North Korea and the Bush Administration’s Toxic Legacy
Map, NK’s proliferation trading partners (see PBS’ Frontline: Kim’s Nuclear Gamble)
Over the last several weeks there has been considerable re-evaluation of the Iraq War, launched ten years ago by the Bush Administration. Eulogies and opinions from pundits of all types ranged from “I told you so,” to “It was a qualified success.”
We all know what the truth is without punditry: the war was a bolloxed-up mess before it began, and its outcome is tragic no matter the angle from which one views the results.
But with all the reassessment of the Bush years and its policies on Iraq, there’s been little revisiting of tangential foreign policies and their equally disturbing outcomes.
In particular, in spite of the ramped up threats of nuclear missile deployment, the damage of Bush policies on North Korea have not been discussed.
North Korea has been able to grow its nuclear program primarily because the Bush administration abruptly vacated the previous Clinton administration policy of engagement — in March 2001, a dozen years ago this month. Bush told a shocked South Korean president Kim Dae Jung about this unanticipated policy change in private during a summit. To reporters and the public at large, Bush says,
“Part of the problem in dealing with North Korea, there’s not very much transparency. We’re not certain as to whether or not they’re keeping all terms of all agreements.”
At the end of 2002, North Korea kicked out all IAEA inspectors — those which had been monitoring NK’s nuclear program under the Clinton administration’s previously negotiated 1994 Agreed Framework — thereby eliminating any transparency just as North Korea removed monitoring devices and seals from their nuclear program equipment.
In 2003, the Bush administration entered Six-Party talks with NK; the talks were on-again-off-again until 2009, when NK walked away entirely from discussions. Visiting U.S. scientists were allowed to see functioning uranium enrichment equipment in 2010.
North Korea being an extremely closed country, it is difficult if not impossible to insert operatives to monitor or thwart nuclear weapon development. It has taken considerable effort negotiating with other countries outside North Korea to deter raw materials or technology that could be used in proliferation.
The American public cannot be certain that activities we’ve seen as part of “Arab Spring” weren’t encouraged by the Obama administration to act as a deterrent to proliferation. One need only look at the map graphic above to see how revolutionary activities in 2010-2011 may have impacted the flow of precursor content to/from North Korea from the sympathetic governments of Libya and Egypt — and now Syria.
Nor can the American public be certain about the parties with whom our government may negotiate, given the questions surrounding the last years and death of Kim Jong-il, Kim’s heir Kim Jong-un, and the shadowy military government supporting/operating the country. The intelligence community may have a handle on this, but they’re not sharing any information; the public is unable to insist on transparency and cannot readily hold NK’s true leadership to account via traditional media (bloggers attempt to do so on an informal basis).
Stuxnet (and quite possibly other cyber warfare applications) may also have been launched with a secondary target apart from Iran in mind. The nuclear development program in North Korea may have substantially similar components to that of Iran, including process control equipment. In theory such an attack might allow deterrence spread by Iran or other infected partners without attempting to insert operatives.
But the American public as well as most of the world can’t be certain that Stuxnet obstructed North Korean development because the country is so isolated. It’s possible that NK has been able to work around cyber warfare applications so that they have systems and enriched uranium to share with its existing nuclear partners. If they are trading materials and equipment with Iran, NK poses a threat to Israel and Saudi Arabia as well as the rest of the middle east.
Of all the anti-proliferation scenarios the world faces today, NK may be the worst case.
We can lay the blame solidly at the feet of the Bush administration’s policy wonks. As former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea (1989-1993) Donald Gregg said in 2003 about the administration’s position, the G. W. Bush administration “never had a policy. It’s had an attitude – hostility.”
Worse yet, Richard Perle, the former chair of the Defense Policy Board which advised the Bush administration’ Defense Department, said of the 1994 Framework Agreement,
“…The basic structure of the relationship implied in the Framework Agreement…is a relationship between a blackmailer and one who pays a blackmailer.”
Perle told the Bush administration that the U.S. doesn’t negotiate with extortionists.
And yet here we are, a dozen years later, forced to consider negotiations with a nuclear arsenal aimed at our heads, millions of South Koreans at immediate risk, while we vacillate on food aid to hungry North Koreans who suffer as leverage caught up in this debacle.
North Korea offers yet another fine neoconservative success borne of the Bush years – one showered with flowers and candy, reeking of freedom.
