The Osterley Times: North Korea Pledges Nuclear Test

The abject failure of the Bush administration's policy towards North Korea has been made startlingly clear by Kim Jong Il's announcement that he intends to conduct a nuclear test to bolster his defences against the United States, who have named him as part of the infamous Axis of Evil.

The truth is that this administration appear not to have any policy for dealing with North Korea, having ripped up the very pragmatic deal that was negotiated by Clinton and replaced it with very little other than a vague threat that they may invade, which no-one actually believes anyway.

And make no mistake, if North Korea manage to acquire a nuclear bomb on Bush's watch, it will be solely down to Bush actions and inaction's.

Nor was any of this unpredicted or unknown:

On Oct. 4, 2002, officials from the U.S. State Department flew to Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, and confronted Kim Jong-il's foreign ministry with evidence that Kim had acquired centrifuges for processing highly enriched uranium, which could be used for building nuclear weapons. To the Americans' surprise, the North Koreans conceded. It was an unsettling revelation, coming just as the Bush administration was gearing up for a confrontation with Iraq. This new threat wasn't imminent; processing uranium is a tedious task; Kim Jong-il was almost certainly years away from grinding enough of the stuff to make an atomic bomb.
But the North Koreans had another route to nuclear weapons--a stash of radioactive fuel rods, taken a decade earlier from its nuclear power plant in Yongbyon. These rods could be processed into plutonium--and, from that, into A-bombs--not in years but in months. Thanks to an agreement brokered by the Clinton administration, the rods were locked in a storage facility under the monitoring of international weapons-inspectors. Common sense dictated that--whatever it did about the centrifuges--the Bush administration should do everything possible to keep the fuel rods locked up.

Unfortunately, common sense was in short supply. After a few shrill diplomatic exchanges over the uranium, Pyongyang upped the ante. The North Koreans expelled the international inspectors, broke the locks on the fuel rods, loaded them onto a truck, and drove them to a nearby reprocessing facility, to be converted into bomb-grade plutonium. The White House stood by and did nothing. Why did George W. Bush--his foreign policy avowedly devoted to stopping "rogue regimes" from acquiring weapons of mass destruction--allow one of the world's most dangerous regimes to acquire the makings of the deadliest WMDs? Given the current mayhem and bloodshed in Iraq, it's hard to imagine a decision more ill-conceived than invading that country unilaterally without a plan for the "post-war" era. But the Bush administration's inept diplomacy toward North Korea might well have graver consequences. President Bush made the case for war in Iraq on the premise that Saddam Hussein might soon have nuclear weapons--which turned out not to be true. Kim Jong-il may have nuclear weapons now; he certainly has enough plutonium to build some, and the reactors to breed more.
Yet Bush has neither threatened war nor pursued diplomacy.

Now Kim Jong Il is going further than ever, threatening to actually test nuclear weapons. The response from the Bush administration?

A test would be a "very provocative act," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said during a visit to Cairo. It would create a "qualitatively different situation on the Korean Peninsula" that would spill over into the entire region, she said. Rice declined to predict what the U.S. response might be.

This is typical of the Bush administration when it comes to North Korea, lots of rhetoric and very little actual action. They ripped up the Clinton agreement for no better reason than it was negotiated by Clinton and replaced it with nothing.

News of the imminent test was greeted with anger throughout the region.

High-level officials from the United States, Japan, South Korea and China immediately began exchanging calls Tuesday to discuss a response, according to Asian diplomatic sources. These countries have been part of six-party talks attempting to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear program. Large numbers of intelligence analysts and policymakers who usually split their time among a host of issues, including Iran, were devoted Tuesday exclusively to the North Korean statement.

The reaction was particularly sharp in Japan, which sees itself as a primary target of North Korean aggression. "If they conduct a nuclear test, it will not be forgiven," Japan's new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, told reporters Tuesday night. "The international community will deal with the situation firmly."

The Bush regime have fatally misunderstood the North Koreans and what they wanted. As I argued here, by pushing for further sanctions against the regime the Bush administration were almost guaranteeing that North Korea would pursue further tests, after all this is a regime that is famously known for it's engagement in brinkmanship.

And there are even some of North Korea's neighbour's who are voicing the opinion that the US have pushed North Korea into such a tight corner that the acquisition of a nuclear bomb became inevitable.

"North Korea's final goal is survival, and a test is their final option," said Ahn Yinhay, professor of international relations at Korea University in Seoul. "Given the current situation -- the enormous pressure from the U.S.'s hard-line policy -- the North Koreans may think they have no other means to try to get out of this deadlock. They may think they have nothing else to lose."

The extraordinary thing about all this is that it was all so predictable. Bush, at the behest of Dick Cheney, decided that North Korea would receive no concessions from the US until it dismantled it's weapons sites, seeing the Clinton policy as appeasement.

And it is true that under the Clinton policy the North Koreans were, nevertheless, attempting ways to get around the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and acquire a nuclear weapon. However, the Clinton policy ensured inspectors and cameras at all of North Koreas nuclear facilities and made the chances of spotting such evasions far easier than under the Bush policy; which was basically to have nothing to do with North Korea.

And now we arrive at the edge of the cliff. North Korea are now so far advanced that they are actually threatening to test a nuclear weapon, with - we can only assume - more success than on their last attempt.

The Bush regime are still, even at this late point, refusing to negotiate with North Korea just as they as they are refusing to negotiate with Iran.

What is the purpose of this pigheadedness? It is surely as plain as the noses on their faces that disengagement is allowing both of these regimes to make huge advances towards the acquisition of a nuclear weapon, by which point negotiation will be too late?

The supreme irony is that the man who invaded Iraq looking for non-existent WMD is now sleeping at the wheel as North Korea arm themselves with a much more formidable weapon.

Indeed, by naming both North Korea and Iran as part of his Axis of Evil, Bush could be said to have speeded up their plans to acquire such technology, as they both must see a nuclear deterrent as the only sure way to guarantee that the US will not invade.

So, for all his bluster and his rhetoric, Bush is actually the President who has encouraged nuclear proliferation.