Ex-State Department official sounds alarm on North Korea
“I’m still a social worker — my casework has changed,” said Wendy Sherman, who rose from social work and community organizing to top posts in the U.S. State Department under two Democratic presidents.
Sherman may be understated about her distinguished career, but she can deliver a message with a punch, especially when talking about the nuclear threat from North Korea.
Sherman, who spoke Tuesday at Marquette University, has some ideas about dealing with North Korea’s nuclear threat, based on hard experience. In 2000, she joined then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on a trip to North Korea, where they met for around 12 hours over two and a half days with Kim Jong Il, father of the country’s current leader.
She said that Kim Jong Il was a rational player within “the paradigm he operated in. We don’t see it as rational because we don’t believe in the premise.”
She said the current leader, Kim Jong Un, operates in “the same paradigm,” but “is more publicly brutal than his father was or his grandfather. But no one should underestimate the brutality of the father or grandfather. There were executions galore; they weren’t as public.”
For Sherman, the way forward in North Korea involves a comprehensive strategy that uses all the tools that the U.S. possesses, including military and intelligence assets and diplomacy. The U.S. will also have to work in concert with South Korea and China, she said.
“We need to assert our military capability through exercises and missile defense, how we deploy our military in the region, but that credible threat of force should be in service of diplomacy,” she said. “Force alone cannot solve this problem.
“Sanctions put pressure on a country to come to the negotiating table,” she said.
“At the center should be dialogue, negotiations,” she said, adding that North Korea “just wants to talk with the United States.”
Sherman said China “has the single most important economic relationship with North Korea. It is critical that China enforce the sanctions and actually be ready to slow down or stop their provision of oil with North Korea.”
“Quite frankly, I think we have to get up to the precipice before we get into a negotiation,” she said, adding that North Korea doesn’t “particularly trust anyone.”
“They really are a hermit kingdom, more like a cult than a country,” said Sherman, who served under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Sherman worries that President Donald Trump’s administration lacks a coherent strategy on North Korea, or a team to see through policy. Still, she tries to be optimistic.
She said the ultimate goal should be denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
“This is a really tough problem,” she said.