Recommended reading:
PBS Frontline: Kim’s Nuclear Gamble, (Mar 2003)
Arms Control Association’s Chronology of U.S.-North Korean Nuclear and Missile Diplomacy
Council on Foreign Relations’ The Six-Party Talks on North Korea’s Nuclear Program (Mar 2013)
Excellent post…….
Now, Have you all voted for @emptywheel in today’s round two of Twitter Fight Club 2013??
Here is the link
And, if you are on Twitter, don’t forget to support @emptywheel over arch rival @speechboy71 by issuing tweets to that effect and tagging them with #TFC13
If I can’t trust you all to do this for the team, then where are we in life??
Thanks, Rayne.
I missed your weekend posts and would loved to have participated.
Now, back to the topic. Our Foreign Policy leaders have not changed since Bush. Those in the public view and the ones working behind the curtains are all the same, from the same cloth, and follow the same old tired visions.
Our current foreign policy is not dialogue, sanctions, or anything close to what normal thinking individuals would attempt. It is a drone first and forgettaboutit policy, or a cold war frame of mind policy. Yes, we get all huffed up and put on the codpiece to demand sanctions, our own and those from other countries. But, as we have seen in the past, those are all overcome, broken, and really don’t mean a hell of a lot.
Yes, North Korea is a big threat to Saudi Arabia and Isreal. We, our sons, daughters, husbands, wives are the cannon fodder for those two countries. Be wary of what is said and done from DC regarding North Korea.
@peasantparty: I think foreign policy has been very different between Bush and Obama admins, primarily because another Clinton was at helm at DoS.
But…the move to drones in lieu of field ops is a failure specifically with regard to North Korea. In this particular situation, drones are not an option at all, cannot enter the picture at risk of creating a nightmare of unimaginable proportions. Anyway it’s modeled, it’s really, really bad. Bush’s admin painted us into a corner, and Obama’s admin has eliminated tools to get us out of that spot.
*sigh*
@bmaz: Arrgh! Yer twisting arms now? You know how I feel about the big EW. Fight Club? Sheesh! Okay, here goes.
Bmaz, would vote but there’s no EW over there.
@JohnLopresti: She’s in the Southwest bracket, oddly enough. Use Ctrl-F on your browser and search for emptywheel, she’ll pop up. ;-)
@JohnLopresti: Go to the link, click on “Home”, scroll down and you will find her. Click beside her name/the bubble, then just under her group click on vote.
“If they are trading materials and equipment with Iran, NK poses a threat to Israel and Saudi Arabia as well as the rest of the middle east.”
What bullshit. Is this the Washington Times?
Gee, the U.S. could simply decide that it’s time to recognize North Korea, as the US has never, since the cessation of major combat hostilities in 1953, extended diplomatic recognition to the DPRK. In fact, US policy has been unremittingly hostile since the Japanese were kicked out of Korea by combined U.S. and Soviet forces, along with Communist partisans led by Kim Il-Sung.
The U.S. places stringent, damaging economic sanctions on North Korea. Those sanctions have helped cause massive starvation in that country (helped along by the policies of the ruling elite). The U.S. keeps tens of thousands of its own soldiers stationed along its southern border, maintaining a permanent sense of threat and mobilization for war that has warped North Korean society and distorted the political process there.
An example of the symbology meant to irritate the North Koreans, the US and Japan “called… for the main U.N. human rights forum to launch an inquiry into allegations of violations including the torture and execution of political prisoners in North Korea.”
I’m as much against torture and the execution of political prisoners as anyone is — and I have a body of work that reflects that — but neither the U.S., who carpet bombed their country, nor Japan, a country that held Korea in a totalitarian dictatorship for decades, have any right to preach to the North Koreans. The Japanese government refuses to recognize its war crimes against the Korean people, while both the Japanese and U.S. governments are responsible for the deaths of literally millions of Koreans during wartime.
The U.S. is preparing for a second Korean War — and even if they are not preparing, their bellicose saber rattling could take both the U.S. and the two Koreas (not to mention China and possibly Russia) farther than anyone may consciously wish to go.
It is many decades now since the U.S. lost over 36,000 military dead in the Korean War. Sixty years later the country of North Korea still exists. Another Korean War would be hugely destructive, and will change the world even more than the Iraq debacle.
Americans should pay heed to this, and not jump on the Fear Train to World War III (which such a war could very well augur).
Thank you, Jeff!
