Congress Is MIA in N. Korea Policy

WASHINGTON — There’s no better example of the Republican Congress’ seeming inability to play a serious, effective role in overseeing American foreign policy than the way it has handled the matter of North Korea.

For nearly five years now, Republican congressional leaders have fussed, fumed and fulminated over the Clinton administration’s policy of offering incentives to North Korea in exchange for carefully hedged promises not to proceed with nuclear weapons and missile programs.

But despite all their rhetoric, the Republicans have done nothing. They claim they hate the U.S. policy and say it amounts to rewarding extortion. Yet they back away from threats to cut off the funds for it, and fail even to raise very many questions about it.

Gone are the days of giants such as Sens. Henry Cabot Lodge and J. William Fulbright, who exerted extraordinary influence over American foreign policy. Gone, too, is the era when Democratic Congresses put some legislative teeth behind their beliefs--severely limiting the Nixon administration’s efforts to continue the Vietnam War and cutting off overt, legal aid by the Reagan administration to the Nicaraguan Contras.

These days, by contrast, Republican leaders seem more like a bunch of cranky tourists--denouncing U.S. foreign policy while acting as though they had no responsibility for it. Their rage is so empty you have to remind yourself once in a while that they are, after all, the majority party in Congress, with the power of the purse.

Now, in the wake of the Clinton administration’s most recent bargain with North Korea, Congress has what is probably its best chance to review, change or reverse the direction of U.S. policy. Yet so far, the Republicans, while voicing their usual gripes, don’t seem to understand the implications of this deal or even to know what questions to ask.

Under the agreement, concluded last month in Berlin, the Clinton administration agreed to lift the 4-decade-old economic sanctions that the United States had imposed on North Korea, in exchange for North Korea’s promise not to test its new long-range Taepodong-2 missile.

Three weeks ago, this column criticized the Berlin agreement as a narrow, short-term deal that did not settle whether North Korea may export, produce or deploy its missiles. Thus the agreement left North Korea free to try to extort further benefits from the United States and its allies.

Since then, U.S. officials have offered new ways to try to justify the agreement.

Sure, they said, the North Koreans are holding back some concessions in their missile program to trade away in the future for further benefits. But the United States and its allies are holding back some carrots to dangle before the North Koreans too.

In particular, volunteered one U.S. official, the United States and its allies have at least two more big incentives they can offer North Korea in future bargaining. Carrot No. 1: The United States hasn’t yet agreed to let international financial institutions such as the World Bank lend money to North Korea. And Japan may eventually agree to pay war reparations to North Korea, which has for years sought up to $10 billion. So that’s Carrot No. 2.

This explanation is quite interesting. It suggests that there may have been much more to the Berlin talks than is on the public record. The two governments made what looks like a limited bargain, but they also seem to have at least explored, and perhaps informally outlined, broader agreements in the future.

A cynic might say the Clinton administration’s series of rewards for North Korea is turning into an updated version of the old line, “You can’t fire me, I quit.” With North Korea, it’s “You can’t extort money from us, we’ll bribe you first.”

Where is Congress on all this? So far, nowhere.

The House International Relations Committee has finally scheduled a hearing on North Korea a week from today. Maybe it can conduct a serious review of American policy and get answers to the following questions:

What, exactly, was offered to North Korea in Berlin besides the lifting of U.S. economic sanctions? World Bank loans? Japanese war reparations? Diplomatic recognition? What are the trade-offs? Precisely what will North Korea be required to do in return?

More broadly: Why is it in America’s interest to open the way for an ever-widening stream of benefits--including food, oil, civilian nuclear reactors and cash--to a highly militarized regime that threatens its neighbors, severely represses its people and continues to deploy its huge army along the demilitarized zone with South Korea?

Is North Korea collapsing? If not, should we be helping to strengthen it? Why doesn’t the United States insist on a pullback of North Korean forces first?

If the Republicans in Congress can’t get good answers to such questions, and if they don’t like the administration’s North Korea policy, they have the power--indeed, the legislative duty--to act on their beliefs. Otherwise we can assume that, despite all their denunciations and campaign speeches, it is their policy too.