Dr. Gloria Duffy: A Moment of Weakness for Ahmadinejad

Dr. Gloria Duffy, the Commonwealth Club's president and CEO, appeared on a television news report last night about experts' reactions to the Iranian nuclear and missile activity.

Duffy noted that the Obama administration might be sensing a period of weakness on the part of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad following the tumultuous post-election protests in that country. Others disagreed; former CIA agent (and former Commonwealth Club speaker) Robert Baer argued that the U.S., UK and France took a bad pre-negotiation step by embarrassing Iran when they revealed the country's previously little-known nuclear facility near the religious city of Qom.

View the KGO TV video for these and other views on the situation.

China Gets Tough on North Korea

North Korea's best friend -- if the hermetic, authoritarian, communist state can be said to have any friends -- is giving it the cold shoulder. Bloomberg reports that China will, for the first time, agree to punish North Korean leaders in retaliation for Pyongyang's refusal to accept United Nations resolutions on nuclear tests and missile launches.

China has long defended North Korea, perhaps less out of ideological comradeship than out of what is believed to be a desire to keep a unified and likely pro-Western Korea off its borders. But that loyalty has cost the leadership in Beijing. "The failure to develop a consensus in the Chinese capital to use its leverage over North Korea has permitted [North Korean dictator] Kim Jong Il to repeatedly defy Beijing and the embarrass it," Gordon G. Chang told The Commonwealth Club on May 25, 2007. [Listen to audio of Chang's speech.]

Chang, author of Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World and columnist for Forbes.com, urged the West to make nuclear proliferation "a litmus test of our relations" with China. "The West has been patiently engaging the Chinese for decades, and now it's time for them to act responsibly."

So what has changed in Beijing? Some observers say that North Korea's recent nuclear detonations and missile tests, reportedly designed to bolster at-home support for Kim Jong Il's youngest son and chosen successor, embarrassed China so much it had to take action. But Leif-Eric Easley writes in the Christian Science Monitor that China's rapid development has led it to diverge from North Korea, its economic model taking it closer to Japan, the United States, and South Korea than to North Korea.

Whatever the reason, China's most recent move to help punish its client state is likely to have significant impact in Pyongyang.

What Does North Korea Want?

North Korea has an uncanny ability to shape its geopolitical reality despite the weak hand it's dealt itself, noted author and Korea expert Gordon G. Chang during a Commonwealth Club speech May 25, 2007: "[The U.S. is] the strongest nation in history. North Korea is one of the most destitute states. Yet for more than five decades, the regime run by the Kim family has outmaneuvered us at almost every turn. The situation is even more peculiar than that, because North Korea is not only outmaneuvering us; it's outsmarting the rest of the world." [Listen to entire program.]

Global attention is once again focusing on North Korea amid reports that Pyongyang is preparing a long-range missile test sometime around July 4. As a result, additional protections have been ordered for Hawaii in the event a missile is launched. While North Korea denies it is threatening the United States, the North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun stated, “As long as our country has become a nuclear power, the U.S. should take a correct look at whom it is dealing with.”

In an interview with CBS News’ Harry Smith, President Barack Obama said he did not want to “speculate on hypotheticals.” But at the same time, Obama stated, “This administration – and our military -- is fully prepared for any contingencies.”

Meanwhile, North Korea also claimed last week that Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two U.S. journalists who had been sentenced to 12 years in a labor camp, admitted entering the country illegally in order to slander the country’s human rights record. There are no independent accounts of exactly where the journalists were captured, and the U.S. has asked for the release of the two women. However, many speculate that the journalists are being used as bargaining chips by North Korea against the United States.

As we near the possible launch of the missile toward Hawaii and we await an outcome of the prisoner saga, it might be a good time to dig a bit deeper into Korean politics, culture, and history. In recent years and months, The Club has hosted many programs concerning North Korea, featuring experts from a variety of viewpoints. Several of these discussions were moderated by Club President and CEO Dr. Gloria Duffy, who served as U.S. Special Coordinator for Cooperative Threat Reduction and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the 1990s. To view these programs, visit our video partners at Fora.tv.

--Commonwealth Club Media and Public Relations Department