Does anyone believe that? Things went from bad, to fantasy land, to the hangover, and now finally to a state that is utterly and incomprehensibly difficult for anyone to divine a good solution.
Briefly, North Korea disclosed its nuclear capability in the early 1990s. Clinton then bribed them to cease their programs in a multilateral agreement they signed with us, the UN, and some of their neighbors in 1994, the main tenets of which were negotiated by none other than the man of steel, Jimmy Carter. Things apparently went along well for some years and the North Koreans received certain international aid in exchange for shutting down their uranium enrichment capability, forswearing nuclear weapons, and guaranteeing access to IAEA inspectors. But it was all a charade. Instead, they had been lying under Clinton’s watch, enriching Uranium all the while they were developing a delivery capacity in the form of a fairly sophisticated ballistic missile program.
I can’t say I blame Clinton for not discovering North Korea violations and weapons plans earlier. The secret North Korean regime is notoriously hard for our spies to penetrate. But I do fault him for thinking he could bribe a criminal regime like this into behaving sensibly. The basic concept of the agreement was the problem, and the end result was more or less inevitable. Even the most minimally rationally black-mailer, once he’s been paid, has an incentive to seek more. And that’s exactly what North Korea’s been trying to accomplish ever since. Clinton’s plan was all carrot and no stick. Bush has been tasked with cleaning up a mess that he did not create, where he did not fail to negotiate real security guarantees, and under the threat of a far more substantial North Korean weapons capability.
Looking over these events, though, only the completely out-to-lunch Nicholas Kristoff could see it as a story of Clinton’s successes and Bush’s follies:
First, a bit of history: North Korea may have obtained enough plutonium for one nuclear weapon by halting a reactor in 1989. It didnââ¬â¢t obtain any more weapon-usable plutonium while President Clinton held office (although it did try to start a program to enrich uranium, which is less of an immediate concern).
Then Mr. Bushââ¬â¢s blustery refusal to negotiate led the Dear Leader to ramp up plutonium production, so today North Korea has enough plutonium for four to 13 nuclear weapons. David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security estimates that by mid-2008 it will have enough plutonium for eight to 17 weapons.
So hereââ¬â¢s the scorecard: Weapon-usable plutonium produced under Mr. Clinton, none; weapon-usable plutonium produced under Mr. Bush, enough for at least several additional warheads. (As for the uranium, thereââ¬â¢s no indication that enough has been enriched for even one weapon.) . . .
And, his solution based on Clinton’s “record of success” recounted above:
The only option we have is to negotiate seriously, both in the six-party talks and directly with the North. Mr. Bush has steadily adopted more pragmatic policies toward North Korea over the last five years, and briefly last fall when he entrusted his able envoy, Chris Hill, with real authority, the talks went surprisingly well. Then North Korea had a tantrum and the administration reined in Mr. Hill, and weââ¬â¢re back in a crisis.
One must wonder the obvious: and then what? What if the day the negotiations are done, and we shipped them a few tankers full of wheat and petroleum and Dodge trucks, they announce plans to nuke Tokyo if we don’t box up the state of Ohio’s and ship it to Pyongyong post haste. Kristof’s naked partisanship and manifest stupidity are, unfortunately, emblematic of everything that is the New York Times. Some combination of those two trains, with an admixture of plain mendacity, are the only possible explanations for his latest editorial on North Korea.
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