Espionage: North Korea on the Spot | Newsweek Periscope

FACTCHECK.ORG
GOP Convention Spin, Part II
Viveca Novak 9/4/2008 12:00:00 AM
We found Rudy Giuliani, who introduced her, to be as factually challenged as he sometimes was back when he was in the race. But Mike Huckabee may have laid the biggest egg of all.
What Palin Needs to Know
Michael Hirsh 9/3/2008 12:00:00 AM
Enough already. When it comes to Sarah Palin, we need to get beyond Troopergate, Bridgegate and, above all, Daughtergate. Can we dabble in substance for a moment? Palin's experience in domestic policy—from energy issues to managing budgets—is fairly well-established. There is a record to judge. But when it comes to foreign affairs, she is unmolded clay. Even those who follow Alaska politics closely say they have no idea what Palin thinks about the world. "She has no experience in foreign policy, other than meeting trade delegations" from Russia and Asian countries, said Gerald McBeath, a University of Alaska political scientist who praises her first two years as governor and calls her a "quick study." Adds McBeath: "We are a very parochial state. Our campaigns focus almost exclusively on state issues."
DIPLOMACY
Anatomy of a Nuclear Deal
Stephen Glain 7/27/2008 12:00:00 AM
Historians may one day call it the "duty-free demarche." In December 2006, U.S. arms negotiator Victor Cha was departing Beijing after another failed round of talks on North Korea's nukes. While waiting in the baggage line, Cha suddenly found himself standing next to Kim Gwe Gwan, Pyongyang's lead negotiator. The two men chatted amiably for a few minutes and then Kim suggested they meet at the duty-free shop after Cha passed through security. Once there, standing between the cigarette and liquor counters, Kim told Cha that Pyongyang favored direct Korean-American talks in the hope this would revive the moribund negotiations. Back in Washington, Cha delivered Kim's back-channel appeal to his boss, national-security adviser Stephen Hadley, who requested a memo on how the White House should proceed. Cha drafted an 850-word argument in favor of holding a single round of direct talks. The memo was passed up to the Oval Office and within weeks President George W. Bush reversed one of his bedrock policies: never negotiate directly with rogue states. What then followed was a 16-month diplomatic onslaught of a sort completely foreign to the go-it-alone Bush presidency.
WORLD AFFAIRS
Redefining The ‘Axis Of Evil’
Christian Caryl 7/26/2008 12:00:00 AM
The spectacle of the White House's hailing a major diplomatic breakthrough with North Korea, a nation George W. Bush once shunned as a member of the Axis of Evil, has many folks heaving a sigh of relief. As the deal fell into place last month, Pyongyang handed over an inventory of its nuclear weapons and equipment and demolished a cooling tower at its main nuclear complex, rendering it unfit for weapons production. In response, Washington promised to remove North Korea from its list of governments that sponsor terrorism, and suspended some sanctions. Suddenly, a White House best-known for not talking to enemies was on a path designed to talk Pyongyang off the nuclear-weapons path and into good graces with the international community.
THE WORLD FROM WASHINGTON | MICHAEL HIRSH
'The Truth Shall Set You Free'
Michael Hirsh 5/29/2008 12:00:00 AM
The punching bag is punching back. During his three-year stint as White House press secretary, Scott McClellan was perhaps best known for his fumbling responses to questions from TV correspondents performing for the cameras. Now, with his new book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," McClellan is hitting back hard. Not only does he accuse himself and his boss, George W. Bush, of getting the War on Terror wrong, he faults the media for buying into the Iraq invasion too readily. As McClellan writes in his preface: "History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided—that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder. No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact. What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."
MIDDLE EAST
The Other Mideast Talks
5/12/2008 12:00:00 AM
If President George W. Bush truly wants to leave a legacy of peacemaking in the Middle East, he's looking in the wrong place. Instead of focusing exclusively on Israeli-Palestinian talks, Bush should do more to encourage renewed Israeli-Syrian negotiations.