Gathering Storm Clouds Over North Korea
Remarks by Senator Robert Byrd
August 01, 2003
senate.gov
Weather forecasters have a name for one of their worst nightmares, a violent atmospheric disturbance triggered by an unusual convergence of weather systems. They call it the perfect storm.
As the United States continues to be preoccupied with quelling the postwar chaos in Iraq, I worry that the elements of a perfect storm capable of wreaking devastating damage to international stability are brewing elsewhere in the world. The forces in play are centered on the escalating nuclear threat from North Korea, but they also include the emergence of Iran as a nuclear contender, the violence and desperate humanitarian situation in Liberia, the near forgotten but continuing war in Afghanistan, and the unrelenting threat of international terrorism. Just a few days ago, the Department of Homeland Security issued a chilling alert that al Qaeda operatives may be plotting suicide missions to hijack commercial aircraft in the coming weeks – possibly in the United States.
Weather forecasters can do little more than watch a storm unfold. They cannot quiet the winds or calm the seas. We require more from the President of the United States when it comes to international crises. The President cannot afford to merely plot the course of the gathering storms over North Korea, Iran, Liberia, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The President needs to turn his attention to these countries and work with the international community to diffuse the emerging crises.
The challenge is formidable, and there are no easy answers. But the price of inaction could be ruinous. Of all the looming international threats, North Korea is clearly the most worrisome. Recently, (July 14) former Defense Secretary and Korean specialist William Perry warned that the United States and North Korea are drifting toward war, possibly as early as this year. In an interview published in The Washington Post, Dr. Perry said, "The nuclear program now underway in North Korea poses an imminent danger of nuclear weapons being detonated in American cities."
Surely, such a stark warning from an official so deeply steeped in the political culture of North Korea should be a wake up call to the President. And yet, to date, the Administration has steadfastly refused to engage in direct talks with North Korea or even to characterize the threat of North Korea's nuclear weapons program as a crisis. Instead, the President and his advisers have continued to hurl invectives at Kim Jong Il while shrugging off increasingly alarming reports that North Korea is stepping up its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Since last October, when North Korea revealed that it planned to reprocess plutonium fuel rods into fissile material that could be used in nuclear weapons, the President and his advisers have consistently downplayed the nuclear threat from North Korea while hyping the nuclear threat from Iraq. And yet, while we have strong evidence that North Korea is working feverishly to accelerate its nuclear programs, we still have not found a shred of evidence that Saddam Hussein's efforts to reconstitute Iraq's nuclear weapons program were anything more than bluster and hyperbole.
It is time – if it is not already too late – to drop the false bravado of indifference to the threat from North Korea and engage in face-to-face negotiations with the North Koreans. Multilateral negotiations are fine, preferable even, but they are unlikely to be productive unless the United States takes the lead. We cannot wait for the Chinese or the Japanese or the South Koreans to pave the way. We cannot brush off the nuclear threat posed by North Korea as an annoying irritant. There is a real threat to the United States, and the United States must act fast to neutralize it.
The news on Thursday (July 31) that North Korea has expressed a willingness to engage in six-sided talks, with the participation of Russia in addition to the other players, offers a glimmer of opportunity that the United States should seize before North Korea changes its mind. As difficult as it is to predict or understand the motivations of Kim Jong Il, one thing is certain: no progress can be made in unraveling the nuclear tangle on the Korean peninsula until the parties involved start talking to each other.
Not only must the President come to terms with the gravity of the situation in North Korea, but he must also understand that this is not a one-man show, and this is not the type of discussion that can be sealed with a simple handshake. Under the Constitution, the Senate has a unique and important role to play in helping to frame the contours and context of international treaties. Any agreement negotiated between the United States and Korea will have far reaching implications for the national security of the United States, and as such should be subject to the treaty advice and consent provision of Article II, section 2 of the Constitution.
On a collision course with the nuclear threat from North Korea is the question of how to deal with Iran's increasingly aggressive nuclear posture. A month ago, the President hinted darkly that he would not tolerate the construction of a nuclear weapon in Iran, but he has been largely silent on the issue in the ensuing weeks. Asked during a rare press conference earlier this week about the potential for war with Iran, the President placed the burden for seeking a peaceful solution squarely on the shoulders of the international community without suggesting any role for the United States beyond "convincing others" to speak to the Iranian government. When it comes to dealing with the threat from Iran's weapons of mass destruction, it appears that the White House is deferring to some of the same countries and institutions, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, that it dismissed as inconsequential during the run up to war with Iraq.
Like North Korea, the options for dealing with Iran are limited, but dodging engagement in favor of sporadic saber rattling is scarcely the wisest course of action. Equally unhelpful are ominous hints that the United States is contemplating covert action to precipitate regime change in Iran. Unlike North Korea, Iran has not demanded direct negotiations with the United States. Before it comes to that point, and the United States is faced with the perception of being blackmailed into negotiations, the Administration should seize the initiative and not abdicate its responsibility to other nations and other institutions. Here again, the Administration cannot afford to ignore the storm warnings and hope the crisis will simply blow over.
The situation in Liberia raises a different, but no less volatile, set of issues. Rent by violence and reeling from the effects of a three-way conflict between an illegitimate government and the warring rebels who want to unseat it, Liberia is desperately seeking help from the United States. The President raised expectations for U.S. intervention during his highly publicized visit to Africa earlier this month, but it has been several weeks now since his return, and still no clear policy with regard to Liberia has emerged from the White House.
