George R. Packard
President, International University of Japan;
Director of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, President, U.S.-Japan Foundation
George R. Packard was dean of SAIS from 1979 to 1993 and is now director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies as well as professor of East Asian studies at the school. He is also president of the International University of Japan. From 1965 to 1967, he was chief diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek. Prior to that, he served as special assistant to U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer. In March of 1998, he was appointed president of the U.S.-Japan Foundation.
Packard Report - Jun. 2008
An extraordinary report appeared this week in
the Washington Post of May 26 with the unique,
almost unprecedented headline, "Mid-level
official steered U.S. Shift on North Korea." Buried
on page 12, the story related how Assistant
Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill has single-handedly
turned the Bush Administration from despising
the North Korean regime (part of the "Axis
of Evil" along with Iraq and Iran back
in 2002) to the current policy of trying to
reach a deal on nuclear weapons in its final
seven months.
The story caused a furor among Korea-watchers
here, who have seen an internal struggle waged
by the hard-line forces of Vice President Cheney
and UN Ambassador John Bolton to isolate and
if possible overthrow the DPRK regime. Chris
Hill's success, if that's what it is, has surprised
most observers here. He was seen as skating
on very thin ice, and vulnerable to a counter-coup
at any moment. His conservative critics call
him "Kim long Hill."
His success has depended on keeping information
about negotiations with the North Koreans to
a very few top officials in Washington: mainly
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President
Bush. Hill, a professional Foreign Service
officer with 30 years' experience, apparently
impressed Bush when he was Ambassador to Poland.
The Polish president, a favorite of Bush, heaped
lavish praise on Hill.
So explosive was the report on Hill's role
that Condoleezza Rice felt compelled on May
29 to issue a denial: the administration's
policy toward North Korea has been carefully
coordinated and developed by many people at
different agencies, she said. But almost immediately
this statement was shot down by a report that
a new book, about to be published, "Meltdown," by
Mike Chinoy. In this book, Rice is quoted as
saying of reporting about North Korean negotiations, "Bring
it only to me."
Another dramatic twist came on May 28 in a
report by McClatchy Newspapers' Warren Strobel.
In a "leak" about the 18,882 documents
recently turned over by the DPRK, it seems
that the Central Intelligence Agency's estimates
of North Korean plutonium production in 1992
were just plain wrong. Instead of 50 kilos,
the North Koreans had only 30, of which five
may have been used for a nuclear test. The
discrepancy between these two numbers will
be critically scrutinized by Congress when
any deal goes up to Capitol Hill for approval.
Meanwhile, critics of Japan are finding their
voices again. It has become fashionable to
argue that the US-Japan alliance is "in
drift," that Prime Minister Fukuda is
hopelessly weak, that Japan is hoarding tons
of rice while typhoon victims starve, that
Japan persists in defying world opinion by
continuing to kill whales, and that Japan is
trying to derail the Six Party talks on Korea
due to its obsessive concern with the abductee
issue. As unfair as these criticisms are, we
can see once again that when Americans feel
sympathy toward China (due to the massive recent
earthquake damage), media and popular opinion
swings against Japan.
Any new administration in January 2009 will,
with wise policy choices, be able to reverse
this trend, and fortunately all three of the
current candidates and their foreign policy
advisors are reasonably enlightened on the
subject of US-Japan relations.
But the next three months are crucial for
moving the North Korean issue to an agreement
of some kind. President Bush and Rice badly
want a diplomatic success to offset their steady
stream of failures. Japan would be wise to
find a way to temporarily shelve the abductee
issue and to go along with any legitimate and
verifiable agreement on the North Korean nuclear
program.
Almost no attention was paid to the news this
week that Japan, like the United Kingdom, broke
ranks with the United States by signing the
new international agreement banning "cluster
bombs." This was a healthy decision by
Tokyo, and one that will cause Japan to win
new respect of any new administration in Washington.
Too often Japan has been seen as a compliant "enabler" for
George W. Bush. If Japan, like Germany and
France, had opposed Bush's plan to invade Iraq
in 2003, who knows what beneficial results
might have occurred? There is a lesson here
for the future.
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