Jimmy Carter is set to travel to North Korea very soon, according to two sources familiar with the former president's plans, in what they characterized as a private mission to free a U.S. citizen imprisoned there.

Carter has decided to make the trip and is slated to leave for the Hermit Kingdom within days, possibly bringing his wife and daughter along for the journey. His goal is to bring back Aijalon Mahli Gomes, a 30-year-old man from Boston who was sentenced to 8 years in prison in April, about three months after he was arrested crossing into North Korea via China. In July, North Korea's official media organ reported that Gomes had tried to commit suicide. Earlier this month, the State Department secretly sent a four-man team to Pyongyang to visit Gomes, but was unable to secure his release.

There will be no U.S. government officials on the trip and Carter is traveling in his capacity as a private citizen, our sources report -- much like when former President Bill Clinton traveled to Pyongyang last August to bring home Current TV reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had wandered across the North Korean border with China and were promptly arrested and threatened with years of hard labor.

A senior administration official would not confirm that Carter has decided to go but told The Cable, "If anyone goes it would be a private humanitarian effort." Carter's office did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.

The Obama administration wants desperately to avoid conflating the Carter trip with its current stance toward North Korea, which is to engage Kim Jong Il's regime only if and when North Korea agrees to abide by its previous commitments and agrees to return to the six-party talks over its nuclear program, which Pyongyang abandoned in 2008.

Sen. John Kerry, D-MA, had offered to go to pick up Gomes and has been working on the case for months, but our sources report Carter was selected because he is not a serving U.S. official. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson had also been considered, but it's not clear why he was not chosen.

Carter has personal experience dealing with North Korea. In a dramatic and controversial June 1994 trip, after North Korea threatened to reprocess its spent nuclear fuel and the Clinton administration called for U.N. sanctions, the former president flew to Pyongyang to meet with Kim Jong Il's father, Kim Il Sung, and successfully persuaded him to negotiate.

This time, leading Korea experts say, Carter's trip should not be seen as a change in U.S. policy toward Pyongyang and will likely not yield any breakthrough in what most see as a diplomatic stalemate between the two sides.

"Obviously, State and the White House had to be involved in the planning of this. But if you're going to try to pitch this as a foreshadowing of a new diplomatic engagement or a breakthrough, it's certainly not going to be that," said L. Gordon Flake, executive director of the Mansfield Foundation, a think tank Focused on Northeast Asia.

When Clinton flew to Pyongyang to free the two Current TV reporters, who received a "special pardon" from the Dear Leader, he was extremely careful not to wade into policy matters.

"I don't anticipate that in any way President Carter will be carrying water for Obama or for any change in policy toward North Korea, because what is required for North Korea to move forward in negotiations with the United States is clear," said Flake.

But although Carter doesn't have official sanctioning to wade into North Korea policymaking, he might just do it anyway. Carter is known for having an independent streak, boldly taking on foreign-policy issues whether invited to do so or not.

Many former officials reference Carter's last trip to North Korea as evidence of this phenomenon. According to several officials who were involved in the policy at that time, Carter's deal with Kim Il Sung went beyond what the Clinton administration had authorized.

After the elder Kim's death the following month, the United States and North Korea entered talks in earnest, resulting in the 1994 Agreed Framework, which represents the most comprehensive cooperation between North Korea and the West to this day.

"As a result of his going slightly off the reservation, we got back to productive negotiations and before long negotiated the most effective agreement we've ever had with the North Koreans," said former ambassador Thomas Hubbard, who was then deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs and deputy to the lead negotiator for the Agreed Framework, Robert Gallucci.

"You can't expect President Carter to take orders and do things the way the president wants it done, but to my mind it's a risk worth taking," Hubbard said. (Clinton himself later told former Joint Chiefs chairman Colin Powell, "I took a chance on him in North Korea, and that didn't turn out too badly," according to an account by the late David Halberstam.)

Not everyone remembers Carter's trip so fondly. Some Clinton administration officials were furious with Carter at the time for coloring outside the lines, and saw him as being deliberately roguish, considering that he brought a CNN camera crew with him and announced his deal before the Clintonites could object. The Clinton White House decided to take his ball and run with it after the fact.

"There are a lot of memories of Jimmy Carter's last trip to North Korea and a lot of people kind of thought he hijacked our diplomacy," said Joel Wit, a former U.S. nuclear negotiator who is now a visiting fellow at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies and the founder of its website about North Korea, 38 North. "The bottom line is he did a good thing and the work he did there helped to pave the way to get the Agreed Framework."

Some experts argue that sending Carter is a bad idea that will only encourage further bad behavior on the part of Pyongyang.

"Sending another ex-president establishes a very bad precedent," said Amb. Charles "Jack" Pritchard, who served as special envoy to North Korea during the George W. Bush administration. "Mr. Carter has a history, an understanding, and a point-of-view where I can't imagine he would not, on his own, engage the North Koreans on substantive issues more than just the return of Mr. Gomes."

"If that's what they want," he said, referring to the Obama administration, "then he's a very appropriate choice."

Obama's tough posture toward Pyongyang, which includes as yet unspecified new financial sanctions and repeated military exercises with U.S. ally South Korea -- all of which are meant to show solidarity and strength after North Korea sunk the South Korea ship the Cheonan -- could be compromised, said Pritchard.

"It sends a signal, whether intended or not, that the United States is trying to get past the Cheonan incident, with the potential that we would be slightly out of step with the South Koreans," Pritchard said.

That's not a universally held view among former Bush administration officials, however.

"In the end, if the priority is to get the American out and that is what's required, then it's worth it, you've got to do it," said Victor Cha, Asia director for the National Security Council during the late Bush era. "If Carter can be helpful in getting some diplomatic dialogue going, that's fine. I hope he doesn't have some package to pull out of his pocket; that wouldn't be helpful."