And why did we have a Bush admin in the first place – Sandra Day O’Connor.
@seedeevee: This is a game of multi-dimensional chess. Have you not already played that bit out?
Who do you think was behind Stuxnet? At a minimum, these parties contributed:
— US provided technology;
— Israel provided intelligence, technology;
— Saudi Arabia provided intelligence, funding;
— Germany provided the means (a la process controls equipment).
These countries already acted on the threat they perceived, and now we are ALL of us having to deal with the unexpected repercussions from Stuxnet’s launch as well as NK’s increased saber-rattling. How do you think the South Koreans feel? What steps would they feel are warranted — regardless of what you personally feel about Israel and Saudi Arabia? What would the South Koreans be willing to do to assure their nation’s security?
We’ve already seen the highly predictable next move on the part of North Korea: a move to demand negotiations and with it the implied recognition they’ve long wanted. What were the next moves?
Keep up. Many plays have already been made on these boards.
@Jeff Kaye: Here’s what I see is a key sticking point — if the US moves to recognition, it appears to validate the use of nuclear threats by smaller countries to achieve their ends.
How do you suggest getting around that?
In the mean time, we “send” Dennis Rodman, someone whose actions the public will marginalize, in order to obtain information on demands apart from recognition. I can see more of this continuing in the mean time.
@Rayne: Not the “multi-dimensional chess” bs again . . . .
My comments may may me sound like a dumbass, sometimes — but you are hitting us with double barrels of the worst of the past.
“multi-dimensional chess” and “scary Iranians and North Koreans” should have been laughed out of the building after Karl rove left and Barack Obama was proven to be incompetent about anything but winning a political campaign against the worst politicians in a lifetime.
South Korea has no future as a sovereign nation — Korea does. South Korea does not want to antagonize the North, the US does. South Koreans are Koreans — not Americans, not Israelis, not Germans.
Your hypothesis about stuxnet is entirely lacking in supportable facts — from who the “players” are to what you feel their “perceptions” are.
If you are trying to say, in a round-about way, that our “leadership” is making the same mistakes they have been making since they denied Korea it chance at self-determination after WW2 – then I could agree with you.
But I don’t think you are.
You seem to just be here saying “boo”.
Thanks for your response, though!
@Rayne: There is no sticking point from the US side. They have no intention of recognizing North Korea (after over 60 years). They want to finish the Cold War job and wipe out those regimes that do not formally recognize capitalism, that put themselves outside Western imperialist control.
The fall of the Soviet Union, Tito’s Yugoslavian federation, the East Europe puppet Stalinist regimes… this only whetted the appetite for the second act… the overthrow of the Chinese Communist regime, the forced capitalist reunification of the Korean peninsula, the return of capitalism to the old French Indochinese states, and, of course, the destruction of Castroite Cuba.
It’s an ambitious agenda, and a murderous one. Its accomplishment is unlikely without WWIII, and at a minimum the destruction of Constitutional democracy in the United States, as the latter cannot maintain that level of war for as long as it will take to accomplish their conquest.
It has long been known, if forgotten, that the future of humanity rests on solving the problem of nuclear proliferation and stopping nuclear war. It is this, not global warming, that is the most immediate threat to the human race, if not the planet. The answer, however, does not lie in a global Pax Americana. That way lies dictatorship and destruction.
@Rayne: There is no sticking point from the US side. They have no intention of recognizing North Korea (after over 60 years). They want to finish the Cold War job and wipe out those regimes that do not formally recognize capitalism, that put themselves outside Western imperialist control.
The fall of the Soviet Union, Tito’s Yugoslavian federation, the East Europe puppet Stalinist regimes… this only whetted the appetite for the second act… the overthrow of the Chinese Communist regime, the forced capitalist reunification of the Korean peninsula, the return of capitalism to the old French Indochinese states, and, of course, the destruction of Castroite Cuba.
It’s an ambitious agenda, and a murderous one. Its accomplishment is unlikely without WWIII, and at a minimum the destruction of Constitutional democracy in the United States, as the latter cannot maintain that level of war for as long as it will take to accomplish their conquest.
It has long been known, if forgotten, that the future of humanity rests on solving the problem of nuclear proliferation and stopping nuclear war. It is this, not global warming, that is the most immediate threat to the human race, if not the planet. The answer, however, does not lie in a global Pax Americana. That way lies dictatorship and destruction.