Time to disengage National Post

Saturday, October 19, 2002

It was only a matter of time before former president Clinton's Grand Scheme collapsed under the weight of its own naïveté. The last straw was North Korea.

Under Mr. Clinton, Washington determined upon "Engagement" as the solution to the world's ills. Individuals, groups and states once regarded as beyond the pale were welcomed as "partners for peace" in order to "dialogue the issues" with respectable, democratically elected leaders.

It was a colossal failure. The practice necessarily places the superior -- morally or militarily speaking -- power in a position subservient to that of its inferiors for fear of "derailing the peace process." The risk, therefore, is assenting to provocations by intemperate "peace partners" who make sweeping demands but offer few tangible concessions. In the end, it all falls apart.

So it was that Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Yasser Arafat "accepted" Israel even as he undermined the Oslo Accords and prepared to liquidate it; Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein/IRA broke bread with the Ulster Unionists in the Good Friday Agreement but never decommissioned any weapons; and Saddam Hussein was allowed off the hook for dozens of arms violations as Mr. Clinton and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Kofi Annan pathetically sought his permission to enforce them.

The latest casualty of Engagement emerged this week when North Korea admitted (in the face of irrefutable U.S. evidence) that, yes, in spite of 1994's solemn commitment to halt its pursuit of nuclear weapons, it had, in fact, accelerated efforts and was close to having a bomb. It can be no mere coincidence that the White House, which had extracted Pyongyang's "admission" nearly two weeks ago, chose to publicize it just days after the Nobel committee awarded Jimmy Carter the 2002 Peace Prize with explicit criticism of President George W. Bush's plan to attack Iraq. It was Mr. Carter, with Mr. Clinton's imprimatur, who forged the Agreed Framework, which absurdly promised North Korea massive aid (including nuclear reactors) in exchange for false promises to end its clandestine nuclear program.

By revealing Pyongyang's "admission," the Bush administration achieves several purposes: It makes the Nobel committee look like the fools they are; it demonstrates that appeasing tyrants such as Kim Jong Il or Saddam Hussein is as bad an idea now as it was in 1938; and it keeps security issues uppermost in American voters' minds in the run-up to the Nov. 5 mid-term election.

But the North Korean fait accompli nevertheless complicates matters for Mr. Bush, who is likely to be confronted with a demand from Pyongyang for more aid to dissuade bankrupt, starving North Korea from achieving nuclear capability. An Iraq-style military operation in North Korea is difficult to imagine and unnecessary at the moment. But Mr. Bush should ignore the former Clinton officials who say, typically, that Pyongyang's admission signals a "warming trend" in U.S.-Korean relations. Washington must not submit to nuclear blackmail.

For the time being, work can be speeded up on anti-missile defence technology and pressure brought to bear on China and Russia to prevent arms and technology transfers in and out of the country, and persuade South Korea to freeze its "Sunshine Policy," the peninsular equivalent of Engagement. Carrot diplomacy has failed abjectly and it is time for some stick. That is, the United States should pay no more Danegeld and instead should make it clear to Pyongyang that all its recent gains and rapprochement will be rolled back unless it verifiably ends its nuclear weapons program.

© Copyright 2002 National Post

-- Anonymous, October 19, 2002

Answers

....a demand from Pyongyang for more aid to dissuade bankrupt, starving North Korea from achieving nuclear capability

yeah, right.

-- Anonymous, October 19, 2002