Clinton and North Korea

By John Burton

Korea watchers in Washington DC are debating what policy Hillary Clinton will adopt toward North Korea if she is elected the next president of the United States as I found out during a recent visit to the nation's capital.

Her stance is being closely watched since North Korea is likely to receive a higher priority in her administration than it did under President Barack Obama, who pursued what has been called a position of "strategic patience" by largely ignoring the North Korean issue for eight years as he focused on dealing with the growing power and possible nuclear breakout of Iran in the Middle East.

"The US government can't handle more than three or four major issues at the same time and North Korea didn't make it into that top list as the Obama was preoccupied with other issues," such as reviving the US economy and responding to growing instability in the Middle East, according to Marcus Noland, executive vice-president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who has written extensively on North Korea.

In addition, "Obama's early efforts to establish some sort of dialogue with North Korea were quickly rebuffed by Pyongyang and he concluded in a realistic appraisal that his attention should be focused on problems elsewhere that had a greater chance of being solved," Noland added.

Clinton will not have the luxury of avoiding the North Korea issue as Pyongyang appears to be rapidly accelerating its program to build up its nuclear weapon stockpile and develop long-range missiles that would give it a possible strike capacity in attacking the U.S mainland.

The debate among Korea watchers is whether Clinton will tilt toward a policy of engagement with North Korea or else adopt a harder line policy than Obama in confronting North Korea that reflects her reputation as a foreign policy hawk.

Since Clinton herself has not referred much to North Korea during the just concluded presidential primary campaign against Bernie Sanders, the best clues for what she might do can be found in recent statements made by her foreign policy advisors.

Most of her advisors come out of the moderate Democratic Party foreign policy establishment and many served with her when she was U.S. Secretary of State during the first term of the Obama administration. Several played public or behind-the-scene roles in helping reach an accord to halt Iran's nuclear arms program under her successor as Secretary of State, John Kerry.

That background has persuaded some that Clinton will pursue a policy of engagement with North Korea similar to the one that her husband, Bill Clinton, tried to implement during his last years in office between 1998 and 2000, which included a visit by his Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, to Pyongyang to meet Kim Jong-il.

Jake Sullivan, who is Clinton's top foreign policy advisor and seen as the strongest candidate to become her National Security Advisor in the White House, recently suggested that the experience of reaching the successful nuclear deal with Iran could also be applied to solving the North Korea nuclear issue. Sullivan played a key role in the U.S. negotiations with Iran when he was at the U.S. State Department.

But some analysts believe that North Korea's aggressive ramping up of its nuclear ambitions has reduced the chances that Clinton will opt for negotiations. "Too much water has passed under the bridge and North Korea's actions has narrowed the spectrum of opinion on which should be done," said Scott Snyder, senior fellow for Korean studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Clinton is in danger of confronting a domestic political backlash if she is seen as adopting a policy of acquiesce toward Pyongyang.

A more confrontational approach was recently expressed by Wendy Sherman, who was the policy coordinator for North Korea during the Bill Clinton administration and once was seen as a dove on dealing with Pyongyang. She was also one of the chief negotiators in concluding the Iran nuclear deal and has been mentioned as a possible Secretary of State in a Clinton administration.

In a speech last month, Sherman said that North Korea was a much more difficult problem to solve than Iran and called for increased economic sanctions that would be "severe, requiring comprehensive implementation" over a long period of time. She also expressed support for continuing military exercises, the THAAD missile defense in South Korea, and an increased focus on human rights violations in North Korea, suggesting that the end game would be the collapse of the Kim Jong-un regime. Noland described the speech as offering a policy of "all sticks and no carrots."

Whatever approach Clinton decides to take in regard to North Korea will largely depend on the actions of Pyongyang and its determination to preserve its nuclear weapons program. But given current trends, I expect that Clinton will be tougher on North Korea than Obama has been..

John Burton, a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is now a Seoul-based independent journalist and media consultant. He can be reached at johnburtonft@yahoo.com.