February 9, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST

Bush Bites His Tongue
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF


There are two words the Bush administration doesn't want you to think about: North Korea.

That's because the most dangerous failure of U.S. policy these days is in North Korea. President Bush has been startlingly passive as North Korea has begun churning out nuclear weapons like hot cakes.

The dangers were underscored with last week's reports that the uranium in Libya's former nuclear program may have come from North Korea. Indeed, Mr. Bush seems to recognize that his policy has failed - that's why he isn't talking much about North Korea now, at least publicly, and why (as reported in The Times today) he sent an emissary to talk last week with the Chinese leader, Hu Jintao, about how to tame North Korea.

North Korea is particularly awkward for Mr. Bush to discuss publicly because, as best we know, it didn't make a single nuclear weapon during Bill Clinton's eight years in office (although it did begin a separate, and secret, track to produce uranium weapons; it hasn't produced any yet but may eventually). In contrast, the administration now acknowledges that North Korea extracted enough plutonium in the last two years for about half a dozen nuclear weapons.

In fairness, Mr. Bush is paralyzed only because the alternatives are dreadful. A military strike on North Korea's nuclear sites might have been an option in the early 1990's, but today we don't know where the plutonium and the uranium are kept, so a military strike might accomplish little - but trigger a new Korean war. To fill the time, Mr. Bush has pursued six-party talks involving North Korea, but they have gotten nowhere.

So what would work?

The other option is the path that Richard Nixon pursued with Maoist China: resolute engagement, leading toward a new "grand bargain" in which Kim Jong Il would give up his nuclear program in exchange for political and economic ties with the international community. This has the advantage that the best bet to bring down Mr. Kim, the Dear Leader, isn't isolation, but contacts with the outside world.

A terrific new book on North Korea, "Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader" by Bradley Martin, underscores how those few glimpses that North Koreans have had of the outside world - by working in logging camps in Russia or sneaking trips to China - have helped undermine Mr. Kim's rule. Yet Westerners have in effect cooperated with him by helping to keep his borders sealed.

At least China and South Korea have a strategy to transform North Korea: encourage capitalism, markets and foreign investment. Chinese traders, cellphones and radios are already widespread in the border areas, and they are doing more to weaken the Dear Leader than anything Mr. Bush is doing.


North Korea is the eeriest and most totalitarian country I've ever visited, making even Saddam Hussein's Iraq seem normal by comparison. I realized how regimented the entire country was when I stopped two girls randomly on the street for an interview on a 1989 trip and the girls started praising their leaders - reciting identical lines in perfect unison.

In his new book, Mr. Martin tells the story of how one of the Dear Leader's assistants, while drunk, told his wife about his boss's womanizing. The wife, apparently a true believer in the North Korean system, was shocked and wrote a letter to the leadership to protest this immorality.

The Dear Leader had the woman brought to him, then denounced her before a crowd and ordered her shot. At that point, her husband begged to be allowed to kill her. Graciously acceding, Mr. Kim handed him a gun to kill his own wife.

So this is a regime that is not just menacing, but monstrous. Mr. Bush is right to regard it with loathing. But U.S. policy on North Korea for the last four years has only strengthened Mr. Kim and allowed him to expand his nuclear arsenal severalfold.

The risk is that Mr. Bush will respond to the failure of his first term's policy by adopting an even harder line in the coming months, seeking Security Council sanctions (he won't get them) and ultimately imposing some kind of naval quarantine. That would only strengthen Mr. Kim's grip on power, as well as risk a war on the Korean peninsula. A Pentagon study in the 1990's predicted that such a war could kill one million people.

In short, our mishandling of North Korea has been appalling - and it may soon get worse.

where it belongs.  Right at Bill Clintons feet.  North Korea is another one of Bill Clintion's horrible horrible horrible foreign policy failures.  Clinton gave them the Nuke reactors. What do you have to say about that, Fat&dorkny, Clinton gave them the nuke reactors.  We wouldn't be in this mess if they didn't have nuke reactors. Huh huh huh?????  

I have an idea! Lets send Bubba over there.  He can ride over there on his wifes broomstick.  And lets send her over there too.  I bet they will beg for mercy after 5 minutes of her grating voice.  It reminds me of fingernails on a chalkboard.

While the REAL Axis of Evil (Cheney-Rove-Bush) uses smoke and mirrors regarding Iraq, North Korea has an itchy trigger finger on a loaded gun aimed at our collective asses. With their newer, farther ranging missile delivery system, Seattle, Portland, and even San Francisco are now within range of North Koreas nuclear warheads.

Damn you all who continue to support these Warmongering Criminals.

Why North Korea won't talk  
By Sarah Buckley
BBC News  

North Korea's decision to indefinitely pull out of talks on its nuclear programme appears, on the surface, to have come out of the blue.
Only last month, Pyongyang said it was ready to treat the US as a "friend", and officials in the region expected new talks to start in a matter of weeks.

