dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

https://freekorea.us/2008/08/24/joe-biden-and-north-korea-policy/

Biden has generally favored a policy of (wait for it) more blackmail economic incentives for North Korea to disarm.

The selection of Biden would probably signal the elevation of long-time Biden aide Frank Januzzi should Obama be elected. The fact that Chris Nelson likes Januzzi ought to be a conclusive reason not to like him, although Januzzi is too mild of manner to really despise, either. The record shows Januzzi to be a faithful believer in the idea that North Korea would change if we’d only understand it better.

In 2001, Januzzi tried without success to arrange a visit to Pyongyang by his boss. In 2004, Januzzi joined strident appeaser Siegfried Hecker as part of a congressional delegation to Yongbyon and Pyongyang:

“We visited several facilities at Yongbyon,” said Frank Januzzi, an aide to Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “We went to North Korea with the goal of trying to deepen mutual understanding and made some progress toward that goal,” Januzzi said in a telephone interview. [USA Today, Barbara Slavin]

“We had a good visit,” said Frank Januzzi, another member of the delegation and an aide to Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Januzzi said they also discussed with the North Koreans issues that included the nuclear facilities, human rights and economic reforms. [L.A. Times, Barbara Demick]

On human rights, however, Biden raised objections to some provisions of the North Korean Human Rights Act that succeeded in watering the bill down before it went to the full Senate for a vote (none of the reports specify which provisions). Even then, an unnamed Biden staffer had to be subjected to intense lobbying by the National Association of Evangelicals before the bill was able to get a vote.

There isn’t much question that Biden considers human rights issues a severable secondary priority, and sees the scale and gravity of North Korea’s atrocities as no worse than those committed by “other bad guys … around the world [who] sure don’t treat their people real nicely.” In a 2005 hearing, Biden questioned Chris Hill and Joe DiTrani about why human rights should get in a way of a deal that would give the North Koreans security guarantees, and possibly fully normalized relations with the United States in exchange for their plutonium:

BIDEN: …I’m really confused by why it’s not just simple enough to not negotiate but just sit down and say, “Here’s the deal. This is it. These are the outlines of it, for real. And we’re willing to live with you bad guys.”

Unless you’re not. If you’re not, you’re living with other bad guys other places around the world. In China, there’s not all good guys. Other places, you’re living with guys not as bad but sure don’t treat their people real nicely.

And that’s what confuses me and confuses, I think, a lot of other people.

So in the few minutes I have left, let me ask these two questions. Are you willing to live with the bad guys if you have a verifiable agreement that they have given up, not their prison camps, not their maltreatment of their folks, not their legal system, not those — if they’re willing to give up nuclear weapons, nuclear capacity to build weapons and a capacity to throw those weapons on missiles? [link]