President Bush asserted yesterday that the administration's strategy on North Korea is superior to the one pursued by his predecessor, Bill Clinton, because Clinton reached a bilateral agreement that failed, while the current administration is trying to end North Korea's nuclear programs through multi-nation talks.
"In order to solve this diplomatically, the United States and our partners must have a strong diplomatic hand," Bush said at a news conference. "And you have a better diplomatic hand with others, sending the message, than you do when you're alone."
I guess Bill Clinton is to be blamed for North Korea's testing of its nuclear weapon. And the Bush administration had nothing to do with this. But now look at what else the WaPost reports:
Bush's current policy, in fact, envisions direct, bilateral negotiations with North Korea on certain issues in the six-nation talks, such as missile proliferation and normalizing relations. That commitment to direct talks is enshrined in the agreement of principles guiding future negotiations that was reached in Beijing in September 2005. Indeed, Rice was prepared to authorize her chief negotiator to travel to Pyongyang in November 2005, provided that North Korea shut down its nuclear reactor as a sign of good faith. It refused that condition, and the trip was scrubbed.
By the same token, it is not fully accurate to describe the negotiations that led to a 1994 agreement between the United States and North Korea as purely the result of one-on-one negotiations. During talks that produced the Agreed Framework, in which North Korea said it would freeze its nuclear program, U.S. negotiators briefed Japanese and South Korean officials every day. South Korea and Japan agreed to bankroll much of the cost of the light-water reactors that were to be provided to North Korea under the deal.
Robert L. Gallucci, the chief negotiator of the accord and now dean of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, said it is a "ludicrous thing" to say that the Clinton agreement failed. For eight years, the Agreed Framework kept North Korea's five-megawatt plutonium reactor frozen and under international inspection, while North Korea did not build planned 50- and 200-megawatt reactors. If those reactors had been built and running, he said, North Korea would now have enough plutonium for more than 100 nuclear weapons.
By Gallucci's account, North Korea may have produced a small amount of plutonium for one or two weapons before Clinton came into office -- during the administration of Bush's father -- but "no more material was created on his watch." When Clinton left office, officials saw signs that North Korea may have been attempting to create a clandestine uranium enrichment program, but nothing was definitive.
Such a program would violate the Agreed Framework. When the Bush administration decided it had conclusive proof of that enrichment in July 2002, it confronted North Korea and terminated fuel oil deliveries promised under the Agreed Framework. In response, North Korea evicted the inspectors, restarted the reactor and retrieved weapons-grade plutonium from 8,000 fuel rods that had been kept in a cooling pond. Intelligence analysts now think that, before Monday's apparent nuclear test, North Korea had enough plutonium for as many as a dozen weapons.
So Clinton's Agreed Framework had kept North Korea's plutonium program pretty much frozen for eight years. And while there were reports of North Korea cheating on the framework by enriching uranium, there was no conclusive proof. The program worked. Now the Bush administration comes into office and what do they do? They confront the North Koreans, terminating fuel oil deliveries as promised under the Agreed Framework. The North Koreans kick out the inspectors and restart their nuclear weapons production program. And for four years they have been happily producing plutonium for their new weapons stockpile.
The Bush administration calls former President Clinton's Agreed Framework agreement a failure? President Bush calls his own confrontational policy on North Korea a success?
But now check this little bit of information from the Post:
Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell pressed China to host three-way discussions because it was clear that Bush was opposed to direct talks, according to the new book "Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell," by Washington Post Associate Editor Karen DeYoung. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld adamantly opposed any dialogue, arguing in a series of memos that the goal should be the collapse of North Korea's government, the book says.
Now this is interesting. Rumsfeld opposed any dialogue because he believes that the Bush administration's goal should be the collapse of North Korea's government. I wonder if this type of thinking is prevalent throughout the Bush administration.
Of course, the tie-in between Rumsfeld’s desire to force a collapse of the North Korean government and the Bush administration’s confrontational-style policies against North Korea fits nicely together. If you want to force the North Korean government to fall, the last thing you would want is to provide North Korea with economic aid in exchange for the North Koreans promise not to continue their plutonium production program. You force a confrontation, break the Agreed Framework, and impose your worthless economic embargo against the North Koreans—who, of course, go back to building their bomb.
When will the neocons learn? We've tried to isolate and economically blockade both North Korea and Cuba for decades, hoping to cause both of these nations' governments to collapse. I don't see either government falling for a long while.
This is a complete mess.
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