The Limits Of Carterian Diplomacy
The North Korean Problem Does Not Have A Silver Bullet Solution. Why Pretend Otherwise?
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Featured Stories | Foreign Affairs — Comments (15) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Jimmy Carter has this op-ed on the situation in North Korea (an interesting side effect of any North Korean effort to escalate tensions is that it invariably brings about another Carter op-ed). I suppose that a great many things could be said about the Agreed Framework that came about as a result of Carter's efforts and those of the Clinton Administration--and Ed Morrissey records some of the choicest commentary from the Brookings Institution here--but the end of the op-ed caught my eye (read on):
What must be avoided is to leave a beleaguered nuclear nation convinced that it is permanently excluded from the international community, its existence threatened, its people suffering horrible deprivation and its hard-liners in total control of military and political policy.
Well, you know, it would be nice if that could be avoided. However, no one is isolating North Korea out of spite and the North Koreans aren't really trying all that hard to be the popular kids in class. The "hermit" nature of the Hermit Kingdom is, alas, largely self-imposed. When you have a country whose leader seeks to convince the populace that he is a god (as supposedly was his father before him), when you have a country that starves its citizens to death in pursuit of economic policies and aggrandizement of the leadership class on a scale so utterly massive as to stupify the imagination of Stalin himself, when you have a country whose human rights abuses and persecution of political dissidents boggles even the most jaded of minds, you have an isolated country. There are, alas, few options available to ameliorate the situation. And now, as if the situation is not bad enough, North Korea has decided to get nuclear weapons. Does it expect to be invited to parties?
Obviously, no one seeks to isolate a country just for kicks. But it takes two to play the game of healthy inclusion, and the North Koreans have picked up their ball and gone home, at least for the moment. We can talk all we want about the supposed "axis of evil" effect, which would presumably have us believe that the North Koreans were never really interested in nuclear weapons before the 2002 State of the Union, we can harp all we want about the supposed need for bilateral talks (I will never get over the fact that the very people accusing the Bush Administration of ditching our allies in Iraq are now asking us as part of their pleas for bilateral talks to ditch allies like Japan, Russia, China (which holds the largest sway with the North Koreans) and--incredibly--South Korea) and we can harp all we want about the supposed need for some sort of nonaggression pledge from the United States. But North Korean consistently refuses to engage in any confidence-building diplomatic measures of its own. And this fact cannot be forgotten.
Don't get me wrong. I know that this is a sticky problem and I don't have facile solutions at hand. But it would be a mistake to think that such solutions lie gleaming in the text of Jimmy Carter's op-ed. The situation is a bit more complicated than the former President would appear to portray it, or than the Times's word count limit for op-eds would appear to allow by way of a description.
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Here, that is. And then don't come back.
Bush's policy has been a failure. But Bush was dealt an unwinnable hand. As soon as North Korea went nuclear the options were reduced to military force (at catastrophic cost) and the arming of US allies. Clinton, on the other hand, had options. He could have insisted on verification measures as a precondition instead of expecting an irrational tyrant to abide the honor system. He could have isolated North Korea instead of helping to loose it of the burden of meeting its population's minimum nutritional needs (and thus allow it to spend even more of its budget on defense. But he didn't. He went for feel-good diplomacy and the result is a nuclear-tipped totalitarian state with a fruitcake for a ruler and a bellicose foreign policy.
Now it's official that North Korea has fallen from China's favor. The Chinese already didn't want to deal with millions of North Korean refugees but they really didn't want a nuclear Japan.
There is also the fact that at least 10,000 artillery pieces are within range of Seoul; any military action would have catastrophic consequences for the South Koreans. President Bush is taking the only responsible course available.
The good news is, because of China's disfavor and the isolation because of near-unanimity in the international community, the DPRK regime can't prop itself up for very much longer.
Bush could have done something. His hands weren't tied. His hands still aren't. Odds are that North Korea doesn't have any nuclear weapons. Now North Korea can--and could--destroy all of Seoul South Korea using conventional munitions.
Your comments about Bush's bad hand are bogus. He could have done something. He didn't. And now he does nothing.
Question: Why are you guys so afraid of alternate opinions?
What, pray tell, should he do? Should he pave North Korea with bunker busters? Should he aim a decapitation strike at Kim Jong Il? Should he send Jimmy Carter with a few more fruit baskets? It is terribly easy to criticize and far more difficult to propose real solutions.
And you're not on your fourth handle because people "can't handle the truth." Red Staters do not, and should not, suffer the smarmy know-it-alls who seek not to inform and to be informed but merely to offer vapid criticisms.
because they're so bad. Although afraid doesn't quite cover it, distaste at the sheer awfulness is more like it.
Example, how do you leave Clinton entirely out of it?
What precisely would you do that hasn't been tried?
Is there any room in your mind for criticism of N. Korea and what they are responsible for and guilty of?
You see after a while the business of Bush being responsible for anything and everything that has gone wrong wears on a person, there is more than a hint of monomania to it. Maybe that's what we're "afraid" of, the same old crap!
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
you must fully agree with the administration's actions in Iraq?
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Thou art the Great Cat, the avenger of the Gods, and the judge of words...-Inscription on the Royal Tombs at Thebes
Is the the signed Michael Jordan ball that Ms. Albright was so thoughtful to provide? (Along with the tools and materials needed to build nukes.)
{Sorry, couldn't resist}.
tre-
Alternate opinions we welcome. Poorly written posts that are merely insults disguised as opinions are a waste of our time. Just like many of the President's critics, you like to spew out nonsense about how his policy failed, yet you don't offer a single "opinion" on what would have been a better policy. That is why you are annoying to us. That is my two cents worth....
And for what it is worth, President Bush HAS been trying to defuse the North Korean situation, unfortunately by the time he took office the Clinton regime had already supplied North Korea with everything they needed to make the nukes they now hold. Makes it a little more difficult.
-Life is tough, but it's tougher when your stupid.-
John Wayne
the "inordinate fear of communism" guy,said shortly before he expressed shock at the people who crushed Hungary invading Afgahanistan.
Rest assured I'm not questioning his patriotism or that of the other liberals who routinely make excuses for and are lenient towards our enemies. It just always works out that way, by pure coincidence.
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
What is easy to state: The bush policy--or lack thereof--is a failure. When Saddam allowed the inspector back in, but Bush attacked anyway, he communicate quite clearly that negotiating or buckling to US pressure would provide no benefit. And now we have the US bogged down in a fiasco while North Korea has learned the only lesson available from Bush's incompetence: build a good weapon. And now Bush has told the North Koreans that we aren't planning any military attacks.
Nothing like ruling out the iron fist. What a shame.