It is hard to watch the most sensible foreign policy of the Clinton Administration being crumpled before our eyes. Particularly so when it is being done for the most malevolent of reasons -- to resurrect an enemy that had decided to make its peace with America, so that the advocacy of missile defense for America could be seen to be based on a real rogue missile threat rather, than as hitherto, a make believe one.
President George Bush is being given the benefit of the doubt with his new hard line policy towards North Korea, even as he overrides his more far-sighted Secretary of State, Colin Powell. General Powell had tried to get it on to the record, before the Gang of Two, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, could bend the novice president's ear back towards the dark ages, that the Bush Administration intended "to pick up where President Clinton and his administration left off."
It is not to be, says Bush. Already his policy of distrust has led to the indefinite postponement by the North Korean leader Kim Jong il of his planned trip to South Korea.
Yet how aware is Bush how dark the age was before ex-president Jimmy Carter flew into Pyongyang and rescued president Bill Clinton from a nose to nose confrontation that could have easily slipped into a new Korean war, with the Pentagon telling Clinton it might lead to 50,000 American dead?
At the time it seemed that the evidence was incontrovertible that North Korea had nuclear weapons, was building more and developing the rockets to carry them as far as Alaska. Now seven years later we can be fairly sure that while it is possible North Korea has plutonium sufficient for one or two nuclear weapons, it is not increasing its stock of plutonium and its rockets, even if they can reach Alaska, are not powerful enough to carry a nuclear payload.
The Carter-Clinton deal did bring about a freeze in North Korean nuclear weapons development in return for the commitment to build two nuclear power stations for the country and an end to the long-standing economic embargo. In fact the Clinton administration, whilst moving ahead with South Korea and Japan to construct the civilian power stations, was extraordinarily lethargic about lifting sanctions.
Indeed, Clinton only seemed to engage with matters Korean when they were on the edge of the precipice. Yet looking back it was perhaps his greatest foreign policy success. He pulled some nuclear teeth without the painful necessity of military dentistry.
It is a pity he never fully appreciated what he had done. But the Republican foreign policy thinkers did. Always more gung-ho on developing America's own land-based system of missile defense, they knew that the only good case they could cite to prove the necessity for it was North Korea.
It is not supposed to break the old time Mutual Assured Destruction relationship with Russia. It is not supposed to neutralize China's deterrent, although it will, since China is not an official "enemy". It can't be used to justify ambitions Iran might have for nuclear weapons since the hostility of now democratic Iran towards the "Great Satan" is much diminished. As for Iraq, thanks to the war, the UN dismantling of its nuclear establishment and the current tight military embargo, Saddam Hussein is light years away from developing long distance rockets with nuclear warheads.
RSS