Get Asia Right

[ 2 ] asia policy “Our allies may be frustrating at times, but we must give them precedence until China becomes what former deputy secretary of state Bob Zoellick called a ‘responsible stakeholder’—or, as Zoellick suggested, a democracy. Former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage had it right: to get China right, we have to get Asia right.” • Get Asia Right Michael Green The new president is inheriting a U.S. strategic position in Asia that is stronger than many realize. Polls taken in Japan, China, India, and Korea suggest we are more popular today than four years ago. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that Asians rank the United States number one in the region in terms of “soft power” and believe that U.S. influence in Asia has increased over the past decade. We have both strengthened our alliance ties with Japan and broadened trust and cooperation with China simultaneously for the first time in U.S. history. Moreover, the new president is inheriting an array of important new multilateral mechanisms from the six-party talks to the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue with Australia and Japan and the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Energy and Development. Nevertheless, we still face major challenges in Asia. It would be a mistake to think that U.S. policy in the region can run on autopilot while the new administration focuses on immediate problems like Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and the Middle East—that is precisely the mistake that the Bush administration has made over the past year, and as a result the new president has some work to do in shoring up our position in certain areas. And to be candid, as excited as much of the world was about the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, our Asian friends are looking for reassurance from him on some issues that made them nervous during the campaign. ThefirsttaskistosettherighttonewithNorthKorea.AfterNorthKorea’s October 2006 nuclear test, the UN Security Council (UNSC) unanimously passed a resolution imposing sanctions and promising more to come if Pyongyang did not immediately come into compliance with commitments it made in the September 2005 six-party talks to verifiably dismantle all of its nuclear weapons and programs. But we never implemented any of the michael green is Senior Adviser and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Associate Professor of International Relations at Georgetown University. He can be reached at . [ 3 ] special roundtable • advising the new u.s. president approved UNSC sanctions or threatened new ones when North Korea balked at implementing denuclearization commitments. Once Pyongyang realized there would be no consequences for delay and deception, the North refused to move at all without new inducements. In the end, we managed to reach an agreement that only covers the North’s plutonium facilities at Yongbyon. That is certainly a step forward, but one that would only be credible if the North’s declaration on its facilities can be verified. In fact, President Bush made it clear in June that the United States would not go ahead with the final delisting without a credible verification protocol. That condition was all the more important because Pyongyang had successfully excluded from the agreement any measures on its clandestine uranium enrichment program, its existing nuclear weapons, or its dangerous transfer of nuclear know-how to Syria. Yet when North Korea balked and threatened to begin reprocessing or testing again in October, we lifted the sanctions anyway, in exchange for vague commitments to follow up on verification procedures later. This diplomatic process has done real damage to our credibility with key allies like Japan. It has also taught Pyongyang the wrong lessons. Still, it would be a mistake to give up on the six-party talks at this point. The critical thing will be for the new president to convince Pyongyang that there will be consequences for failure to live up to its commitments just as there will be incentives for denuclearization. Just as important, the new administration will need to do a great deal of reassuring to Japan and South Korea, where thoughtful observers are beginning to question whether the United States is moving to accept a nuclear North Korea as...