Bush
And North Korea
By Mike Whitney
12 October, 2006
Countercurrents.org
"We have reaffirmed
our commitment to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. The actions taken
by North Korea are unacceptable and deserve an immediate response by
the UN Security Council."
President George Bush; following the detonation of North Korea's
first nuclear weapon
It
took 6 years of relentless threats, sanctions and belligerence, but
Bush finally succeeded in pushing Kim Jong-Il to build North Korea's
first nuclear bomb. Now, Kim can just add a few finishing touches to
his ballistic-missile delivery system, the Taepo-dong ICBM, and he'll
be able to wipe out the 9 western states with a flip of the switch.
In a matter of hours, the
world has become a much more dangerous place, a fact that will have
no effect of the blinkered ideologues at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. They've
probably already moved on to the next phase of their plan to expand
the Middle East catastrophe; Armageddon in Iran.
The crisis with North Korea
was entirely avoidable for anyone with even minimal diplomatic skills
and an elementary understanding of human psychology. Instead, the Bush
troupe persisted for 6 years with the same inflexible policy nudging
Kim ever-closer to producing his first nuclear weapon.Now, half the
population of the United States is in the gun-sights of a madcap tyrant
whose basic grasp of reality has always been seriously in doubt.
At the same time, the White
House has resumed issuing statements via its sardonic press secretary,
Tony Snow, that Bush "is closely monitoring the situation and reaffirms
his commitment to defend our allies in the region."
"Monitoring the situation"?
Bush has done everything in his power to facilitate the North Korean
despot's quest for WMD except hand-deliver atom-bombs to the front porch
of his imperial palace!
Bush has put everyone in
the region at greater risk and, without a doubt, triggered a nuclear-arms
race in Japan, China and South Korea. It is the death-knell for non-proliferation
and the threadbare NPT.
The Bush administration has
known what Kim wants for 6 years and has had ample opportunity to find
a peaceful resolution to the standoff. North Korea's demands go back
to the original 1994 "Framework Agreement" in which Bill Clinton
promised to provide food, fuel and 2 light-water reactors in exchange
for North Korea's abandoning its nuclear weapons programs. The North
agreed to these terms, but the United States has never honored its obligations.
When Bush took office, the
agreement was jettisoned altogether and Bush pushed for sanctions. He
placed North Korea on the "Axis of Evil" list, threatened
regime change, and publicly announced that he "loathed" Kim
Jung Il. All of this fueled the confrontation and thrust the wary Kim
towards developing a viable nuclear deterrent to US aggression. Kim
had no intention of being the next victim of Bush's preemptive policy.
Bush's dim-witted bravado
and saber-rattling has only made negotiations more difficult and aggravated
an already tense situation. Even when it was announced that Kim would
be testing a nuclear device sometime during this past weekend, the headstrong
Bush still refused to enter "11th hour" negotiations. Instead,
his Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill issued yet another
ominous-sounding threat that "North Korea can either have a future
or they can have those weapons. They can't have both."
Kim, of course, brushed off
the warning and detonated the bomb
American Intelligence agencies
now believe that North Korea has enough fissile material for between
2 to 8 nuclear warheads and they are speeding ahead with the development
of the requisite delivery systems.
What will Bush do now?
Will he bomb the North and
potentially open another front on the Korean Peninsula for our already
over-extended military? Or will he simply continue with the fiery rhetoric
and the chest-thumping bluster?
His track-record is far from
reassuring.
The Bush team will probably
follow their familiar pattern of ignoring the dilemma while creating
a public relations smokescreen to conceal their incompetence.
Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice
will undoubtedly make their appearances on the morning talk shows claiming
that "we are all much safer" under the enlightened leadership
of George Bush. Perhaps, they could synchronize their silly assertions
to coincide with the explosion of Korea's next nuclear weapon.
How could Bush let the situation
get so out-of-hand? After all, the central tenet of the war on terror
is: "We will not let the world's most dangerous weapons fall into
the hands of the world's worst dictators"? Instead, they have elevated
an unstable megalomaniac into a nuclear-armed menace. It could turn
out to be the greatest foreign policy meltdown in American history.
Bush needs to forgo the Texas
bravado and make substantive changes to the present policy before North
Korea becomes the world's largest WMD-production factory.
First, he should agree to
two-party talks with representatives from the North, which is what North
Korea has demanded from the very beginning.
Second, he should review
all sanctions directed against North Korea and publicly state that he
will reassess whether they are truly justified.
Third, (and most important)
Bush should offer firm assurances in the form of a treaty that North
Korea WILL NOT BE ATTACKED BY THE UNITED STATES IF IT ABANDONS ITS NUCLEAR
WEAPONS PROGRAMS. This has been the North's primary demand from the
very onset of the crisis. (although it has been omitted from newspaper
coverage to conceal the fact that the rest of the world is actually
terrified of the America's erratic behavior)
Fourth, the administration
should reconsider providing the oil, food, and light-water reactors
which were part of the original "Framework Agreement" as long
as North Korea agrees to undergo intensive "go anywhere, see anything"
inspections conducted by the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA.
A larger tragedy can still
be averted if cooler heads prevail. The time for bluster is past. The
present policy is a dead-loss which has put everyone in greater peril.
The North is currently working
out the kinks in its Taepo-dong ICBM. If we are serious that "We
don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," (as Condi Rice
opined) the administration must take positive steps to defuse the present
crisis; its time to change directions, amend the policy, and negotiate
a peaceful settlement. The alternatives are too horrific to consider.
Mike Whitney
lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: f [email protected]
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