We all thought it was always a Terror-Sponsoring State
Why North Korea Needs Relisting as a Terror-Sponsoring State
By
Claudia Rosett
November 2, 2017
Officially the State Department
is headquartered in Washington, but every so often -- far too often --
there come these moments when State seems so out of touch that it might
as well be operating on Neptune. So it goes with the question of whether
to put North Korea back on the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism --
to which the the instant answer from State ought to be yes, yes, YES.
Instead,
like an ant circumnavigating an elephant, State is examining the
proposition (yet again), having just missed a legal deadline for telling
Congress whether Kim Jong Un's North Korea meets the criteria to be
listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. On Thursday National Security
Adviser H.R. McMaster told the press
that listing North Korea is an "option" which President Trump's cabinet
is considering "as part of the overall strategy on North Korea."
Just
how much considering remains to be done? McMaster himself mentioned as
"clearly an act of terrorism that fits in with a range of other actions"
North Korea's assassination with VX nerve agent of Kim Jong Un's
half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, this past February in a Malaysian airport.
But McMaster remained coy on whether, in the judgment of America's
diplomats, the lethal use of WMD in a commercial airport would suffice
to land North Korea back on the U.S. list of terror-sponsoring states.
He said only, "you will hear more about that soon, I think."
This equivocation comes as President Trump embarks on a 12-day trip to Asia,
in which North Korea strategy will loom large -- and a complex mission
it will be, requiring a mix of soft power and hardball, with stops in
Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. After decades of
disastrous U.S. policy toward North Korea, including failed nuclear
deals under Presidents Clinton and Bush, and eight years of passivity
dolled up as "strategic patience" under President Obama, the margin for
error in North Korea policy has greatly dwindled, and the risks have
soared.
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