The turnaround, according to North Korea, was provoked by recent high-profile speeches by the Bush administration, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's branding of Pyongyang as an "outpost of tyranny".  
North Korea last took part in talks on its nuclear programme in June

But analysts said the real reason was last week's briefing of Asian officials by Michael Green, a senior US envoy.

During visits to Japan, South Korea and China, he is believed to have alleged that North Korea sold enriched uranium - a key ingredient of nuclear weapons - to Libya in 2001.

If true, that transaction would undermine North Korea's claim that its nuclear arsenal is purely defensive, and threaten to escalate its row with the US to a dangerous new level.

"Nuclear proliferation is the ultimate red line from Washington's point of view," said John Swenson-Wright, associate fellow at The Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) in London.

It is not yet clear if North Korea's announcement was motivated by anger or alarm. Most analysts agree its policy on the nuclear talks had been on hold until the new Bush administration's approach became clearer.

It may be that Mr Green's hardline briefing persuaded Pyongyang that nothing had changed.

But, as always with North Korea, analysts point out that Pyongyang could have withdrawn simply in order to gain leverage in the long-running negotiations.

In withdrawing from the talks "indefinitely", but not abandoning them completely, it may be hoping to win economic incentives from neighbours South Korea and China to coax it back to the negotiating table.

It may also hope to dilute US demands - which include the complete dismantlement of the North's nuclear programmes - although Washington has said that these are non-negotiable.  
The US thinks North Korea has been selling enriched uranium

Mr Green's Asian tour may have triggered North Korea's withdrawal, but Pyongyang's frustration has been building for a number of months, said Adam Ward, of the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

North Korea has been under pressure to respond to Washington's proposal, made during talks in the summer, that it follow Libya and disarm.

It is also threatened with sanctions by Japan, because of a row over Japanese it kidnapped to train North Korean spies in the 1970s and 80s.

In addition, Pyongyang has been angered by a US Bill passed last year which aims to promote better human rights in North Korea and protect North Korean defectors.

"The US has been talking about nuclear non-proliferation until the third round [of six-party talks]. Now, the US has put the issue of human rights on top of the issue of non-proliferation," said Jasper Kim, assistant professor of international studies at Ewah Women's University in Seoul.

What happens next

Despite the dramatic nature of Thursday's agreement, analysts suspect North Korea will probably return to the talks eventually.

Part of the reason why this crisis has been dragging on so long is because there are very few options on the table.

Mr Swenson-Wright said North Korea had two alternatives.

It could either ratchet up tensions further, by testing a nuclear weapon, for example, or return to the talks.

The former is "not likely because it would evoke a strong reaction from everyone, including [ally] China", he said.

As for the US and its allies in the region, their options are also limited.   "Like everything to do with North Korea, we unfortunately will have to wait and see".

Military action is highly unlikely because of the size of North Korea's conventional army, and the international consensus that it does have a nuclear weapons programme, and at least six to eight nuclear weapons already in its arsenal.

The US is also currently preoccupied with Iraq and Iran so diplomacy is its only choice, analysts said.

But if the talks are to get back on track, North Korea's closest ally, China, holds the key, according to Robyn Lim, professor of International Relations at the University of Nanzan in Nagoya.

China is one of the few countries to have any influence over the North.

"But the basic problem is the Chinese themselves are pretty divided," she said, pointing to splits between the military and civilian administration as to how much pressure to exercise on Pyongyang.

The risk to China of a collapse in the North Korean regime are enormous. Political disintegration could result in floods of refugees over its borders, and a reunification with South Korea could mean greater US influence in the region.

Beijing, like the other parties involved, does not want nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula.

But the problem is, the longer there is no progress on talks, the more time North Korea has to add to its nuclear arsenal

It has been on the Bush administration's watch that North Korea has accelerated its (real, not hyped) WMD program. The significance is, as Jon B. Wolfsthal, a nonproliferation specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, is quoted in today's Wall Street Journal, "Every day that passes makes it much more unlikely that we will be able to roll back the program."

Remember, it was the Bush decision to focus on the "imminent" WMD threat in Iraq instead of the ACTUAL threat in North Korea. The result, writes the BBC, is that   "The US is also currently preoccupied with Iraq and Iran so diplomacy is its only choice (in the Korean peninsula), analysts said."

During the Clinton years, his administration was pilloried for their North Korea diplomacy. Now that the neocons are in charge, the situation has only gotten worse. If the Bushies want to take credit for the brewing fiasco in Iraq, then one would think that they would be eager to tout their "success" in North Korea as well.

