One of the stranger aspects of being overseas is following the upside-down logic of the International Herald Tribune, which around January mysteriously morphed from a shrill critic of the U.S. government to its official mouthpiece. In a recent editorial it argued that “North Korea made a colossal mistake by getting off to a bad start with President Obama, who offered the kind of dialogue that President George W. Bush took far too long to embrace.”
North Korea did not make “a colossal mistake,” as the Tribune supposes, but rather, given its nature and aims, scored a coup of sorts by: (1) forcing the U.S. to grovel by sending an ex-president and spouse of the current secretary of state to beg back the hostages; (2) exposing U.S. rhetoric about not negotiating with terrorists to be a mockery (one that is especially galling to our Japanese and Korean allies, who are from time to time hectored by the U.S. not to negotiate with a rogue regime to regain their own hostages); (3) embarrassing the Obama-Clinton team by showing that it has a separate set of rules for Washington insiders such as the ubiquitous and self-righteous Mr. Gore, whose company sent the two journalists into the heart of darkness for no apparent good reason and then relied on possibly compromising U.S. diplomacy to get them back.
I don’t think North Korea sees any of this as “a colossal mistake” at all, but rather as a cheap win-win in every way — and a valuable guide for how to proceed in the future.