Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008
The crisis began to unfold last October when the isolated communist outpost admitted having a secret weapons program to enrich uranium. The U.S. quickly suspended free oil shipments to North Korea, which had been flowing since the 1994 agreement. That's when Kim began playing the rest of North Korea's escalation cards.
Today, the White House not only faces the Herculean task of putting the diplomatic pieces back together and trying to refashion a nuclear arms agreement like the one North Korea signed off on in 1994, but also of making it stick. In retrospect, it's clear North Korea began cheating on the 1994 pact not long after the ink had dried. In fact, the country has failed to adhere to virtually every pact it's made with the U.S.
"There's less than zero trust," says Drennan at the Institute of Peace.
Making the challenge even more daunting is the fact that the Bush administration arrived at the current crisis after having actively ignored Kim for nearly two years. That was part of the Republicans' stated hard-line policy of not coddling rogue states in the way that they perceived Clinton had. So, despite the fact that Bush now stresses he wants to find a "diplomatic" resolution, North Korea and the U.S. have not shared serious, active diplomacy since 2000.
Critics from the previous administration insist the incoming Bush team was made aware of simmering problems in North Korea, and specifically regarding a secret uranium enrichment process, but that the White House chose to do nothing for 22 months until the crisis exploded into public view.
It's telling that when the North Koreans finally did seek out an American sounding board this month, they cast their eyes toward New Mexico and requested face time with Richardson. He served as Clinton's United Nations ambassador, has periodically dealt with the North Koreans and has what in Western diplomatic circles passes for a relationship with Kim's leadership.
That isolation suits some hawks within the administration just fine. They'd prefer to ignore North Korea's histrionics. Rather than play the old game of negotiating Kim down off the limb with promises of food and fuel -- rewarding bad behavior -- administration hard-liners would prefer to simply leave Kim out on that limb in hopes his grip over the impoverished country eventually collapses.
At the same time White House hawks are lobbying for a firm containment policy for North Korea, they're pushing a unique, preemptive war with Iraq. Broiling tensions with North Korea seems to have done little to firm up American support for a strike in the Middle East. In fact, it may be causing serious second thoughts.
"As we get closer to D-Day with Iraq, the crisis with North Korea has emerged as the dramatic unexpected, the one nobody saw on the horizon," says Lopez. "It's the one [White House political strategist] Karl Rove must be nervous about. And the guy in Iowa who says, 'North Korea has nuclear weapons and we won't go to war, but Hans Blix says Iraq has no weapons and we'll go to war. Hey, what the heck is going on?'"
An online Newsweek poll last week showed respondents by a margin of 3-1 thought North Korea posed a more dangerous threat to America than Iraq. True, online polls are not scientific since people have to volunteer to participate, but the Newsweek results came in the wake of a new study that showed Republicans are twice as likely to respond to Internet polls, which makes Newsweek's Iraq-North Korea findings even more troubling for the White House.
"For eight years hawks were in the opposition complaining about Clinton's foreign policy. Now they're responsible and they're finding out it's a bit more difficult," says Reiss. "North Korea shows it's a much messier world than you can draw up on paper."
Not that the Clinton team escapes criticism for the current meltdown. "It was typical of the Clinton foreign policy," complains Lopez at the Kroc Institute. "They clapped their hands in 1994 after they got an agreement and said, 'This is great.' But by '97, it was clear there was trouble." North Koreans, grumbling that the U.S. was not taking them seriously, began to make noises about denying access for international weapons inspectors while the Clinton administration's attention drifted elsewhere, says Lopez.
"Did Clinton makes mistakes? Yes. Did it look the other way when North Korea was cheating and the White House knew about it? Absolutely," adds Reiss.
Kim may be poised to play the ultimate cheating card, reactivating the nuclear plant that separates weapons-grade plutonium, which would give the North Koreans enough material to manufacture one bomb each month.
As part of a landmark Agreed Framework deal in 1994, North Korea, in exchange for food and fuel from the United States as well as movement toward normalized relations and help in building two new energy plants, agreed to freeze the process of separating weapons-grade plutonium at its Yongbyon nuclear facility. Experts in '94 estimate North Korea had approximately 8,100 spent fuel rods, which were locked down as part of its agreement with Washington.
Kim recently announced the facility will be reactivated, but he insists it's only to meet the energy shortage caused when the U.S. stopped the fuel shipments late last year.
That benign explanation is "nonsense," says Reiss. "It's a bomb factory. It's there to produce plutonium." He notes that the oil America ships to North Korea makes up just 5 percent of the country's annual consumption and the current stoppage would not necessitate starting up the Yongbyon facility.
To date, there's no evidence that the key separation process involving the spent fuel rods has begun. Without any weapons inspectors on the ground, it's impossible for the international community to keep tabs on the 8,100 rods. But if North Korea does begin the crucial separating process, satellites and heat sensors will be able to detect plumes of smoke coming out of Yongbyon, says Reiss.
If and when those plumes of smoke appear, North Korea could produce a handful of nuclear bombs by the spring, and a couple dozen each year.
That's a short fuse, and it may be North Korea's most effective bluff of all.
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