Yet there are already signs that the Obama team's decision to essentially forgo direct engagement for the time being while concentrating on pressure and coordination with allies is fraying at the top levels.

We're told that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is said to be frustrated with the policy, had her Policy Planning chief Anne Marie Slaughter convene a high-level meeting at the State Department earlier this month to examine fresh options.

No matter what Carter does or how the North Koreans respond, the debate in Washington is likely to ramp up due to this trip, said Wit.

"The minute you send Jimmy Carter to North Korea, you've got to believe the pot is going to be stirred."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's trip to Southeast Asia last month cemented what officials and experts are recognizing as a more assertive U.S. approach to the region in the face of increased Chinese aggressiveness.

At the ASEAN regional forum in Vietnam, Clinton shocked the Chinese by announcing that the United States intends to play a prominent role in a new regional effort to create a framework for resolving territorial disputes in the waters near East and Southeast Asia. The announcement followed months of diplomatic legwork behind the scenes and provoked an angry reaction from the Chinese government and state media.

"The United States supports a collaborative diplomatic process by all claimants for resolving the various territorial disputes without coercion," Clinton said in Hanoi July 23, not naming China specifically. "We oppose the use or threat of force by any claimant."

In a response posted to the Chinese Foreign Ministry's website, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi expressed surprise and described Clinton's comments as "in effect an attack on China," arguing that any territorial disputes in the region should be handled bilaterally, without U.S. involvement.

The Chinese government has been conducting its own backroom diplomatic effort with ASEAN countries, primarily related to disputes over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, a complex archipelago of hundreds of minor islands and coral reefs that are claimed by various regional powers.

"What will be the consequences if this issue is turned into an international or multilateral one?," Yang said. "It will only make matters worse and the resolution more difficult."

The Chinese state media was apparently more blunt.

"People's Daily, the ‘voice' of the Party, today charged the US has ‘not thought through in a calm manner' the issue of ‘how to co-exist with a rapidly developing China,'" Chris Nelson wrote in the Washington insider newsletter The Nelson Report on July 27. "Saying that if the US can't ‘control its impulses', People's Daily manages to sound like China's favorite client, North Korea, warning China ‘will not flinch' if the US keeps acting up."

If the Chinese were surprised, they were among the only ones. In the weeks leading up to the conference, U.S. officials worked hard to lay the groundwork for Clinton's announcement. Under Secretary Bill Burns was dispatched to four ASEAN countries while Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell and NSC Senior Director Jeffrey Bader worked the phones to call the others.

While the Obama team was conducting its quiet diplomacy, the Chinese were working the ASEAN countries as well. In fact, China had secured an agreement from the ASEAN countries that the South China Sea issue would not be on the conference agenda. But during the meetings, the issue was on everybody's minds and when Clinton rose to address it, several other countries joined her in another clear rebuke to the Chinese. "This was organized and coordinated and when the Chinese realized that the American announcement was coordinated with the ASEAN partners, that caught them off guard," said Ernie Bower, director of the Southeast Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The showdown could usher in a new era in Asian regional dynamics. China, which has been building its naval capabilities and working to expand its diplomatic influence, especially in Southeast Asia, has been increasingly assertive due to its rising sense of self-importance and perception that the U.S. is distracted with other international priorities. But Southeast Asian countries are wary of Chinese power and are looking to the U.S. to step in and play a larger role.

"The Chinese set themselves back years by the way they overreacted" following the conference, said Bower. "They fulfilled every bit of Southeast Asia's fears that these guys are showing us a nice face but behind it they have other objectives."

The conference appears to represent a turning point in the Obama administration's approach to China. After a year and a half of largely avoiding confrontation but getting little increased cooperation from Beijing in return, the administration is setting firm boundaries with China on key issues.

"The Obama administration started out thinking they could have this partnership with China so they treaded lightly. But their new approach is, ‘We're going to have to show them some determination and show them that we are going to follow through,'" Bower said.

An administration official close to the issue said that Clinton's remarks in ASEAN were not meant to signal any change in the U.S. approach toward China, which is comprehensive and complex. But increased public discussion of international issues that involve China goes hand in hand with the renewed U.S. commitment to being present and involved in Asia going forward.

"Part of this is a reminder to China that we will be a player in the region for a long time," the official said.

The administration has noticed increased Chinese assertiveness on a range of issues. "China, in the recent period, has definitely sensed that that they have a perceived strategic opening," the official added.

Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg, in a recent talk at the Nixon Center, tied Clinton's South China Sea initiative to recent uncooperative actions by the Chinese, including their cutoff of military-to-military relations with the U.S.

"We continue to stress that [military to military cooperation] is not a favor to one country or the other, but it is absolutely critical to manage this very complex process of China's own economic growth and military modernization, that a number of the issues that we have can only be satisfactorily addressed if we have direct dialogue, and that it's, frankly, counterproductive for China to see this as a benefit to be offered or withheld in relationship to other issues," he said.

Steinberg said that the recent dispute over a U.S. aircraft carrier conducing naval exercises in the Yellow Sea off China's northeast coast could have been resolved if mil-to-mil contacts were still ongoing. The U.S. tacitly acceded to China's demand to move the exercises, but the Pentagon said it will feel free to operate in the Yellow Sea in the future.

The Obama administration's overall strategy is to expand and strengthen regional mechanisms, such as the East Asia Summit, which Clinton has been invited to join. The effort is meant to counter China's penchant for dealing with smaller countries on a bilateral basis, where Beijing can exert more pressure.

"Ultimately, the Chinese leadership is going to have to look at that and say: ‘Are we better off showing more flexibility and a willingness to engage on a more multilateral basis, or just insist on our position at risk of raising questions in the minds of other countries in the region as to why it's not willing to engage multilaterally?'" said Steinberg.

