In yet another foreign policy triumph from the brilliant team that brought you "Mess o'Potamia," "The Taliban: Back in Style," and "Where's Osama?", I'm thrilled -- thrilled -- to see that they've let the batshit craziest dictator alive develop a nuclear bomb. Awesome.As Josh Marshall notes, the failure of American containment policy in North Korea stems -- like most failures of this crowd -- from their desire to be the Anti-Clinton:
President Bush came to office believing that Clinton's policy amounted to appeasement. Force and strength were the way to deal with North Korea, not a mix of force, diplomacy and aide. And with that premise, President Bush went about scuttling the 1994 agreement, using evidence that the North Koreans were pursuing uranium enrichment (another path to the bomb) as the final straw. ....How many more days to we have to live under the incredible combination of ignorance and arrogance that this crowd specializes in? Can we at least get some Democratic congressional oversight soon? Please?
All diplomatic niceties aside, President Bush's idea was that the North Koreans would respond better to threats than Clinton's mix of carrots and sticks.
Then in the winter of 2002-3, the US prepared the invade Iraq, the North called Bush's bluff. And the president folded. Abjectly, utterly, even hilariously if the consequences weren't so grave and vast.
Threats are a potent force if you're willing to follow through on them. But he wasn't. The plutonium production plant, which had been shuttered since 1994, got unshuttered. And the bomb that exploded tonight was, if I understand this correctly, almost certainly the product of that plutonium uncorked almost four years ago. ....
The Bush-Cheney policy on North Korea was always what Fareed Zakaria once aptly called "a policy of cheap rhetoric and cheap shots." It failed. And after it failed President Bush couldn't come to grips with that failure and change course. He bounced irresolutely between the Powell and Cheney lines and basically ignored the whole problem hoping either that the problem would go away, that China would solve it for us and most of all that no one would notice.
Do you notice now?
16 comments:
Lets not forget - the next several days is the blueprint for how Iran will assume the world will react. Bush shoold consider some at the Crawford ranch. Tis is such HARD work. My gosh!
Also, and I'm not an expert here - If I were China, Japan, or South Korea - I'd really be out for blood this morning. I mean before the rumbling was over I'd have a plane firebomb with that stupid MOAB bomb we masterbate to in the military.
I know S. Korea is an inch away - but damn people that dude is crazy.
That Marshall blurb is right on. Something similar should be be flowing freely from every Dem today. They should try and get out in front on this as much as possible and HAMMER Bush. This cycle will quickly turn and Bush has the bully pulpit. They'll have one chance to define this as a Bush failure and pin it on him, and the window is already closing.
There is no bigger threat to our safety than North Korea at this point. China doesn't necessarily need to solve the problem for us, and really, they shouldn't. That puts them in the Eastern policy driver's seat. Seeing as how they own something in the ballpark of 50.6% of all of our debt, that doesn't thrill me much.
The weapons of mass destruction all along have been with a total looneybin in North Korea. And now they have tested. Granted, it was a small, wee little tiny bomb compared to our standards, but the first explosion shows you that you got it right. The rest is making it proportionally larger.
There is no greater threat to our safety and security. This Mideast terrorist stuff is child's play compared to a nuclear nutcase in North Korea.
Maybe I shouldn't have invested in that time share in Seoul last week.
I don't want to freak anyone out, but the Post has an analysis of the NK situation that accurately describes the acheivements of the Clinton policy and the failures of the bush policy. I expect the article will be retracted soon.
Man, that is a disturbingly accurate WaPo piece. I bet the late addition has some mention of how the Clenis caused Bush to veer off course.
It'll be interesting to see how this story impacts things... I mean the Bushies have practically been pretending NK was already nuclear for a while now.
It will clearly be the main RNC talking point going forward, because it plays to their supposed strength. But will it succeed in shifting the narrative from Foley?
Took your post, OM, and ran with it at my place...
My wife's entire family lives in South Korea, I've visited there, and plan to return multiple times. So please be assured I'm not making light of this story at all. Quite the opposite. Nor am I in any way opposed to Furious & OM's plan to use this against Bush in a big, mo'fo' way.
That said, color me less than frightened. North Koreans are starving in huge numbers, they black out the country daily to conserve diminishing fuel supplies, the country has no money at all, and it's almost completely isolated in the international community. North Korean sabre-rattling tends to serve one purpose: as leverage to coerce other countries to give it food and energy.
All we know at this point is that there was underground seismic activity somewhere in N. Korea, and that North Korean emmissaries say they tested a nuke.
Please don't assume we (meaning the world) are in some sort of grave danger. We're not.
But, once again, this continues to represent a terrible diplomatic failing by the Bush Adminsistration, and DEms should be fucking hammering him for this.
Desperate times yield desperate measure, Mike. I do not have the expertise that you have, as you've actually been there to see it. But I gotta figure, as you put it, that sabre rattling was used as a means to get food and fuel. But to have a nuke that works means that they may get a nuke that launches. And if that lunatic is crazy enough to starve his people to build one, I bet he's willing to go the next step of perfecting the delivery platform and making the paylaod bigger.
