North Korea has what Iraq dreams of
Andrew Coyne
National Post
Friday, October 18, 2002
Eight years ago this
week, the Clinton
administration brought
home a piece of paper
from North Korea
promising peace in our
time. In exchange for
diplomatic recognition,
500,000 tons a year of
heavy fuel oil, and a
pair of nuclear
reactors, the Stalinist
regime of Kim Jong Il
(the diminutive "Great
Leader," not to be
confused with his
father, Kim Il Sung, the
"Glorious Leader")
agreed to dismantle its
burgeoning nuclear
weapons program, and to allow international inspectors full access
to its stockpiles of plutonium, to verify that these were not being
used to manufacture a bomb.
The so-called Agreed Framework, brokered with the help of Jimmy
Carter, the former president and winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace
Prize, was hailed by The New York Times as "a resounding
triumph." Defying "impatient hawks and other skeptics who
accused the Clinton administration of gullibility" and warned that
North Korea "was simply stalling while it built more bombs,"
negotiators had instead taken the path of peace. "If the North
fulfills its commitments," the Times rhapsodized, "this negotiation
could become a textbook case on how to curb the spread of
nuclear arms."
If the North fulfills its commitments. In fact, the North did not fulfill
a single one. It used the plutonium, according to CIA reports, to
make not one but two bombs. It has never allowed the sort of
intrusive inspections promised. And, as it has just acknowledged,
it has all the while been engaged in a clandestine program to
develop more nuclear weapons, this time using enriched uranium.
Turns out those impatient hawks were right: It was simply stalling
while it built more bombs.
To its existing arsenals of chemical and biological weapons, to say
nothing of its enormous stockpiles of conventional arms, it may
soon be able to add several nuclear warheads, if it has not
already. These may be used either to terrorize its neighbours or to
accessorize the long-range missiles that are one of its few
exports. Or they may simply be put to the same use as before: as
a means of extracting more concessions from the West, in return
for still more promises from the North Koreans.
The agreement, in short, has proved as good as North Korea's
word. What began as a craven exercise in appeasement -- there
is no overstatement in that word here -- has ended as these
things usually do: with disillusionment on one side, an
undiminished threat on the other, and another round of blackmail
in the offing.
I mention all this for the benefit of those who still wonder what all
the fuss over Iraq is about. Even now, predictable voices are
asking why, if the United States is so determined to disarm Iraq
that it is willing to go to war, it does not do the same to North
Korea. Indeed, the Bush administration's reaction to the North's
astounding confession of bad faith was remarkably muted, limited
to some faint murmurings about "dialogue" and "peace-loving
nations."
There is a very simple explanation for this. Listen closely: It's
because North Korea already has the bomb. If we attacked, or
even threatened to, they might level Seoul. It is precisely to avoid
this predicament that the Americans have been pressing to take
out Saddam Hussein: now, before he has the bomb. If we wait
until he gets one -- I hear North Korea's terms are quite
reasonable -- it will be impossible to take it away from him.
Critics who accuse the United States of inconsistency have some
nerve: These same people have been warning us that the
Americans and their cowboy President were fixin' to invade every
country that so much as looked at them sideways. But let them
show a little discretion and suddenly they're hypocrites. In fact the
situations are quite different, and call for different responses --
not only because Lil' Kim has the bomb that Saddam's dreams are
made of, and not only because war in the Korean peninsula is of a
different order of magnitude, in terms of carnage and
destabilization, than an invasion of Iraq, but because there is
more fluidity in the North Korean situation than is conceivable in
Iraq.
Crazy the regime may be, but it has of late been making some
fitful attempts to come to grips with the reality of the outside
world. In the present case it may have no higher aim in mind than
to reprise the shakedown of 1994, but after the regime is relieved
of that delusion, the revised terms of trade can be impressed
upon it: If it does not give up its nuclear ambitions, pronto, it will
lose all the gains it has made to date, together with any hope of
future progress, whether in normalizing relations or inward
investment or aid for its suffering people.
The same applies to Iran, the third wheel on the "axis of evil."
There is every case for waiting out the mullahs, for reasons that
preclude the same approach to Saddam: The regime may fall of its
own accord, it has no recent history of invading its neighbours,
and it appears to be guided by at least some rational assessment
of its own best interests. I was going to say it had no nukes,
either, but apparently all it takes is a half-million tons of fuel oil
and a letter of introduction from Jimmy Carter.
nationalpost.com
Thx..Mr.F |
