In an editorial titled the North Korean Challenge
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/opinion/11fri1.html? The New York Times
trumpeted "When President Bush took office four years ago, he immediately
began distancing himself from the Clinton administration's approach, which
had stopped the most imminent North Korean nuclear weapons program in its
tracks." And further posited the fallacious argument that the Bush
administration policy of multi party talks was part of a litany of Bush
administration diplomatic errors on North Korea.
It is hard to understand on what basis the Times considers the Clinton
approach a success and the Bush approach a failure. It would appear that
the Times is involved in peering through rose colored glasses or very near
term historical revisionism. After all the Clinton unilateral policy of
bribing the North Koreans with light water reactor, tons of food and fuel
aid did not stop any bomb building in its tracks. In fact it only allowed
the North Koreans more unimpeded time to actually add to the body of
nuclear work they had already accumulated.
Furthermore the Times alludes to North Korea "kicking over the negotiating
table and refusing talks". Well that apparently was only a 15 minute
strategy since today they are demanding unilateral talks with us. They
want to talk with us because apparently they think Bush is as easy a mark
as Clinton was. The Times is simply out of touch with this issue.
The multi lateral talks are exactly what the administration should pursue
in dealing with the North Koreans. In arriving at that conclusion one need
only ask the central question
of who has most to lose in the region if North Korea is a belligerent?
Since the parties directly threatened by the North Korean regime are the
Japanese, South Koreans, Chinese and Russians why then should it be left
to us to use diplomacy to diffuse this situation?
China and Japan are the big dogs in the region and since North Korea lacks
any real long range delivery systems, threatened use of the weapons would
directly affect them. Why should we engage in talks directly and again
pledge our assets to bribe the North Koreans when China's economy is
growing at a rate that is double ours and has most to lose if hostilities
of any sort break out in the region?
China's interests are further threatened if the Japanese are forced to
build nuclear weapons to off set the historical enmity which the Koreans
hold for them. The Bush strategy here is correct not because the
administration does not have enough diplomatic capital to use to diffuse
the situation but because it is time to force the nations whose
responsibility is to take care of business in that neighborhood to meet the
threat themselves.