The administration's increased assertiveness in Southeast Asia includes its own bilateral outreach to ASEAN member countries as well, including new military cooperation with Indonesia and discussions of civilian nuclear cooperation with Vietnam.

"They are trying to strengthen ties with various Southeast Asian countries including Indonesia and that's a very worthwhile thing to do," said Paul Wolfowitz, former ambassador to Indonesia and former deputy secretary of defense.

Wolfowitz called on Obama to follow through on his promise of an Indonesia visit, which has been postponed twice.

During President Obama's trip to Canada this weekend for the G-8 and G-20 meetings on global economic reform, the real action will be taking place in his meetings with several top Asian leaders on the sidelines of the events.

"We also want to use these meetings as an opportunity to underscore America's commitment to leadership and increased engagement in Asia," said a senior administration official about the trip. "We see this is an opportunity to continue our efforts to renew our leadership in Asia."

Five out of the six precious bilateral meetings Obama will grant over the weekend will go to leaders from East Asian countries. After the first meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron in Toronto, his one-on-ones will be with President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea, Chinese President Hu Jintao, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, and the new Japanese prime minister, Naoto Kan.

"That is, I think, an eloquent demonstration of the importance that the president attaches to Asia, the importance of Asia to our political security and economic interest," another senior administration official said.

For the Korea bilat, the sinking of the Cheonan will be at the top of the agenda. The U.N. debate over how to reprimand North Korea for sinking the ship is going on now and strategies for finishing that effort need to be discussed.

With the Chinese president, Obama will likely follow up on the slight change China made to its currency policy this week. Congress isn't quite yet satisfied with the move and is still pressing legislation, so Obama needs to find out whether Hu intends to go further.

In a blistering New York Times column Friday, Princeton University economist Paul Krugman argued that China's currency adjustment was "basically a joke" and called on Beijing to "stop giving us the runaround and deliver real change" or face trade sanctions.

Obama may also want to raise Beijing's refusal to resume military-to-military dialogue, as shown most dramatically when China refused to let U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates visit last month when he was traveling in the region.

"It's our view and it's the president's view that military-to-military relations between the U.S. and China are in China's interest and in the U.S.'s interest," the senior administration official said. "This is not a favor that either side does to the other."

"We believe they should be continuous and should not be subject to ups and downs based on events in the relationship," he said, a reference to the administration's decision to go ahead with arms sales to Taiwan over Beijing's vociferous objections, as well as Chinese anger over Obama's welcoming of the Dalai Lama in February.

With Japan's Kan, Obama's mission is to make nice and get off to a better start than he did with ousted Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. The Kan administration definitely seems to be on board with that idea and the White House is sending the message that, as far as the United States is concerned, the dispute over the Futenma air station on Okinawa is settled.

"Prime Minister Kan has made clear that he endorses the agreement that we reached on basing in Okinawa. He does not question it, and he's looking to strengthen the alliance," the senior administration official said.

Obama is scheduled to visit India, Japan, and Korea on a trip in November, so the meetings are also meant to prepare for that as well. No word yet on whether Indonesia will be added as a stop.

Now that Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has fallen on his sword, and the United States Japan have an opportunity to "reset" their relationship, which suffered due to the personal discord between Hatoyama and President Obama and the lingering dispute over a base in Okinawa. But will they take it?

For now, the battle over the Futenma air station seems to be tabled, with the new prime minister, Naoto Kan, pledging to largely stick to the deal struck in 2006. But there are lingering doubts as to whether either Washington or Tokyo is ready to revamp the rest of the alliance, which needs an update as it crosses the 50-year threshold.

So far, Kan seems to be sounding the right notes.

"The new prime minister has done everything possible to underscore the importance of the U.S.-Japan alliance," an administration official close to the issue told The Cable. "This is a very complex set of interactions but we're reassured by what we've heard so far from Prime Minister Kan."

Japan hands in Washington note that Kan, in his swearing-in remarks, affirmed the U.S.-Japan alliance as "the cornerstone" of his country's diplomacy and pledged to honor the 2006 agreement. But Kan also said he would place equal emphasis on improving ties with China.

That struck many in Washington as a sign that the Democratic Party of Japan, which took power last year for the first time, is still hedging against what party leaders see as an Obama administration that just isn't giving Japan the respect and attention it feels it deserves.

As for the recent cooling in relations, "I don't think it's over, but a change in leadership is a chance to reset," said Randall Schriver, former deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia. The U.S. problem with Hatoyama was personal, based on his style and inability to meet his own deadlines, resulting in a lack of trust, Schriver said.

"Japan's a democracy and Hatoyama brought himself down," said Devin Stewart, senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

So is everything OK now that Kan is in charge?

Not exactly. The new prime minister's comments on China suggest that Washington and Tokyo aren't yet on the same page regarding larger issues of security, economics, and diplomacy.

"The relationship is bigger than Futenma, but that's all we talked about," Schriver said. "So somebody has to raise this to the next level and start to talk about the broader regional issues and that's got to be us."

Kan's not likely to take the lead on trying to revamp the alliance, mainly because he has to focus on Japan's economy and keeping his party's control of the parliament.

"Prime Minister Kan is treading on the eggshells left behind by Hatoyama," said Patrick Cronin, director of the Asia security program at the Center for a New American Security, the think tank founded by Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell. "He has to carry his party into uncertain July elections whose outcome may determine the next ruling coalition, the next cabinet, and possibly even the next steps on military basing."

And Kan has every reason not to want to reopen the Futenma issue, which Hatoyama seemed to resolve just before he resigned.

"The tough decision had been made," said Tobias Harris, former DPJ staffer and author of the blog Observing Japan. "Now all Kan has to do is say that he stands by the status quo and hope that Okinawan resistance gradually loses steam as the two governments hammer out the details."

