Policy Forum

Yukio Okamoto, president of Okamoto Associates, Inc., and former chairman of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizmi’s Task Force on Foreign Relations, writes, “The summit should be seen as a solid first step. In the coming year, Prime Minister Abe will be probably be asking the Bush Administration to join his government in the crafting of a detailed and inspiring vision of America’s and Japan’s common future.”

Gavan McCormack, a coordinator at Japan Focus and author of the book Client State: Japan in the American Embrace, writes, “The maturity and the humanity of states and societies, as in the case of individuals, may be measured by the way they face the darkest moments of their own history. The contrast between recent judgments in courts in South Korea and Japan points to a gulf in terms of civic maturity, with South Korea apparently showing the way to Japan.”

Brian P. Duplessis, a Major in the United States Marine Corps with 17 years service, writes, “For too long, military thought has almost exclusively focused on the DPRKs sizeable conventional forces and WMD capabilities while giving short shrift to irregular warfare capabilities and disruptive activities. In order to successfully blunt a future DPRK military attack, this trend must be reversed.”

China Matters, a blog online at: http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/, writes, “Every time the North Korean dog sticks its head out of its Chinese kennel, we beat it on the snout with a stick and force it back to the heel of its Chinese master. And we persist with the policy even when it runs counter to our current diplomatic efforts and security strategy for the region. It’s a policy that’s blind, self-defeating, and futile. And now that the U.S. has abandoned a policy of confrontation with North Korea, it’s also become ridiculous.”

Donald G. Gross, Senior Fellow at The Atlantic Council of the United States, Asia Programs, in Washington, DC, writes, “As the dominant country in the Asia-Pacific, the U.S. faces a crucial strategic choice: it can use its superior diplomatic, political, military and economic power to negotiate a historic Framework Agreement with China that achieves a fundamental shift in the paradigm of U.S.-China relations. Or, to the contrary, the U.S. can narrowly focus on protecting its domestic market and bolstering its military presence in East Asia in expectation of an inevitable conflict with China.”

Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, authors of Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform, write, “While we welcome the February 13 agreement, ongoing conflicts over implementation underline that it was a first step only. We are still far from either resolving the North Korea’s chronic food emergency or successfully denuclearizing of the Korean peninsula.”

Jae-Jean Suh, Senior Research Fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, writes, “it is highly unlikely that North Korea will refuse to integrate into the capitalist world system that other socialist nations had selected and continue to persist with its acquisition of nuclear weapons, thereby further sustaining its Cold War isolation, but would rather make a strategic choice of abolishing its nuclear weapons.”

Katharine H.S. Moon, Associate Professor of political science at Wellesley College and Associate Fellow at the Asia Society in New York City, writes that “The Japanese system of sexual slavery was first and foremost an atrocity perpetrated on women, not nations. Often, these were women of lower classes or women underprotected in some way by their own people. And whether they were Korean or Dutch or South Pacific Islander, their bodies, minds and souls hurt equally.”

Tong Kim, Visiting Scholar at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University, writes that “The North Koreans should heed the rekindled criticisms among the opponents of the Bush administrations new approach to the DPRK since their refusal to participate in the talks last week. They should remind themselves that they won a rare opportunity to engage the United States after waiting 6 long years. They should also remember that the United States still has other options to resort to, if it is convinced, as events may prove right or wrong, that there is no way to reach a fair negotiated settlement.”

The Atlantic Council Working Group on North Korea, chaired by Ambassador James Goodby and General Jack N. Merritt released this report which notes, “Enlarging the diplomatic agenda through parallel negotiations, alongside the nuclear talks, will strengthen the U.S. hand by enabling diplomats to assert additional pressures on North Korea as well as provide Pyongyang, and other negotiating partners, new incentives The history of negotiating with North Korea demonstrates that improvements in political conditions almost always precede and foster agreements on security-related issues.”