There's a great post over at Kung Fu Monkey with a rather satircal conversation about why bombing Iran is for iots peoples' best interest.
I bring this up because it is analogous to NK. Bush's policy a continued starvation and complete isolation create an even more dangerous situation than before; an increasingly desparate situation whereby they now have a nuke when they didn't before because they tabled it. But I think you and I agree on that point.
Where we disagree is on the level of danger, where I am unconvinced that NK will invade SK (with what army with what fuel with what weapons), but not necessarily convinced that they won't lay a nuke down somewhere (SK or the US West Coast for example) or worse yet...sell what they got to one of our other numerous enemies. That may be where the real danger lies.
Just conjecture, really. Stupid armchair political hack that I am. I should stick to beer.
Smitty-
First off, expertise my ass. I'm merely sounding off based on my somewhat-infomed opinion. As opposed to my standard sounding off based on knowing absolutely nothing!
Anyhow, if we can verify that KJI actually has a nuclear device (sound familiar?), then I agree the stakes are raised.
A lot.
But it's very much in The Dear Leader's interests to let the world think he has a device. With the state of the world as it is right now, plus NK's million man army (or however huge it is), he knows that no one's invading. All he wants -- when the sabre's return to their sheath's and he & his boys go into their "Crazy Korean Guy At The Negotiating Table Stance" -- is food and energy.
And SK, among others, will be only so happy to give it to him. South Koreans think of North Koreans as Koreans. They speak the same language, eat the same food. Some of them are related, but were separated by the War. It's an easily manipulated situation from the NK perspective.
So until we know that NK actually has a device, the ratcheting up of fear helps only two groups: The current US administration, and NK.
It's amazing to look at how it's gone to this point: Without a verified device, NK has demanded, and received, a sit down with the US, Japan, China, Russia, and S Korea. What other impoverished, insanely-led nation on earth could pull that one off?
We should make all the appropraite diplomatic noise (as the other nations are doing), but we should give him jack shit.
If we find that NK possesses a legitimate nuclear device, however, all bets are off, and the international community has to band together and figure something out. But either way, this can't be another Georgie The Cowboy moment. We have to keep the level of fear in check.
Wasn't the device verified by the Russkies, who have no compulsion to play along with W at all? I thought I read today that they verified that indeed, it's real, it went boom, and it's nuclear.
The Russians have said as much, though no other nation has gone as far. The kilotonnage reported by Russian sensors is a much higher number than those from America or France.
As for the geopolitics, it's true that Putin doesn't wanna play ball with Bush. But two things he favors could come into play: US distracted from Iran, a region that Russia & China have their eyes on a great deal. And heightened tensions between SK, Japan, US & China in the Pacific Rim. The collapse of the PRK would be a disaster for the US/China/SK. Yglasias talked about this.
Perhaps it doesn't concern Russia as much.
Honestly, I don't know. As I said, this requires serious diplomacy, and for a change the entire globe is united in condemnation of NK. But a climate of fear only plays into the Bush/Bolton camp's hands, and we don't need /want that.
Excellent headline, O.M.
smitty wrote:
"There is no bigger threat to our safety than North Korea at this point."
Calm down. There is no bigger threat to North Korea's safety at this point than North Korea.
As for our safety and peace of mind, China is the biggest threat, with everything else way, way back in line.
What makes North Koreans (note I'm saying the people, not necessarily the national government) a potential danger is precisely how desperate their situation is. To the extent we intensify their impoverishment and misery, we increase the danger from their direction.
Democrats may be able to give Bush and the Republicans some grief for not pursuing diplomacy with North Korea. However, Kim Jung Il being the nutcase he is, that might not ring true in the public mind.
(Not appreciating the irony) Bush & Co. will just say Kim Jung Il's word is worthless, so how could we get anywhere trying to deal with him.
Best way to proceed: Just what Clinton did with Saddam: constant surveillance and periodic talks.
Apparently his health hasn't been good, and he's grooming one of his sons (the second oldest I think) to replace him. The kid's about 15 right now.
I'm not saying Clinton was "so damn good," Joe, but he did have a process in place that kept Li'l Kim's nuclear ambitions down to 1-2 potential weapons instead of 10-12 actual ones.
Bush's approach was to refuse to talk with him directly and call him names indirectly. We know the guy's batshit crazy with an inferiority complex, so a combination of isolation and insult doesn't seem like the best route. Especially in retrospect.
tokyo joe wrote:
"To talk one-on-one with NK would not only give NK the upper hand in negotiations . . ."
That doesn't make sense.
But it doesn't matter for now anyway. Talking one-on-one with N.K. is a nonstarter because Bush and Cheney aren't creative or game enough to think up any deals or accommodations with which to bargain. Their position is, do what we say and we might decide to talk to you. That's not just with North Korea, but with any country they deem unfit.
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