Some Japan experts in Washington lament that the DPJ is still not getting a lot of respect in Washington. At a conference this week being hosted by CNAS, the theme of alliance renewal is front and center.

But will new ideas get a fair hearing?

Not only are there no Okinawans invited, the one DPJ lawmaker speaking is Akihisa Nagashima, a powerful lawmaker for sure, but also a well-known hawk with long ties to the Washington "alliance managers" who still hold the reins of the relationship.

"It's clear that the voices of a ‘status quo' U.S.-Japan security relationship will get the most air time at this meeting," argues the New America Foundation's Steve Clemons.

North Korea announced today that it was breaking off diplomatic relations with the South, one day after South Korea imposed severe trade restrictions on Pyongyang in response to the March sinking of a South Korea ship, the Cheonan.

The news broke as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was getting ready to depart Beijing for Seoul, South Korea, where she is expected to back President Lee Myung-bak's demand that Pyongyang "pay a price" for its actions. Clinton's five-day visit to China for the Strategic and Economic Dialogue has been largely overshadowed by the crisis on the Korean peninsula, with Beijing calling for calm in the face of growing pressure from Washington and Seoul.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, calls are heating up for the Obama administration to take punitive measures like putting North Korea back on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.

But the Obama administration is clearly signaling it does not intend to do that any time soon. The calculation is that the listing, which administration officals see as having been overly politicized by George W. Bush's administration, is more trouble than it's worth.

"With respect to ... the state-sponsor of terrorism list, the United States will apply the law as the facts warrant," Clinton said in Beijing Monday. "The legislation, as you know, sets out specific criteria for the Secretary of State to base a determination... If the evidence warrants, the Department of State will take action."

What Clinton is saying here is that the original reasons that North Korea was put on the list, when they blew up half the South Korean cabinet in Rangoon in 1983 and then bombed Korean Air Flight 858 in 1987, are not enough to justify putting Pyongyang back on the list today. Nor are the other reasons that the State Department has included in reports as recently as 2007 good enough for relisting now, namely that North Korea still hasn't answered for 12 Japanese abductees and still harbors members of the Japanese Red Army.

In fact, that 2007 report evens says that "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) was not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987."

Whether you believe that or not, the sinking of the Cheonan falls outside that definition.

"I don't see how you can call this a terrorist act," said Michael Auslin, fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "I think it's an act of war but it's not a terrorist act. Putting them back on there would just show that we really don't have any other options. I think it was a mistake to take them off, but I don't think this is how you put them back on."

Leading Asia experts lament that the process was reduced to a political negotiation at the very end of the Bush administration, when then North Korea negotiator Chris Hill agreed to delist Pyongyang in exchange for North Korean promises to keep alive the Six Party Talks on their nuclear program. Those promises have gone largely unfulfilled.

When the delisting actually happened in October 2008, the State Department stated that North Korea "had not provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding six-month period and the provision by the government of assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future."

Many Asia experts support putting North Korea back on the list, but they don't see the Cheonan sinking as a justification for doing it.

"I actually think it makes perfect sense to relist North Korea; it just has nothing to do with the Cheonan incident," said L. Gordon Flake, executive director of the Mansfield Foundation, a northeast Asia focused think tank. "The incident just provides an opportunity to reevaluate the politically driven decision to delist them in the first place."

That decision was meant to cement progress made by the Bush administration as represented by a September 2005 declaration whereby North Korea promised to abandon all nuclear weapons programs and a February 2007 agreement on implementation.  Japan was so upset, based on their domestic imperative to keep the abductee issue alive, that then Prime Minister Taro Aso reportedly called Bush that morning to beg him not to do it.

But after being delisted, Pyongyang just waited out the Bush administration and then started a series of provocative actions that eventually led to the Obama administration basically abandoning attempts to engage North Korea altogether.

That's not to say there aren't arguments to be made that North Korea is indeed still currently a state sponsor of terror. For example, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman accused Pyongyang this month of funneling weapons to Hezbollah and Hamas through Burma, an allegation that has not been confirmed by the U.S. side.

But the Obama administration isn't making those arguments. That job is left to congressmen such as Gary Ackerman, D-NY, and Sam Brownback, R-KS. "Through the sales of ballistic missiles, artillery rockets and conventional arms to Hamas and Hezbollah, State Department-designated foreign terrorist organizations, Pyongyang is fueling two additional potentially disastrous confrontations," Ackerman said.

Overall, the making of the listing into a political football is exactly the reason that the Obama administration doesn't want to wade into those waters again.

"They saw the way this was handled in the Bush administration and they don't want to go there," said Flake. "It's a lot easier to do then to undo. This is a tool that should not be overly politicized, if we want to put more sanctions on North Korea, we can."

Hillary Clinton is on her way to Asia for the fifth time since becoming secretary of state (compared to one trip for President Obama), and although the trip is heavily weighted toward China, the discussions are sure to be dominated by how Pacific nations should respond to the evidently well-documented allegation that North Korea torpedoed a South Korea ship in March.

"This was a serious provocation. There will be definitely be consequences because of what North Korea has done," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Thursday. "This is abominable ... It is not the way that civilized nations act toward one another."

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the U.S. "strongly condemns" the action and added, "this clear violation of the armistice agreement further sets them back and further isolates" North Korea, but declined to say whether there would be any firm consequences going forward.

Why so vague? Clinton and her team have some tough work ahead of them if they want to get everybody on the same page regarding the incident. Meanwhile, the trip was already packed with other business on a range of bilateral and regional issues. Here's what to watch:

JAPAN: The Japanese media is reporting that the U.S. and Japan are getting ready to announce on May 28 a deal to move the Futenma air station to another part of Okinawa, largely in line with the 2006 agreement that the Japanese government had campaigned on changing. The Nelson Report, a Washington insider newsletter, claimed Wednesday that the Japanese reports are "not the entire story."

