| Say, "Yes," Quickly |
1 September 2003
|
Does Mr. Bush Know He's Winning in Korea?
The hexapartite talks over the future of the Korean peninsula got underway last week, and the US is within an eyelash of getting exactly what it wants. The only fly in the diplomatic ointment is the inability of the some in the Bush administration to act as cynically as necessary. For once, the White House is pretending that it is constrained by honor, but to no useful end.
The talks among the US, China, Japan, Russia and both Koreas center around the North Korean desire to blackmail the world into helping it out of the economic mess it is in. The rulers there worry that the US has "regime change" on its mind, and they want a non-aggression pact. In exchange for that and some economic aid, they are prepared to give up on their nuclear program and let in international inspectors. Their threat to declare themselves a nuclear power is a hollow one -- until they explode a fission bomb, they aren't a nuclear power.
Some foolish notion has taken root in Washington that to accept this deal would be to yield to blackmail, and it is proof positive that this administration doesn't understand when it is winning. Having already forced multilateral talks on Pyongyang, which always insisted on bilateral discussions only, the White House had a two-way chat as part of the side-line discussions right after the talks began. This non-aggression pact is another situation where winning only requires saying "yes" and then giving a booby prize to North Korea.
President Kim with The Bomb is an idea that is really too awful to permit. If his price for giving it up and letting in international inspectors is a piece of paper, Mr. Bush should send him reams of it. Non-aggression pacts are not worth the paper they are written on, but if the one under discussion provides the cover North Korea needs to step away from the nuclear cliff, let it happen. The US is not preparing a pre-emptive strike because even if it succeeded, South Korea would be incinerated by the North's conventional weapons. Giving up an option one does not entertain is not a loss at all. One would have thought Texas businessmen Bush and Cheney would understand a deal like this is too good to pass up.
Home