Conservative confusion on North Korea.
Earlier this month, the US went to North Korea for a discussion. The North Koreans told US officials that they had a nuclear weapons program. Eventually this admission was leaked to the press. The immediate question in the US media became what to do about North Korea’s admission.
Some Bush Administration officials said negotiations with North Korea were out of the question. Soon, American conservatives were lining up to congratulate the Bush administration for its hard line stance on North Korea, noting that this stance caused North Korea to make its confession. Included in their number was Wall Street Journal editorial board member Claudia Rosett, who recently wrote:
Last January he [Bush] called these regimes “evil.” Then, instead of apologizing to all the modern Neville Chamberlains who had gone faint with shock, he went about telling the world just how evil. His administration confronted Saddam and Kim Jong Il with evidence of their depredations and violations. And what do you know? Some of the world’s worst bullies have begun to crack.
(*) Unfortunately for Rosett and her conservative fellows, however, the facts are against Bush being a hardliner. Quoting from the New York Times, 25 September 2002, in an article entitled, “In Policy Shift, U.S. Will Talk to North Korea:”
President Bush will send a senior American diplomat to North Korea early next month, the White House said today, ending 20 months of internal debate on whether to open talks with a country that Mr. Bush lumped with Iran and Iraq as part of an “axis of evil.” . . .
Administration officials say they intend to have a wide-ranging discussion with North Korea that will cover its missile production and exports, its huge array of conventional weapons within reach of South Korea and its history of repression. There will undoubtedly be revived talk about its nuclear program, which has been frozen since 1994 under an agreement with the United States.
The timing of the White House announcement was significant, because the stance on North Korea contrasts so sharply with Mr. Bush’s approach to Iraq. Administration officials have gone to some lengths in recent weeks to explain why they think diplomacy can work with Kim Jong Il of North Korea but not with Saddam Hussein.
(†) In other words, it wasn’t threats from the Bush Administration that provoked the North Koreans into admitting their nuclear weapons program; it was negotiations. Furthermore, President Bush has not been against negotiations with North Korea all along, as so many conservatives exclaim. Instead, the whole reason for US officials to go to North Korea in the first place was to open negotiations. When North Korea admitted to its nuclear weapons program, things suddenly changed, and everyone conveniently forgot about the original intention behind talking to North Korea. Even today, however, negotiations appear as a distinct and realistic possibility.
That should clear up any confusion.