It's no secret that the relations between Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and the Obama administration have been frosty. Hatoyama's decision initially not to honor the basing deal was a risky one. Expect him to lay the groundwork during the Clinton trip to walk back that position.

The sinking of the South Korea ship actually reinforces the need for a strong U.S.-Japan security alliance in Japan's eyes, so expect Clinton and Hatoyama to project unity. But at the same time, Japan is still more hawkish on North Korea than the Obama administration wants to be; Japan has already joined South Korea's call for strong U.N. Security Council action. Clinton is unlikely to lay out a firm U.S. position until she has had a chance to consult with the South Koreans and the Chinese.

"The DPJ is realizing that there was a reason for the U.S.-Japan alliance after all and the South Korean report of the sinking of the Cheonan certainly makes that case," said Devin Stewart, senior fellow at the Carnegie Council. "While China has sought to take advantage of the current bumpy spot in U.S.-Japan relations to move closer to Japan -- perhaps at the expense of the U.S. -- the Japanese government and the Japanese people see the value in a close relationship with the U.S."

CHINA: Clinton will spend five days in China, compared with one each in Japan and Korea. The official reason for the journey is for the second round of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, which includes a 200-plus contingent of U.S. officials. But the substance of the dialogue is not so  revolutionary. The economic track will focus on U.S. calls for Chinese currency revaluation and China's "indigenous innovation" policy, but nobody expects movement on the Chinese side on either issue during the trip. The strategic side will likely be hijacked by the North Korea issue, as opposed to less flashy topics such as military-to-military cooperation.

"It's a dialogue of convenience right now," said Derek Scissors, research fellow in Asia economic policy at the Heritage Foundation, "Nothing valuable is going to come out of the dialogue on the economic side because the U.S. isn't going in trying to do anything valuable."

The Chinese have been less than enthusiastic about getting involved in the torpedo incident. They didn't issue a statement of condolence for weeks after the boat sank, and declined this week to send their ambassador in Seoul to a briefing on the South Korean investigation, sending the embassy's No 2 instead. The recent visit to China by Kim Jong Il did not go well. It was reported that he left early, in a huff because Chinese President Hu Jintao expressed Chinese interest in getting more involved in North Korean domestic affairs. Clinton will need China to at least not forswear U.N. action; a Chinese abstention on any Security Council resolution would be good enough. But it will be tough for Clinton to pressure China into any specific course of action, mainly because the U.S. hasn't decided what action it is advocating in the first place.

As for the dialogue itself, the deliverables will be thin. The plenary session will focus on energy security, the low-hanging fruit that both sides can agree to support. The Obama administration is interested in the overall issue of world economic rebalancing, but the administration isn't making that a priority in the talks right now, probably due to its own vulnerability on the issue.
Clinton will have to press hard for some statement on China's commitment to the draft Iran sanctions resolution. In the wake of the Copenhagen mess, neither side wants to talk about climate change. Taiwan is not on the agenda; that's probably a good sign because it means that Taiwan is not a flash point in the relationship right now.

KOREA: By the time the Clinton team gets to Korea, the last leg on the trip, the state of play on the ship sinking may have changed. South Korea may have already announced a series of unilateral actions against the North, including trade restrictions and maybe even a shutdown of the Kaesong Industrial Complex. The U.S. will have to decide by then whether it wants to join South Korea in calling for a Security Council resolution with some teeth, a general U.N. statement, or something else.

It's important for Clinton to stand side-by-side with the South Koreans and announce initiatives can be seen as addressing the issue directly, such as improved intelligence coordination and more transfers of submarine-detection capability. As for the Six-Party Talks on North Korea's nuclear program, they were on life support before, and North Korea is trying to pull the plug. But the Obama administration can't pronounce the talks dead because that may be exactly what the North Koreans want.

No matter what U.N. action the allies can muster, there is likely to be little effect on Pyongyang. The North Koreans feel safe that the U.S. cannot retaliate militarily, because there's a risk of massive escalation that puts Seoul in immediate danger. And a country that care little about the suffering of its own people is impervious to most sanctions.

"They look at the U.S. and think ‘What are they going to do?" said retired ambassador Jack Pritchard, president of the Korean Economic Institute, noting that North Korea has a long history of launching violent attacks near its borders. "They've gotten away with it before; they'll probably continue to get away with it. There are few actual consequences."

When Barack Obama met briefly with Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on the sidelines of last month's nuclear summit, he asked the Japanese leader to follow through on his promise to resolve the U.S.-Japan dispute over relocating the Marine Corps base on Okinawa.

But as Hatoyama's self-imposed May deadline approaches, it doesn't look like the prime minister is going to be able to deliver, and some Japanese lawmakers are now going public with their criticism of the way the Obama administration has handled the issue.

One of them is Kuniko Tanioka, a member of Japan's upper house of parliament and the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, and a close advisor to Hatoyama. During a visit to Washington Tuesday, Tanioka leveled some of the harshest criticism from a Japanese official to date of the Obama team's handling of the Futenma issue, which is still unresolved despite months of discussions.

"We are worried because the government of the United States doesn't seem to be treating Prime Minister Hatoyama as an ally," she told an audience at the East-West Center. "The very stubborn attitude of no compromise of the U.S. government on Futenma is clearly pushing Japan away toward China and that is something I'm very worried about."

Some Japan hands in Washington see Tanioka as marginal, a left-wing backbencher who just recently entered Japanese politics in 2007. But she is close to Hatoyama and serves as the "vice manager" for North America inside the DPJ's internal policy structure.

At issue is a 2006 agreement between the Bush administration and the former Japanese government run by the Liberal Democratic Party. That agreement would have moved the Futenma Air Station, which sits in the middle of a populated area of Okinawa, to a less obtrusive part of the island.

