Secretary of State John F. Kerry is getting mixed reviews in his first high-stakes test as North ?Korea brazenly threatens a nuclear showdown — a challenge that highlights the strengths as well as the weaknesses of ?the nation’s newly minted top ?diplomat, experts say.
“If you wanted a champion for peace and stability, somebody who has a sophistication and ?savvy, we couldn’t have a better person than John Kerry in the mix,” said Charles Stith, a Boston University professor and former U.S. ambassador to Tanzania.
With North Korea apparently poised to launch a missile test, Kerry traveled East to gain ?China’s support in convincing ?its unruly neighbor, headed ?by volatile young leader Kim Jong Un, to back down.
“I think that his actions are ?entirely predictable and regardless of who President Obama had appointed secretary of state, I think we would see the same policy: The United States is trying to make it clear to North Korea that A) avoiding war is in everybody’s interest and B) we’re not going to get pushed around,” Boston University international relations professor and retired army Col. Andrew Bacevich said, adding that Kerry’s “opportunity to demonstrate creativity lies elsewhere.”
Yesterday, as Kerry held talks in Beijing, the U.S. and Chinese leadership presented a unified front — at least rhetorically — in calling for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.
“We agreed that this is of critical importance for the stability of the region and indeed for the world and indeed for all of our nonproliferation efforts,” Kerry said. “This is the goal of the United States, of China” and of other countries that hope to resume nuclear talks one day with North Korea.
China has long had close ties to North Korea, providing it with fuel, food and diplomatic cover even as it tested nuclear weapons and threatened the already shaky peace on the Korean peninsula. That makes for an uphill battle for Kerry, who took over the post of top American diplomat in February, hailed for his years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The region falls outside the former Bay State senator’s area of expertise, said one expert.
“You can tell this is not his comfort space,” said Gary Schmitt of Washington’s American Enterprise Institute of Kerry’s handling of relations with China. “You are struck by how much more at ease he is talking about European and Middle Eastern affairs and issues as opposed to Asia.”
There is hope a partnership with China could produce ?results, regardless of what headway Kerry makes personally, said Tufts University professor William Martel.
“The popular myth in the ?media is that it’s the persuasive skills of diplomats that fundamentally change the dynamics of international policies. I’ve never ?believed that,” Martel said. “I think the big issue is this question of whether North Korea’s behavior has been so reckless, so dangerous and so provocative, it might lead to a change in thinking in Beijing that they need to recalibrate their policies.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
