North Korea and Iran have thrown cold water on US President Barack Obama’s vision of dialogue with US foes — and experts warn there may be little he can do for now to change their minds.
North Korea on Monday detonated an atomic bomb as powerful as the one that ravaged Hiroshima, brazenly defying Obama’s calls both for dialogue and for a global ban on nuclear tests.
On the same day, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ruled out talks with world powers on Iran’s nuclear drive and instead proposed a debate with Obama — who had sent an unprecedented video appeal to Iranians in March.
Obama has made reaching out to US adversaries a hallmark of his young presidency, saying in his inauguration speech in January that he would extend his hand to all leaders “if you are willing to unclench your fist.”
Obama condemned North Korea and urged international action.
But the famously calm leader also showed he was not in panic mode, playing golf on Monday — the Memorial Day holiday — for more than four hours.
Analysts said Obama was up against the stark reality that no matter what his overtures, US foes have their own internal dynamics at play.
L. Gordon Flake, executive director of the Mansfield Foundation think tank who advised Obama on North Korea during his campaign, warned against conventional wisdom that the test was mostly a way to pressure Washington.
North Korea’s main motivation, he argued, was domestic — to shore up the regime’s strength as leader Kim Jong-il’s health wanes following his stroke last year.
“To presume that this is a way to try to get the Obama administration’s attention would be to presume that they want to start negotiations. And there has been zero indication of that,” Flake said.
“It’s pretty clear that in the waning days of the [former US president George W.] Bush administration, they made a decision to abandon the six-party talks process and to go full-speed ahead with their own nuclear program,” Flake said.
North Korea last month pulled out of a six-nation aid-for-disarmament deal reached in 2007 in protest at a UN Security Council statement condemning it for testing a long-range missile.
Monday’s test drew a similar rebuke from the Security Council.
Victor Cha, who was Bush’s top adviser on Korean affairs, also rebuffed the “standard answer” by experts that Pyongyang was trying to provoke Obama to agree to face-to-face negotiations.
“Pyongyang has rebuffed all serious efforts by the Obama administration thus far to engage in high-level talks,” said Cha, now a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Georgetown University.
Cha said North Korea may instead be seeking the status of a nuclear weapons state or security guarantees as the communist state transforms — perhaps without Kim at the helm.
“These goals pose formidable challenges for the United States and other members of the six-party talks,” Cha said.
Iran, for its part, goes to the polls on June 12 and analysts said that Ahmadinejad and other hardliners find it impossible to do an about-face and respond to Obama after campaigning for years on anti-Americanism.
Ahmadinejad has championed Iran’s nuclear drive, which he says is for peaceful purposes despite widespread suspicion in the West that it aims to develop nuclear weapons.
Scott Snyder, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Iran would be watching closely to see how forcefully the Security Council acts against North Korea.
“Iran and North Korea are really connected at the hip on this issue,” Snyder said.
“What happens with North Korea certainly must be viewed through the lens of Iran and vice versa,” he said.
“If the response is perceived as too weak, one effect could be to enhance criticisms of the Obama administration’s handling of foreign policy,” he said.
Outspoken conservative John Bolton, a US ambassador to the UN under Bush, has gone on the offensive, saying Obama’s emphasis on diplomacy allowed North Korea to carry out its second nuclear test.
“The North Koreans have thumbed their nose at the administration and now we have to see what kind of stuff they are made of,” Bolton said.
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