January 27, 2003

SUNSHINE IN DAVOS?

By Tom Plate

Hopeful news about the Korean crisis at the World Economic Forum

DAVOS, Switzerland -- If misery loves company, it has been Standing Room Only the past few days at this famous international policy-wonk retreat in the snowy Swiss Alps.

For among the world bankers, national leaders, CEOs, academics, cultural icons and other well-known figures, there has been no shortage of gloom and doom. Davos pessimisms include profound worries over the impending U.S. military move against Iraq, the shaky world economy, bioterrorism threats, the corporate governance mess -- and a whole list of complex issues longer and trickier than negotiating the towering ski slopes of nearby St. Tropez.

But peeking up through this avalanche of issue-misery is a shaft of hopeful sunlight. Ironically enough, it concerns the heretofore grim Korean peninsula issue. The optimism breaks down this way: After all but threatening WWIII over North Korea's putative cheating on its weapons-of-mass-destruction agreements, President George W. Bush appears to have come down on the side of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on this major issue.

For his part, Powell, a "sunshine policy" fan, is convinced of the wisdom of outgoing South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and incoming Roh Moo-hyun in their insistence on jaw-jaw rather than war-war with North Korea. The soldier-turned-diplomat has been telling people here that there is no insurmountable obstacle to the U.S. government producing some kind of written guarantee of non-aggression that the North Koreans say they require, for starters, if they are to decisively ratchet down their menacing but cash-producing weapons programs.

Bush appears to have sided with Powell despite extraordinary pressure from the Pentagon and, more importantly, from Vice President Dick Cheney, with whom he talks lengthily by telephone every day. By siding with Powell, the former Texas governor has had to overcome his own deeply embedded distaste for negotiating with Communists. It was this gut instinct more than anything else that accounted for his abrupt and brutal rejection of Kim Dae-jung's sunshine policy in March, 2001.

But nowadays the president, authoritative sources suggest, is thinking about the Korean peninsula more in pragmatic than ideological terms. He is eager to put the issue to the side, at least for the next several months, so as to focus on Iraq, whose government Bush is, with monomaniacal intensity, determined to rattle out of power.

When and if the Saddam problem reaches closure, the president may well return to his hawkish instincts on Korea. But by then, Powell and his closest aides believe, a North Korean deal should be done -- and have so told the president.

If Powell's people can talk the problem out of existence diplomatically, Bush is described as being willing to live with this result. Thus, because of Saddam, Bush has given Powell and Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly the green light to sunshine on, full speed ahead.

The above column may have just appeared in the Honolulu Advertiser, The South China Morning Post and The Straits Times of Singapore. The author, Tom Plate, is a regular columnist at these three papers. The column also appears in other world newspapers, including The San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, The Japan Times and The Korea Times. Email him at: tplate@ucla.edu.

For publication and reprint rights, contact the author directly or John Simpson (john.simpson@latsi.com) of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate International.

Columns from Davos:

Hawkish Policy Best Defended By The Dove (January 26, 2003)

Previous Columns:

Beijing Worries About U.S. Designs On The Korean Peninsula (January 27, 2003)

The World Could Lose A Vital International Voice (January 21, 2003)

Japan '42 Redux -- Or Is It Vietnam All Over Again? (January 20, 2003)

Making The Best Of A Bad Situation (January 13, 2003)

Can Chinese Diplomacy Turn Over A New Card? (January 6, 2003)