Bush and North Korea

Bumbling Toward Disaster

By MIKE WHITNEY
CounterPunch

"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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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."