The question of whether the United States should intervene in the Liberian crisis is fraught with unknowns and uncertainties. The humanitarian crisis calls out for relief. And yet, the solution is elusive, and the danger of ensnaring U.S. military troops in an intractable civil war is not to be underestimated. Can the Economic Community of West African States, known as ECOWAS, raise a force sufficient to stabilize the unrest in Liberia? Could the United States help without sending in ground troops? Is the United Nations prepared to take over peacekeeping operations once the situation is stabilized? Can the United States afford to assist Liberia? Can the United States afford to ignore Liberia?
The questions are tough, but procrastination is not an acceptable response. Hundreds of innocent civilians are suffering and dying as a result of the conflict in Liberia. Monrovia is in shambles. Last week (July 25), the President took the tentative step of ordering several thousand U.S. Marines to be positioned off the coast of Liberia, but how or whether any of those troops will be deployed remains unknown. Indecisive, half-hearted gestures serve no purpose. As long as there is an expectation that the United States will intervene, African states are unlikely to take independent action to deal with the situation in Liberia. The President needs to determine a course of action, he needs to consult with Congress and the United Nations on pursuing that course, and he needs to explain his reasoning and his strategy to the American people.
In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, (July 24) General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, termed Liberia "potentially a very dangerous situation" that poses "great personal risk" to American troops. Any decision to send American troops into that war torn country is a decision that must be carefully thought through and be made in concert with Congress and the international community, not simply presented to the American people as an after-the-fact notification.
The situation in Liberia, and the other crises brewing around the world, require more attention and more explanation from the President than the usual off-the-cuff comments tossed to reporters at the end of photo ops. This is not a summer for the President to spend riding around the ranch in his pick up truck. This is not a time to play to the television cameras with the "bring 'em on" school of rhetoric. The problems confronting the United States require the President's serious and undivided attention. The American people deserve a full accounting from the President of where he stands on critical international issues, and how he intends to deal with them.
Against the backdrop of the war in Iraq and the emerging crises in North Korea, Iran, and Liberia, the largely forgotten war in Afghanistan continues to grind on, more than a year and half after the United States rousted the Taliban from power and obliterated al Qaeda's terrorist training camps. Nearly 10,000 American troops remain in Afghanistan, with no end to their mission in sight – and no clear mission to accomplish – hunting the remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda organizations. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein's sons have been killed, and one can only hope that we are closing in on Saddam Hussein himself, but in the wider war on terrorism, Osama bin Laden remains at large, and his organization continues to spread its venom throughout the Middle East and perhaps the world.
The alert issued earlier this week by the Homeland Security Department is only the latest reminder that the al Qaeda terrorist network remains a potent threat to America and its allies. The warning included specific details – such as the fact that targets might include the East coast of the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, or Australia – and it raised the possibility that at least one of the planned highjackings or bombings could be executed before the end of the summer.
In the face of such a frightening specter, it is somewhat unsettling that on the subject of terrorism, the President is talking tough to Iran and Syria, but he seldom mentions Osama bin Laden anymore.
Is this another example of the President's efforts to change his message to divert the attention of the American people? The imminent and direct threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was used to hoodwink the public into accepting the rush to war, but now that no weapons have been found, the President barely mentions them anymore. Instead, he is now talking about how regime change in Iraq was really the catalyst required to stabilize the Middle East. New day, new message.
At the center of America's imperiled relations with its friends and foes alike is the Bush doctrine of preemption, which was first articulated in the September 2002 National Security Strategy. This unprecedented declaration that the United States has the right to launch preemptive military attacks against hostile nations in the absence of direct provocation sent shockwaves throughout the international community.
The doctrine of preemption was the justification for attacking Iraq without provocation, but the ramifications of the policy go far beyond that nation. All so-called "rogue regimes" were put on notice that the United States was prepared to act to deter the development of weapons of mass destruction that could be used against America.
Suddenly, the elite club of nations that formed the President's "axis of evil" found itself caught in the cross hairs of the U.S. military. And just as quickly, the hollowness of the doctrine was exposed. Iraq could be attacked at will because it did not have nuclear capability. North Korea called for restraint because it plausibly did have nuclear capability. Iran was a question mark. Predictably, both North Korea and Iran, seeing the writing on the wall, began to scramble to accelerate their nuclear programs. In retrospect, the doctrine of preemption is beginning to look more and more like a doctrine of provocation.
Against this background, the storm clouds of international instability are massing. America's military forces are stretched thin in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our military leadership is absorbed with Iraq. Our military resources – both financial and personnel – are strained to the breaking point. With the exception of Britain, our allies are reluctant to commit significant resources or manpower to an operation in Iraq in which the United States has a stranglehold on authority and decision making. The Executive Branch is preoccupied with the occupation of Iraq and seems paralyzed when it comes to meaningful action to deal with North Korea or Iran or Liberia. Afghanistan and the global war on terror have seemingly been relegated to the status of afterthoughts. America's foreign policy appears to be adrift in an increasingly tumultuous sea of international turmoil. Meanwhile, the national terror threat continues to hover uneasily in the "elevated range" amid new warnings of terrorist attacks being plotted against commercial aircraft.
In this moment of great potential peril, the President is preparing to retire for a month to his ranch in Texas. The question needs to be asked: Who's minding the White House?
In a short time, the Senate will recess for the month of August. It is my belief that we should not go far. I hope that the international situation will remain stable, and that no new crises will erupt. But I do not pretend to be sanguine. I do not pretend to assume that all will be well.
A rare combination of volatile and dangerous international events are poised to converge in the coming months. In large part, it is a storm of this Administration's own making, fueled by the fear, confusion, and instability caused by the unprecedented and ill-advised doctrine of preemption. I only hope that the President and his advisers can summon the skill, the wit, and the leadership to engage and attempt to tame the elements of international turmoil before it is too late and we are swept up into the vortex of the storm.
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