Hatoyama and the DPJ campaigned on the promise to alter the plan but ran into a wall when U.S. officials initially insisted the old agreement be honored, even though the old government had been thrown out.

Since then, Pentagon and State Department officials have been conducting quiet negotiations, but the administration is still waiting for the Japanese side to propose a detailed alternative to the current plan.

Meanwhile, huge protests in Okinawa have constrained Hatoyama's room for maneuver -- and Tanioka said the United States was partly to blame.

"It seems to us Japanese that Obama is saying ‘You do it, you solve, it's your problem,'" she said, noting that public opinion polls in Japan show increasing dissatisfaction with the presence of U.S. military forces there.

Obama should have granted Hatoyama a bilateral meeting during the recent nuclear summit if he is really concerned about Futenma, she said, not just a passing conversation at dinner.

"If it is such a serious problem, then he should have sat down. If it's not so serious of a problem, he should say so."

Administration officials have also said repeatedly that they are willing to consider adjustments to the current Futenma relocation plan, but it has to be "operationally feasible," meaning it meets Marine Corps needs, and "politically feasible," meaning that the Japanese host communities can go along.

Therein lies the problem, according to Tanioka, because, she says, "There is no politically feasible plan."

"Washington works under the assumption the original plan was feasible. It was not," she said.

While Tanioka acknowledges that Hatoyama and the DPJ have made some mistakes, especially in dealing with the media, she suggested that now the security relationship itself could be in danger.

"It's getting much worse than I expected," she said. "They are going to start saying ‘all bases out,' not only the Marines."

When Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada met with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the sidelines of the G-8 meeting in Canada, he told her that Japan probably couldn't stick to a 2006 agreement to move a controversial Marine Corps base on the island of Okinawa.

"I said [to Clinton] we fully recognized the U.S. position that the existing plan was the best," Okada told reporters after meeting her. "But given the current situation, I explained ... there are too many difficulties."

But while some observers see the dispute over the relocation of the Futenma air station as a crisis in the U.S.-Japan alliance, for Japan hands inside the Obama administration, the dispute is a manageable one and doesn't threaten the overall cooperation between the two allies. Administration officials do admit, however, that the Japanese seem to be flailing, struggling to outline a clear position and sending mixed messages from Tokyo to Washington.

"No one is foolish enough to think about crashing this relationship about a military base," one administration official close to the issue told The Cable. "We're going to try to see if the Japanese can move this forward over the next couple of months."

Two administration officials confirmed that Japan has now submitted a package of alternate ideas for relocating the base, which has riled local residents for decades. None of those ideas match what the U.S. and Japan agreed to in 2006, to move the air station across the island to reclaimed land near Okinawa's Camp Schwab. But that's OK, the officials said, privately acknowledging that some compromise away from the original deal will be necessary.

What is not OK is that the Japanese provided the U.S. only broad outlines of plans without specifics. Those specifics are what the U.S. side needs to come back with any counterproposals.

"They have not given us proposals; they've given us ideas or concepts, so that means it's preliminary," one official said. "The ball continues to be in their court. They've got to provide us real proposals that take into account political and operational criteria in Okinawa."

The ideas the Japanese put forth mostly include some mix of the Marines at Futenma relocating within Okinawa and some to a different place. Of course, the current plan includes Marines moving to Guam, but the question is how many. The U.S. has some flexibility on this question, but at the same time the Pentagon has clear operational requirements, and those need to be satisfied no matter what happens.

Both administration officials lamented that the ruling Democratic Party of Japan can't seem to speak with one voice on the issue. Okada, the foreign minister, is supposed to speak for the DPJ on the dispute, but other officials keep going off message.

For example, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said on the floor of his own legislature, "I have my own plan in mind, and the ministers who need to know are aware of it," adding, "I will stake my life on addressing this issue, and I will come up with successful results."

"To me, that's like saying the check is in the mail," said Michael Auslin, a Japan expert at the American Enterprise Institute. "I haven't met anyone who believes he has a plan and I haven't met anyone who knows what his plan is."

Auslin states openly what administration officials say privately: that the confusion within the top ranks of the Japanese ruling party is troubling and poses a larger problem that goes beyond Futenma. They also complain the DPJ unleashed such a tsunami of political activity about the issue in Japan that they now can't contain.

"Hatoyama has completely lost control of the process and the party," said Auslin. "He's not able to deliver anything on Okinawa anymore so that's why we are getting mixed messages."

The Japanese had set a May deadline for themselves to come up with a solution, but that seems unlikely to be met. Here again, Obama's Japan team is willing to be flexible, to a point.

"We're not going to let an artificial deadline crash us," one official said.

But if and when a compromise is reached, that's only the beginning. The relevant environmental studies and operational evaluations would have to be completed, all over again. Then the DPJ has to sell it to their localities, no easy task. Then both sides have to come up with new funding details. Then there's implementation.

The looming deadline on the Washington side is the congressional appropriations cycle. Congressmen may not want to fully fund the massive expansion of the Marine Corps presence in Guam because that is dependent on the Futenma deal going through.

And what happens if it doesn't go through? What then?

As one official put it, "There are several imponderables on the political side."

Good news for all you Obama foreign-policy campaign mavens who haven't gotten called up to join the administration yet: there's still hope. President Obama nominated a top Asia foreign policy advisor for an ambassador-level job Monday evening.

Robert "Skipp" Orr, the former president of Boeing Japan and a former Hill and USAID staffer, was a major Obama fundraiser and foreign-policy advisor based in Asia during the campaign. Obama announced his intention to name him an executive director of the Asian Development Bank, headquartered in Manila.

Among Japan hands, Orr represents a Democratic-leaning group of experts and academics that saw the Obama presidency as an opportunity to shake loose the traditional hold over Asia policy held by a few prominent and well respected experts and former officials.

