 days. If Chávez survives but cannot attend the inauguration, most jurists agree that the president of the National Assembly (Diosdado Cabello, who will presumably be reelected to that post in a vote on January 5) will take power. If the government then rules that the president-elect is only "temporarily absent," Cabello will govern for 90 days, which will be renewable for 90 more. If it instead declares the president-elect to be "permanently absent," Cabello would be constitutionally obligated to call an early election.

The government seems to be at a loss. It is organizing church services, making somber announcements, and readying the country for the prospect of life without Chávez. But it has also announced that Chávez will certainly be re-inaugurated soon, come what may. Cabello has promised that the government will think of something -- maybe swear Chávez in some other day, or in absentia. It has even hinted at the possibility of flying the Supreme Court to Cuba to swear in the dying president there.

The result of these mixed messages is emotional and political confusion. The emotional confusion is easy to understand: Chavistas are being asked to harbor hope and sorrow, all at once. (The opposition, too, is full of hope and sorrow, but for the opposite reasons.)

The political confusion, meanwhile, is no small matter. The government's unwillingness to accept that Chávez most likely cannot be inaugurated has produced unnecessary uncertainty. The indecision is probably the result of a power struggle within Chávez's party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. The PSUV knows well that the timing of the announcement of the president's absence (whether it occurs before or on the inauguration date) and the type of absence (permanent or temporary) determines who gets to control the succession, Maduro or Cabello. And each man leads a different faction.

Chávez stated his preference for Maduro to succeed him in December, during a weekend visit to Caracas between cancer treatments. But the rest of the party does not seem to be fully on board. Maduro's opponents believe that he is too close to Cuba and too distant from Venezuela. As foreign minister since 2006, Maduro has spent much of his time away from home in recent years. Cabello, too, has detractors. Thanks to his history as a member of the armed forces, a state governor, and a minister of public works, he is seen as being allied with the least glorious element of Venezuela's revolution: corrupt businessmen and military officials who have profited from their dealings with the state.

Whoever takes the reins will be tasked with keeping Chavismo alive. What that means, of course, depends on where one falls on the political spectrum. Elías Jaua, a leading Chavista, recently wrote an op-ed defining the term as one who has an "amorous connection" with a leader who never betrayed Venezuelans and who taught them that "they have rights to all rights." Chávez has worked hard to cultivate that affection in the last few years. Love -- mutual love -- was part of his re-election campaign slogan and a heart-shaped Venezuelan flag was his logo. Even Maduro got in on the act and called the election results an "act of love" from Venezuelans to their "comandante presidente."

But in the eyes of the opposition, Chávez is an elected despot -- someone who uses his popularity to erode the rule of law. It is inconceivable to them that supposedly revolutionary Venezuelans are so smitten by a leader who actually exacerbated the ills of the system that his revolution was meant to replace. In other words, Chávez's main domestic legacy -- and something his successor will have to cope with -- will then be an intensely polarized nation.

Of course, lovers and haters of Chávez will have different memories of Chávez, but all will remember his spending: socialism had never had so much purchasing power. Chávez believed in throwing money at every problem. That attitude generated the most impressive consumption boom Venezuela has ever seen. Chávez's spending has benefitted many sectors, including the middle classes and many elites, but it is his outlays for social welfare that Venezuelans will remember the most. During his 14 years as president, Chávez has launched more than 27 missions, his government's name for social programs. The missions were sold as helping the poor, but no one in government ever worried much about whether the returns justified the investments, or whether the main beneficiaries really were the worst-off.

At any rate, the opposition maintains that social spending underwrote Chávez's electoral victories. Chavistas don't disagree. And yet, it is impossible to imagine any successor to Chávez having the same penchant for unrestrained largess that Chávez did. It is a question of both values and capacity. Even for a country as awash with cash as Venezuela has been since 2004, Chávez's spendthrift ways have left behind a worrisome level of debt, fiscal deficit, and dependence on imports. Whoever succeeds Chávez will thus need to make an economic adjustment, to borrow a phrase from the International Monetary Fund. And doing so will accentuate splits within Chavismo. One faction will want to protect the military. Another will want to protect the oil sector. Still others will want to protect the missions. Doing all that at once will be impossible, and that means only one thing: after the grand funeral, if there is one, there is trouble ahead.

The looming problems raise the question of where Chávez got the money for all his spending to begin with. The answer is the United States. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Chávez's spending habits have been matched only by his selling habits. Between 1999 and 2011, Venezuelan exports to the United States, mostly oil and oil products, totaled $341 billion. This is an extraordinarily large sum for an anti-imperialist bastion of only 29.2 million people. Indeed, Venezuela is almost as dependent on oil sales to the United States today as it was before Chávez.

And that points to a final piece of the Chávez legacy. He wants to be remembered as the most anti-American leader the world has seen since Fidel Castro. In reality, Chávez broke with Fidel's approach to the Yankee empire early on. To be sure, Chávez has enjoyed provoking the Americans, but only to a certain point, and never so much that the United States brought an embargo down on his head. So he has played his anti-Americanism conservatively: he has sided with the anti-imperialist FARC in Colombia, but  has also managed to stay on good terms with the Colombian government. He has cooperated with Iran, but has also maintained good relations with the pro-American Saudis. He avoided nuclear weapons.

For a man who has spent so much of his time lambasting the United States, Chávez has done remarkably little to actually punish it. Going by his public chastisements of the United States, he has had plenty of opportunities to cut off oil and force the United States' hand: to discourage the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, which he opposed; to end the arms embargo on Venezuela; to keep the United States out of regional fight for the leadership of the Organization of American States; to stop the United States from siding with Colombia during its incursion into Ecuador in 2008; or to punish the United States for its passive approach to the 2009 coup in Honduras that ousted a pro-Venezuelan president. Yes, Chávez has talked a big game, but he has never followed that up with action other than expelling U.S. ambassadors and increasing oil sales to China in return for loans. All the while, oil never stopped flowing north to the United States.

Chávez came to understand that his expensive revolution needed the U.S. oil market and that he couldn't put his access to that market at risk. If he dies soon, he should be remembered as the United States' reliable oil partner -- the ultimate seller. True, radicals from around the world love Chávez for his anti-Americanism. And Chávez no doubt loved his radical followers -- but probably not as much as he loved getting oil dollars from America. Eager to emulate him, the revolution's caretakers will follow his lead. Since there are limits to the Chinese market for Venezuelan oil, preserving access to the U.S. oil market will thus remain the unstated goal of the Chavista revolution. Anti-imperialism will live long in Venezuela, but only if it stays true to the conservative variety that Chávez invented.

source:

foreignaffairs.com