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Six months into U.S. President George W. Bush¡¯s second term, a new wind is blowing in Washington¡¯s Korea policy. The neocons and Asia hands that had an iron grip on Korea policy during his first term are being replaced by pragmatists, with priority on specialization and Europe experts.
¡ß State Department: Rise of the Europe Experts
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(Clockwise, from upper left) White House Advisor Michael Gerson, Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, White House Spokesperson Scott McClellan
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¡°Foggy Bottom,¡± the gray seven-story building named for the neighborhood of Washington D.C. where it is located, is the command center for U.S. diplomacy worldwide. It has undergone enormous changes in the last six months, with all officials in charge of Korea policy above the rank of deputy assistant secretary being replaced. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took office, Christopher Hill took over from James Kelly as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and lost no time in replacing many of the working level officials in the bureau. All the upper-level officials dealing with Korea above the rank of the new Korea desk head were replaced -- a move prompting comments within the department that the entire Korean lineup has changed.
Observers read the moves as a way of cleaning out the legacy of former secretary of state Colin Powell. There had been friction between Powell and the neocons over the North Korean nuclear dispute throughout his tenure, and North Korea policy became one of the signal foreign policy failures of Bush¡¯s first term.
The personnel selection policy of Rice and Hill, the top Korea policy makers, can be summarized as leaving neocon ideologues out in the cold and appointing pragmatists, with priority given to professional capabilities. R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary for political affairs, Stephen Krasner, the director for policy planning, Kathleen Stephens, the deputy assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and Alexander Vershbow, the putative new ambassador to Korea, are key figures in that shift.
Among State Department officials involved with Korea policy, the most influential are Philip D. Zelikow, an advisor to Rice and her co-author in writing ¡°Germany Unified and Europe Transformed¡±; Krasner, who is a friend of Rice¡¯s from Stanford; Burns, a former ambassador to NATO; and Hill. None but Hill has much experience with Asia. By contrast, the former assistant secretaries of state Richard Armitage and James Kelly were Japan experts.
These personnel changes signal a wider shift in U.S. foreign policy away from the force-based unilateralism of Bush¡¯s first term to one emphasizing cooperation with allies and prioritizing a diplomatic solution to the North Korean problem. But they have yet to show any concrete results in the department¡¯s biggest headache, the dispute over North Korea¡¯s nuclear arms program.
¡ß White House: Sudden Rise of Rove and Gerson
Early this year, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and policy advisor Michael Gerson saw a stellar rise in their influence in matters Korean. After news that North Korea shut down its Yongbyon reactor in April, it was Rove who went on CNN and warned the U.S. could take the issue to the UN Security Council. A domestic policy advisor until last year, he now has an office just to the left of the Oval Office on the first floor of the White House, even closer than the Chief of Staff¡¯s.
Gerson is an even more interesting case. At 40, he has an office like Rove¡¯s right next to the Oval Office. A theology major, he has been Bush¡¯s speechwriter for the last six years, and if the president¡¯s speeches frequently quote the Bible and reflect an evangelical view of the world as a battleground of good versus evil it is down to Gerson¡¯s theological background. Even though he is said to enjoy the president¡¯s complete trust, his promotion to presidential policy and strategy advisor took many by surprise. From his position behind the throne, he is credited with making ¡°the spread of freedom and democracy¡± a core policy of the administration. Bush¡¯s policy direction that the North Korean human rights and WMD proliferation must be dealt with clearly and firmly is also believed to have been drafted with input from Gerson.
Along with these two top aides, the White House Korea policy lineup consists of the core members of the National Security Council, including advisors Stephen Hadley, Michael Green and Victor Cha. But behind them, neocon ¡°godfather¡± Vice President Dick Cheney is alive and well, and sets the big picture in Korea policy. Lewis ¡®Scooter¡¯ Libby, Cheney¡¯s chief of staff with whom he discusses all matters, is a core neocon. It is due to the influence of the ¡°Cheney gang¡± that hard-line pronouncements intermittently clang out of the White House amid a mood of dialogue and diplomacy.
¡ß Pentagon: Exit of the neocons
In the Pentagon, core neocons like Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas J. Feith have gone, as has the State Department¡¯s John Bolton, now an embattled nominee as UN ambassador, clearing the air of their incessant bickering with the pragmatists. Replacing them are Gordon R. England, formally Secretary of the Navy, and Eric Edelman, formerly ambassador to Turkey. Neither has much in common with the ¡°cabal.¡±
The core figure in the Pentagon¡¯s Korea policy is Richard Lawless, the under assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs. That Lawless skips over the established chain of command and reports directly to Secretary Rumsfeld gives the measure of his influence. He has caused stirs with blunt talk saying things like ¡°Korea¡¯s strategic value is finished,¡± but he is also seen as understanding Korea better than anyone and stressing the need for the alliance above all.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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