Back in 2008, other major Asia scholars were associated with other campaigns. Former NSC Senior Director Mike Green and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Randy Schriver were top McCain advisors. Kurt Campbell, who is now assistant secretary of state for East Asia, was a Hillary Clinton supporter and current NSC Senior Director for Asia Jeffrey Bader was a Bill Clinton-era Asia official.

After the election, Obama appointed the Clinton-era guys rather than his campaign confidants. Orr, as well as some other top campaign foreign-policy advisors, were left out as administration slots got filled one after the other. Other top Asia slots were assigned for other reasons. The prestigious position of ambassador to Japan went to California fundraiser John Roos, who is not an Asia expert. Obama gave the China ambassador position to former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, a Republican whom many saw as a potential 2012 rival.

Now 14 months into the Obama administration, the top diplomatic posts have been largely doled out. But some still remain and loyal campaign supporters can still get their due. In another example, Tony Lake was just appointed head of UNICEF, a position that doesn't require any Senate confirmation.

So don't lose hope, former Obama foreign-policy campaign advisors. And to President Obama, how about taking care of former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig and Senate Foreign Relations staffer Frank Jannuzi?

Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell's last-minute cancelation of a stopover in Japan prompted many in the Japanese press to speculate that he was trying to exert pressure on Tokyo over fate of a controversial U.S. air base on Okinawa.

Not so, a State Department official close to the issue tells The Cable. Campbell, who was rounding up a regional tour that included nine countries in eight days, simply ran out of time when his duties in the other stops took longer than expected, the official said.

The real reason the trip was adjusted was because extra time was needed to prepare for President Obama's trip to Indonesia next week. Campbell will be traveling with Obama on the trip.

"The visit is complicating on several levels," the official said. "We have a series of relatively modest deliverables, but every point has been difficult."

Campbell has been leading the negotiations over the details of a new comprehensive partnership agreement between the United States and Indonesia. Part of that agreement will include language on climate-change cooperation and the promise of U.S. resources to help Indonesia to make reforms.

Campbell, who has traveled to Tokyo more than half a dozen times since taking up his post last year, canceled another stop in Thailand as well. That trip had been scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, but protesters outraged over recent conviction of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra were busy pouring blood on the gates of the prime minister's home and office.

Campbell's visit to Japan would have been cut down to only a couple of hours, so the State Department thought it better to wait for the next opportunity.

Besides, the official pointed out, the U.S. side is simply waiting for the Japanese government to decide how it wants to deal with the movement of the Futenma air base, so there wasn't much substance to discuss at this stage.

"He's in Tokyo every month and he'll be back there in a few weeks," the official said.

The Hong Kong regional government's annual New Year's party is a marquee Washington social event, but some guests were surprised at the choice of this year's party favor - a USB computer connection device!

Rows of tables of delicacies like shrimp dumplings and made-to-order Peking Duck rolls lined the grand hall at the National Building Museum Wednesday evening as scores of Asia hands, diplomats, officials, and hungry journalists noshed, kibitzed, and took in the atmosphere. There was a full program including a huge papier-mâché dragon, an authentic sounding drumming troupe, and dancing Chinese toddlers to boot.

A good time was had by all, but as guests departed, they were handed an innocuous plastic box that turned out to contain a gadget for linking several USB-compatible devices to one USB computer port. Seemed like an ironic choice, considering all of the recent news of China's suspected cyber mischief aimed at the U.S. policy community and the Pentagon's warnings about USB devices.

"There's no way I'm putting that thing into my computer!" said one bemused attendee who happens to work for a prominent DC think tank.

So was the Hong Kong government trying to spread malware to DC Asia wonks through party favors? Were they just being ironic? Was it a pure coincidence?

"It was entirely a coincidence," said Daniel McAtee, senior information officer at the Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office, "Our tech-focused San Francisco office came up with the idea back in September given that flash drives increasingly seem to be the 'it' gift at functions."

The Cable conducted an amateur forensic investigation (we had an IT specialist take a quick look). The result was that the device contains no storage, has nothing inside of it that seemed suspicious, and didn't raise any alarm bells in basic diagnostic testing.

"I don't think it is malicious but you know, I am not NSA," our tester reported.

With all about the chatter about China’s hacking of Google and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s drive to deliver “consequences” to bad actors in cyberspace, it’s worth noting that the problem of cyber attacks either promulgated or supported by the Chinese government is far from new.

In a previous life, your Cable guy broke a story that revealed senior military officials believe the Chinese government is supporting hackers that attack “anything and everything” in the U.S. national security infrastructure on a constant basis. And while it’s difficult to prove guilt, the scale, organization, and intent of the attacks leads experts and officials alike to one sponsor: the Chinese government.

The Defense Department has said that the Chinese government, in addition to employing thousands of its own hackers, manages massive teams of experts from academia and industry in “cyber militias” that act in Chinese national interests with unclear amounts of support and direction from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

According to SANS Institute research director Alan Paller, “The problem is 1,000 times worse than what we see.” But the tip of the iceberg is still large. Here are some of the most damaging attacks on the U.S. government that have been attributed to Chinese government sponsorship or endorsement over the past few years:

1) Titan Rain

In 2004, an analyst named Shawn Carpenter at Sandia National Laboratories traced the origins of a massive cyber espionage ring back to a team of government sponsored researchers in Guangdong Province in China. The hackers, code named by the FBI “Titan Rain,” stole massive amounts of information from military labs, NASA, the World Bank, and others. Rather than being rewarded, Carpenter was fired and investigated after revealing his findings to the FBI, because hacking foreign computers is illegal under U.S. law. He later sued and was awarded more than $3 million. The FBI renamed Titan Rain and classified the new name. The group is still assumed to be operating.

