Kim Jong Il vs. George W. Bush: American National Security in the
Balance
New York, July 8, 2006
By Desaix Anderson
North Korea’s Kim Jong Il is a ruthless dictator, reckless
in his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, defiant and maddeningly
provocative, as in his rocketry display on July the Fourth. Moreover,
he is clearly in no hurry to reach an accord on nuclear weapons
in the Six-Party Talks since, as Washington fiddles, Kim is merrily
producing fissile material for nuclear bombs, probably six to ten
during President Bush’s tenure, trying to build nuclear devices
miniaturized sufficiently to affix to his Taepodong-2 ballistic
missiles, and perfecting those missiles for intercontinental delivery.
But in this stand-off, he is joined at the hip with George W. Bush.
Based on his “conservative” ideological principles
that divide the world into good and evil camps, President Bush
refused to pursue the promising missile talks of the Clinton era;
ended the productive ongoing dialogue with Pyongyang that might
have aborted Kim Jong Il’s highly enriched uranium project;
and refused to negotiate with the Democratic Peoples Republic of
Korea (DPRK) until finally he found a means in the Six-Party Talks
to shroud his distaste for talking with evil, camouflaging the
United States interaction with North Korea at a table of six sides
with South Koreans, Chinese, Russians, and Japanese joining North
Koreans and Americans in the talks. This ideological approach to
dealing with the “axis of evil” has ensured that core
issues are not being dealt with effectively, but allows unilateral
demands to be made to Pyongyang without tainting the purity of
Bush’s faith-based diplomacy.
Bush diplomacy has not been based on reality. Neo-conservatives
in the administration have held an abiding conviction that regime
change was the preferred way to deal with evil. They believed that
ultimately Kim Jong Il would behave so egregiously that even the
Chinese and South Koreans would join in sanctions to bring down
the Kim Jong Il regime. As we have seen, this has not been so,
even after the rocketry provocations July the Fourth. While nuclear
weapons tests in North Korea might shake Beijing’s and Seoul’s
approach, by then the process will be so far beyond control that
Pyongyang may decide that its nuclear arsenal and ballistic missiles
will protect North Korea from America and intimidate the South
Koreans and Chinese into continuing their economic support for
a nuclear-armed North Korea.
A reliably informed Chinese recently told me that China is no
longer in a hurry to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue, but
now believes that normalization of the DPRK through economic reform
should occur first, after which, the nuclear issue can be managed.
At the current pace, however, despite some movement on economic
reform, this could take many years to achieve. Moreover, my Chinese
interlocutor added tellingly, neither Washington nor Pyongyang
seems interested in a settlement.
During the six years of Bush’s presidency, there has been
only one glimmer of hope that the administration sought a rational
resolution of the issues with the DPRK. In the spring of 2005,
North Korean negotiator and State Department Assistant Secretary
of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Chris Hill indicated
that he had the support of Secretary of State Condolezza Rice and
President Bush to negotiate with the North Koreans in the context
of the Six-Party Talks an overall settlement with Pyongyang. Over
the summer Ambassador Hill pursued this mandate with patience,
flexibility, and innovation and achieved the remarkable agreed
principles September 19, 2005, that envisaged verifiable de-nuclearizing
North Korea in exchange for economic exchange, political normalization,
and discussion of provision of a light water nuclear reactor to
North Korea “at an appropriate time.”
Just the day before this remarkable agreement had been concluded,
the Treasury Department announced new sanctions against North Korea
for counterfeiting and hard-liners in the Bush Administration and
North Korea began issuing tough statements about the just-concluded
negotiations. In other words, for $24 million salvaged from counterfeiting
and reiteration of hard-line comments, Bush administration hard-liners
managed to scuttle Ambassador Hill’s September 19 achievement.
Those same officials rejected an invitation to Hill to visit Pyongyang
in the fall of 2005 to try to get the agreement back on track,
vetoed a meeting with Hill sought by North Korea Vice Foreign Minister
Kim Gye Gwan in Tokyo in mid-April 2006 and another invitation
for Hill to visit Pyongyang in June 2006 to try to rescue the tenuous
hopes for solution produced September 19.
While the UN Security Council will presumably produce a watered-down
resolution on North Korea’s missile tests, it will not change
the dynamic in Pyongyang and hardliners in Washington will ensure
that measures are taken to punish Pyongyang’s display of
its incipient rocket power.
The core issue remains - conviction in Pyongyang of the undying
hostility in Washington to the regime in North Korea. The DPRK
has felt threatened by the United States since its founding. The
American existential threat to the DPRK fueled the crises in 1994,
in 1998, in 2002, and today. Pyongyang takes seriously the constant
rumble of threats that characterize the Bush administration’s
approach to foreign policy. This is the reason that Pyongyang insists
on talking directly with the United States. Japan, China, South
Korea, and Moscow do not pose a threat to the DPRK. While direct
talks of the core issue are essential, specifically that the United
States end its hostility and threat to the DPRK, this can be accomplished
in the context of the Six-Party Talks to assuage Bush’s sensitivities
about talking with evil.
Herein lays the crux. President Bush denies reality, apparently
cannot bring himself to defy the hardliners in his own administration
and to instruct his administration to resolve the crisis with
Pyongyang. Moreover, despite the denials of crisis from the administration
in the past few days, the emergence of a nuclear weapon state
with inter-continental ballistic missile capability is a crisis
of enormous proportions for America’s national security,
as well as for the national security of our allies in East Asia.
Moreover, the failure to resolve the nuclear threat is creating
a profound and dangerous schism in Asia, dividing the United States
and Japan from a continent including both Koreas increasingly dominated
by China. Such a split, driven by the nuclear stand-off and fueled
by the Japanese–American development of a missile defense
system, risks American strategic pre-eminence in East Asia, established
since World War II, including by costly wars in Korea and Vietnam.
The pattern is clear. Despite President Bush’s tough talk
vowing not to allow North Korea to have nuclear weapons, Pyongyang
has proceeded cavalierly to develop its nuclear weapons capability.
President Bush needs to recognize reality. His ideological approach
to the “axis of evil” has only compounded the threats
and been incompetent as well. In the case of North Korea, although
the situation now seems hopeless, only a miracle, an epiphany in
the White House, might rescue America’s interests. Strategic
wisdom and competent leadership are sorely needed in the presidency.
Rather than “staying the course,” President Bush should
move quickly past the UN resolution on the rockets, put the best
face possible on these developments, rein in his hardliners, appoint
a full-time, high-level, fully empowered Coordinator for the Korean
Peninsula, and instruct the Coordinator and rest of the Bush government
to work urgently, patiently, flexibly, and innovatively to achieve
a comprehensive solution to the North Korean nuclear and missile
issues. With such an approach, China, South Korea, and Russia might
join the United States in pressuring Pyongyang to end its dangerous
challenge and President Bush could perhaps partially redeem a legacy
as the protector of U.S. interests.
Desaix Anderson is former executive director of the Korean Peninsula
Energy Development Organization (KEDO) and a member of the board
of directors of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation. The
opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and
do not necessarily represent the views of the Mansfield Foundation.
The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation
1401 New York Ave. NW Suite 740
Washington, DC 20005
Telephone: (202) 347-1994
Fax: (202) 347-3941 matwater@mansfieldfdn.org
