By Elliot Waldman
The Obama Administration’s policy of ‘strategic patience’ is wearing thin.
A few weeks back, at a time when the minds of most foreign affairs watchers in D.C. were on conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, the State Department’s two top diplomats in charge of North Korea policy, Glyn Davies and Robert King, testified in front of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. At the hearing, Republican committee members, in characteristically pugnacious style, accused the Obama administration of maintaining an ineffectual policy toward the world’s most reclusive and capricious state. Chairman Steve Chabot (R-OH) said in his opening remarks that “a non-nuclear North Korea is an elusive goal if the administration maintains its current strategic trajectory.” Doug Collins (R-GA) went a step further, saying current U.S. policy has “served only to benefit North Korea by offering it more time… to pursue its own objectives.” Even Gerry Connolly (D-VA), normally sympathetic to the White House’s agenda, voiced frustration at the lack of progress made in recent years.
Despite agreeing to abandon its nuclear program in 2005 as part of an accord reached with South Korea, Japan, China, Russia, and the U.S., North Korea disavowed that promise after talks broke down in 2008. Since then, the U.S. government has maintained that North Korea must abide by its 2005 commitment, or else continue to face a crippling sanctions regime and a diplomatic cold shoulder. However, the aggressive lines of questioning by Chabot and others reflect a growing realization that this policy, informally referred to as “strategic patience,” does not adequately address the increasingly brazen threats emanating from the Hermit Kingdom. Indeed, the security situation on the peninsula has only deteriorated in recent years, and all signs indicate that it will continue to do so unless the U.S. revises its stance.
Read the full story at The Diplomat