2) State Department’s East Asia Bureau

In July 2006, the State Department admitted it had become a victim of cyber hacking after an official in “East Asia” accidentally opened an email he shouldn’t have. The attackers worked their way around the system, breaking into computers at U.S. embassies all over the region and then eventually penetrating systems in Washington as well.

3) Offices of Rep. Frank Wolf

Wolf has been one of the most outspoken lawmakers on Chinese human rights issues, so it was of little surprise when he announced that in August 2006 that his office computers had been compromised and that he suspected the Chinese government.  Wolf also reported that similar attacks had compromised the systems of several other congressmen and the office of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

4) Commerce Department

The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security had to throw away all of its computers in October 2006, paralyzing the bureau for more than a month due to targeted attacks originating from China. BIS is where export licenses for technology items to countries like China are issued.

5) Naval War College

In December 2006, the Naval War College in Rhode Island had to take all of its computer systems offline for weeks following a major cyber attack. One professor at the school told his students that the Chinese had brought down the system. The Naval War College is where much military strategy against China is developed.

6) Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and the 2003 blackout?

A National Journal article revealed that spying software meant to clandestinely steal personal data was found on the devices of then Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and several other officials following a trade mission to China in December 2007. That same article reported that intelligence officials traced the causes of the massive 2003 northeast blackout back to the PLA, but some analysts question the connection.

7) McCain and Obama presidential campaigns

That’s right, both the campaigns of then Senators Barack Obama and John McCain were completely invaded by cyber spies in August 2008. The Secret Service forced all campaign senior staff to replace their Blackberries and laptops. The hackers were looking for policy data as a way to predict the positions of the future winner. Senior campaign staffers have acknowledged that the Chinese government contacted one campaign and referred to information that could only have been gained from the theft.

8) Office of Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL

At a March 2009 hearing, Nelson revealed that his office computers had been hacked three separate times and his aide confirmed that the attacks had been traced back to China. The targets of the attacks were Nelson’s foreign-policy aide, his legislative director, and a former NASA advisor.

9) Ghostnet

In March, 2009, researchers inToronto concluded a 10-month investigation that revealed a massive cyber espionage ring they called Ghostnet that had penetrated more than 1,200 systems in 103 countries. The victims were foreign embassies, NGOs, news media institutions, foreign affairs ministries, and international organizations. Almost all Tibet-related organizations had been compromised, including the offices of the Dalai Lama. The attacks used Chinese malware and came from Beijing.

10) Lockheed Martin’s F-35 program

In April, 2009, the Wall Street Journal reported that China was suspected of being behind a major theft of data from Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter program, the most advanced airplane ever designed. Multiple infiltrations of the F-35 program apparently went on for years.

With all the news about technology theft in China related to Beijing's battle with Google, many forget that the legal mechanisms for deciding what technologies to export there haven't been fundamentally updated since 1979.

That's not to say people aren't working on the problem. The White House has started a review to determine how to update technology export rules and Howard Berman, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee, is working a bill that would do just that.

Berman and staff are in Silicon Valley today, coincidentally holding a hearing on the issue in the very location where so many of the 34 companies compromised as part of recent Chinese cyber espionage issues are located. The failure of the government to determine what "dual use" technologies are ok to give to countries like China is not only an economic, but a national security issue as well, he said.

"There is a growing consensus among security experts that due to legal and technological developments in recent years, our current export-control regime, founded during the Cold War and last revised by statute in 1979, is out of date," Berman wrote in this morning's Silicon Valley Mercury News, "It needs to be modernized in order to continue protecting sensitive technologies while also maintaining U.S. technological leadership."

Testifying at the hearing will be John Hennessy, president of Stanford University, William Potter, director for Nonproliferation Studies of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and Karen Murphy, senior director for trade at Applied Materials, Inc., a leading manufacturer in the semiconductor industry.

You can be sure the Chinese are closely watching the administration review and the formation of Berman's bill, which could come in weeks. After all, the Chinese did electronically infiltrate the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, which implements duel use technology export rules, in 2006, forcing that whole office to throw all their computers in the garbage and start over.

It's somewhat conventional wisdom in Washington to assume that if Taiwan moves closer to China, that might not be in the interests of the United States. Not so, argues a new report coming out Tuesday from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

What's more, the U.S. should encourage such movement, argues the report, a result of a cross-strait project led by CSIS's Bonnie Glaser that she and others will discuss at an event at the think tank Tuesday. Now is the right time for confidence building measures between China and Taiwan, despite the several internal and international obstacles that remain, the report explains.

"U.S. support for cross-strait military CBMs is consistent with the long-standing U.S. position that differences between the two sides of the strait should be settled peacefully through negotiations," the report states. The authors also talk about the belief in Taiwan "that talks with Beijing on military CBMs cannot begin without visible support from the United States, which many in Taiwan see as necessary to reduce Taiwan's sense of vulnerability and counter the impression domestically that [Taiwanese President] Ma [Ying Jeou] is tilting toward mainland China."

In an interview, Glaser said that privately, the Taiwanese are calling for more public support from the Obama administration across the board, in order strengthen their hand vis-à-vis Beijing. President Ma has made some significant movements toward rapprochement, but now faces pressure to reassert Taiwanese autonomy, according to Glaser.

"Taiwan is saying to the Obama administration, we need more visible signs of support," she said, "Although the U.S.-Taiwan relationship is strong in the military arena, it's not visible."

Similarly, President Obama had focused on the Chinese side of the equation, delaying a pending sales package to Taiwan until after his administration's relationship with Beijing could be set on a secure footing. Now, following his trip there, the White House is expected to go ahead with the sale as well as other actions that are likely to rile the Chinese Communist Party, such as meeting with the Dalai Lama.

"The Obama administration has got the message that Taiwan wants more. The administration's plan is to do more."