Let's see, Clinton was hailed for talking and negotiating w/ North Korea.  He even gave them 100's of millions of dollars and US Technology & equipment in 1994 for "peacefull" nuclear programs.  Never mind the fact that North Korea itself admits it's negotiations were a rouse to aquire the technology & they never had any plans to honor their agreements.  Also never mind the fact that they were breaking the accords shortly after the ink was dry.

Bush has been lambasted for trying to isolate & punish N. Korea for it's persuit of Nukes.  Now the N. Koreans, thanks to our good gestures a decade ago have the nukes.  Hmmm, seems to me that they are using whatever excuse they can think of to rationalize and justify their having the nukes.

Perhaps I am just simple minded in that regard, but it appears that people use whatever justification they can - no matter how far fetched - to justify their hatred of Bush.

Oh, and as far as taking an op-ed peice from the NY times as fact, I have some serious problems with that.

Yes, facts are good.

North Korea has not accelerated anything. They've been marching foward at the same pace for over a decade, while blowing smoke up the asses of prior administrations in exchange for aid concessions.

During the past four years, the Bush Administration has been advocating and coordinating six party, multilateral talks with Crazy Kim. While also creating and leading the Proliferation Security Initiative, which played a key role of the disarmament of Lybia. Look up the PSI and it's role in containing NK, then come back and argue that the Bush Admin hasn't been paying attention. I'd love to see the logic.

RLTW

-- Modified on 2/10/2005 8:43:19 PM

fit neatly into the worldview of the Bush-haters and ideological bigots of the Left.

RLTW

all at the same time, without the irony of resorting to the use of our own WMD.
The sabre rattling going on with Iran right as the North Koreans acknowledge their own nuclear arsenal is frightening. Or at least, I believe it should be frightening to any sane rational human being. The idea of one nuclear capable rogue nation is bad enough. But despite this, it seems to me that Bush is focusing on the wrong spoke of his Axis of Evil. But not for the reasons you might think.

Lets call a spade a spade... if push came to shove with the Iranian nuclear program, its just as likely the Israelis would go in and do a hatchet job on Iranian nuclear assets (most likely after coordinating with the Oval Office) like they did in Iraq 20 years ago. But only the US would be able to militarily contend with North Korea should they adopt an even more bellicose posture.

Ahhh screw this, I'm gonna call my Vixens in Vegas to come fuck my brains out. Live for the moment.

-- Modified on 2/10/2005 8:13:25 PM

But I can't agree that the Bush Admin is focusing only on one spoke, as you put it. The reason I can't agree is that I pay close attention to what's going on, and I notice negotiations and diplomatic efforts taking place, with the same twists and turns that have been occuring over the past two decades.

RLTW

NYTimes.com

EDITORIAL

The North Korean Challenge

Published: February 11, 2005


Excerpts:

1.  (Bush) immediately began distancing himself from the Clinton administration's approach, which had stopped the most imminent North Korean nuclear weapons program in its tracks...The Bush administration's response, however, was more visceral than rational, and only drove North Korea into deeper isolation and paranoia.

2. As Washington turned increasingly confrontational, North Korea unfroze its plutonium program...The Bush administration put North Korea on a diplomatic back burner as it followed its obsession with Iraq.

3. Washington insisted on talking to North Korea only in the presence of four other nations...North Korea apparently used the delays to build more bombs.

4. What makes this litany of diplomatic errors particularly alarming is that diplomacy is still the only path. The United States does not have any realistic military options, and intermediate steps, like United Nations sanctions, would require more international unity than the Bush administration seems able to generate.

5. The Bush administration did not create this problem, but, with a series of avoidable errors, it has made it much worse, much faster than might otherwise have been the case.

--------------
My comments:

With regard to Libya, there is a body of analysis that shows that the British played a pivotal role in the negotiations that resulted in disarmament.

It is obvious. And you know it. Why don't you just admit it?

Which is, it's the Chinese's problem, let them handle it. Which reminds me, what's up with those guys shades? Has he seen on Austin Powers movie too many, or what?

Forgive my cynicism, but I don't see the NKor situation becoming urgent anytime soon, unless lots of oil is discovered there.

Talk about denying reality. That's not an "analysis", it's a case study in wishful thinking.

RLTW

How the left can take an editorial & and an editorial from teh NY times at that - and take it as the definitive truth.

Who wrote this editorial, Jason Blair?

I think the point being made was that the NK plutonium program was halted by the Clinton negotiations. The NK then began a secret uranium program. The Bush response resulted in the revival and acceleration of the plutonium program.

If one judges the Bush policy based on its results to date, it is fair to say that the policy has failed:  It has not resulted in the NK returning to negotiations nor dismantling their WMD program. At a time when the Bushies could have been focused on the one member of the axis of evil that actually had WMD, their focus instead was on the only country with a non-existent WMD program.

,,, you can't make nukes from the material they got from us.  personally, I still don't believe the NKs completely yet.

-- Modified on 2/11/2005 10:28:26 PM