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When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives in Seoul on February 19, the question of how to deal with the North Korea problem will be high on her agenda. The Obama administration inherits a now-nuclear North Korean state and stalemated six-party talks on denuclearization in the DPRK. Pyongyang remains bellicose
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toward America's allies in Japan and South Korea. And the North Korean regime has been utterly unapologetic about its systematic human rights abuses.
Can new directions in North Korea policy more effectively promote America's security and humanitarian interests? What approach is the Obama administration considering? What additional ideas for dealing with the Kim Jong Il regime merit fresh consideration? Please join us as Peter Ackerman, an expert on strategic nonviolent resistance; David Asher, former coordinator of the Department of State's North Korea working group and former senior adviser for East Asian affairs; and L. Gordon Flake, executive director of the Mansfield Foundation, discuss new options for the Obama administration's North Korea policy. AEI's Nicholas Eberstadt will moderate.
| 1:45 p.m. | Registration | |
| 2:00 | Panelists: | Peter Ackerman, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict |
| David Asher, international affairs consultant | ||
| L. Gordon Flake, Mansfield Foundation | ||
| Moderator: | Nicholas Eberstadt, AEI | |
| 3:30 | Adjournment |
WASHINGTON, FEBRUARY 20, 2009--It is hard to see any evidence of success in what has been the United States' policy toward North Korea. Kim Jong Il's regime has tested nuclear weapons, and the six-party talks on denuclearization have stalemated. What's more, the North Korean leadership has not relented in its horrendous abuse of human rights, and its people continue to live in abject poverty. As Nicholas Eberstadt noted at an AEI panel discussion on February 19, "for those of us concerned with the freedom agenda of the DPRK, we haven't had a very good batting average."
L. Gordon Flake, the executive director of the Mansfield Foundation, countered that due to the realities on the ground, "there's just not enough wiggle room for a dramatically progressive policy toward North Korea." He argued that instead of focusing on a "North Korea policy," we must commit our attention to a larger "Southeast Asia policy." "There is no magic bullet, no secret path" to solving the North Korea problem, he said, but it is in the U.S. strategic interest and diplomatic capability to improve relations and strengthen alliances with the regime's neighbors--South Korea, Japan, and China.
Yet this does not mean that the U.S. cannot push for reform in the DPRK. "'Engagement for change' should be the key phrase for the Obama strategy toward North Korea," noted David Asher, a former coordinator of the Department of State's North Korea working group and former senior adviser for East Asian affairs. "We can use the same positive diplomatic, nonviolent, and nonprovocative means we used to win [the Cold War] without fighting in Eastern Europe."
Peter Ackerman of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict also argued that the United States can support North Korean civil resistance, which would have a higher probability of success than armed resistance. "Put the North Koreans on a stimulus package," he said. By engaging with locals through technical assistance programs and providing them with the resources to oppose the dictatorship, regime change could be induced from within--without a shot being fired.
"The biggest single threat from North Korea is not that it would use its nuclear weapons but that it will sell them," Asher added. A good approach to North Korea would "both anticipate and encourage change on the Korean Peninsula in line with the enduring national interests of both the United States and its allies."
Speaker biographies
Peter Ackerman is the founding chair of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict in Washington, D.C., and one of the world’s leading authorities on nonviolent conflict. He is also the chairman of the board at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is the coauthor of two seminal books on nonviolent resistance: A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict (Palgrave, 2000) and Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century (Praeger, 1994). Mr. Ackerman was executive producer of the PBS documentary Bringing Down a Dictator, on the fall of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic, which received a 2003 Peabody Award. He was also series editor and principal content adviser for the two-part Emmy-nominated PBS series A Force More Powerful, which charts the history of civilian-based resistance, including Gandhi's campaigns for Indian independence, Danish resistance to German occupation in World War II, the U.S. civil rights movement, the rise of solidarity in Poland, the people's movement against General Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and the dismantling of South Africa's apartheid system. In addition, Mr. Ackerman is chairman of the board of Freedom House and a member of the board of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also on the executive council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
David Asher is an international affairs analyst and former coordinator of the Department of State’s North Korea working group (2001-2005). From 2005 to 2007, Mr. Asher was a senior associate scholar with the Heritage Foundation. He was also a member of the Armitage commission on U.S.-Japanese relations. From 2001 to 2005, he served as senior adviser to the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, cochair of the North Korea Activities Group policy coordinating committee at the National Security Council, and U.S. delegation adviser to the six-party talks on North Korea. Mr. Asher has been involved in East Asian economic, financial, and security affairs since the late 1980s in government, academia, and the private sector.
Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at AEI and is also a senior adviser to the National Bureau of Asian Research in Seattle. He serves on the advisory board of the Korea Economic Institute of America and is a founding member of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. Mr. Eberstadt is currently, inter alia, a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics and the Visiting Committee for the Harvard School of Public Health. Mr. Eberstadt is regularly consulted by governmental and international organizations, including the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the World Bank. Mr. Eberstadt has published over three hundred studies and articles in scholarly and popular journals, mainly on topics in demography, international development, and East Asian security. His dozen-plus books and monographs include The Poverty of Communism (Transaction, 1988); The Tyranny of Numbers (AEI Press, 1995); The End of North Korea (AEI Press, 1999); Korea's Future and the Great Powers (University of Washington Press, 2001); The North Korean Economy: Between Crisis and Catastrophe (Transaction, 2007); Europe's Coming Demographic Challenge: Unlocking the Value of Health (AEI Press, 2007); and, most recently, The Poverty of "The Poverty Rate": Measure and Mismeasure of Want in Modern America (AEI Press, 2008).
L. Gordon Flake is executive director of the Mansfield Foundation, which he joined in February 1999. Previously, he was a senior fellow and associate director of the program on conflict resolution at the Atlantic Council of the United States and, before that, director for research and academic affairs at the Korea Economic Institute of America. Mr. Flake is coeditor with Park Roh-byug of Understanding New Political Realities in Seoul: Working toward a Common Approach to Strengthen U.S.-Korean Relations (Mansfield Foundation, 2008), is coeditor with Scott Snyder of Paved with Good Intentions: The NGO Experience in North Korea (Praeger, 2003), and has published extensively on policy issues in Asia. He is a regular contributor on Korea issues in the U.S. and Asian press and has traveled to North Korea numerous times. He is a member of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies and serves on the board of the U.S. Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, the board of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, and the advisory council of the Korea Economic Institute of America.
