Caricature by DonkeyHotey flic.kr/p/Ct4G4K https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Few men have done the damage to the United States over a period of decades as has James Earl Carter. Carrying on the tradition he pioneered as president, you would be hard-pressed to find a despot he will not fellate or a venue in which he will not speak disparagingly of the United States. Now he’s at it again:

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has expressed a desire to visit Pyongyang as a messenger between the United States and North Korea, Park Han-shik, an emeritus professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, said Sunday. “Carter wants to meet with the North Korean leader and play a constructive role for peace on the Korean Peninsula as he did in 1994,” Park, 78, told the JoongAng Ilbo over phone after meeting with the 93-year-old former president. Park, a prominent scholar of North Korea-related issues who has traveled to Pyongyang over 50 times, visited Carter, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work with the Atlanta-based Carter Center, at the former president’s home in Plains, Georgia, on Sept. 28. “Should former President Carter be able to visit North Korea, he would like to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and discuss a peace treaty between the United States and the North and a complete denuclearization of North Korea,” Park said, “and contribute toward establishing a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.” “He wants to employ his experience visiting North Korea to prevent a second Korean War,” he continued.

Wait. Back up. “[A]s he did in 1994???” Let’s revisit that bygone era courtesy of National Review:

It was a tense scene in the White House on June 15, 1994. Perry and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. John Shalikashvili were briefing President Clinton and other top officials on three options to substantially reinforce the 37,000 U.S. troops stationed on the Korean peninsula since the end of the Korean War. The Pentagon was advocating a “middle option” — moving 10,000 more troops, along with F-117s, long-range bombers and an additional carrier battle group to Korea or nearby. “We were within a day of making major additions to our troop deployments to Korea, and we were about to undertake an evacuation of American civilians from Korea,” Perry recalled. The real fear was that North Korea would read the buildup and evacuations as certain signs of an impending attack, and launch a preemptive invasion of South Korea. U.S. analysts believed the North Koreans took one main lesson from the 1991 Persian Gulf War: Don’t give the United States time to mass its forces. Perry told Clinton all the options were unpalatable, but that not to pick one of them would be disastrous. “My recollection is that before the president got to choose — was asked to choose — the door of the room opened and we were told that there was a telephone call from former president Carter in Pyongyang and that he wished to speak to me,” Gallucci remembered. Jimmy Carter had been meeting as a private citizen with North Korea’s aging leader Kim Il Sung, and was calling to report a breakthrough. The White House session broke up and relieved officials watched television as Carter informed CNN by telephone of the latest development.

What happened next?

I am pleased that the United States and North Korea yesterday reached agreement on the text of a framework document on North Korea’s nuclear program. This agreement will help to achieve a longstanding and vital American objective: an end to the threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula. This agreement is good for the United States, good for our allies, and good for the safety of the entire world. It reduces the danger of the threat of nuclear spreading in the region.

And that, boys and girls, is how North Korea got its nuclear weapons. By 2002, it became obvious that the North Koreans were violating the letter and the intent of the agreement. They were confronted over their violation and withdrew from it.

There is nothing good that will come out of a Jimmy Carter visit to North Korea. He is, at best, an incompetent interlocutor on behalf of the US and the Western world, at worst he is an incompetent and a hostile one. All he will do is muddy the waters and create a political pressure point to help North Korea evade the day of reckoning that seems to be coming.