The Times Says We're Negotiating A Peace Treaty With North Korea?
Yes you read that right.
No, I'm not on drugs, nor am I intoxicated (though I did partake in a couple "brown liquor drinks" early last night. The New York Times is seriously reporting this:
President Bush's top advisers have recommended a broad new approach to dealing with North Korea that would include beginning negotiations on a peace treaty, even while efforts to dismantle the country's nuclear program are still under way, senior administration officials and Asian diplomats say.
Aides say Mr. Bush is very likely to approve the new approach, which has been hotly debated among different factions within the administration. But he will not do so unless North Korea returns to multinational negotiations over its nuclear program. The talks have been stalled since September.
North Koreans have long demanded a peace treaty, which would replace the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War.
For several years after he first took office, Mr. Bush vowed not to end North Korea's economic and diplomatic isolation until it entirely dismantled its nuclear program. That stance later softened, and the administration said some benefits to North Korea could begin to flow as significant dismantlement took place. Now, if the president allows talks about a peace treaty to take place on a parallel track with six-nation talks on disarmament, it will signal another major change of tactics.
And people in Hell have demanded ice water, but it still hasn't been delivered. If this is truly a new approach by the White House, I'd advise against it. Kim Jong-Il isn't someone who can be reasoned with, and any "treaty" signed by him will only be broken. Anyone remember the 1994 agreement regarding nuclear fuel to North Korea for their compliance that they wouldn't develop nuclear weapons? The same agreement that Madeline "Half"-Albright claimed we were duped in? And the administration wants to try and wheel and deal with this little, sawed-off dictator with the bad haircut? Please, people. Let's get real here.
The decision to consider a change may have been influenced in part by growing concerns about Iran's nuclear program. One senior Asian official who has been briefed on the administration's discussions about what to do next said, "There is a sense that they can't leave Korea out there as a model for what the Iranians hope to become — a nuclear state that can say no to outside pressure."
The Iranians are run by a bunch of mad mullahs, whereas North Korea is led by a single madman. Isolation has served us well, at this point, and forced them to come back to the six-nation talks; a direct one-on-one relationship/negoptiation with the US was turned down as an idea by the president in the 2004 debates. We agreed with him then, and we still agree it's not a sound idea right now.
But it is far from clear that North Korea would engage in any new discussions, especially if they included talk of political change, human rights, terrorism and an opening of the country, topics that the Bush administration has insisted would have to be part of any comprehensive discussions with North Korea.
With the war in Iraq and the nuclear dispute with Iran as distractions, many top officials have all but given up hope that North Korea's government will either disarm or collapse during Mr. Bush's remaining time in office. Increasingly, they blame two of Mr. Bush's negotiating partners, South Korea and China, which have poured aid into North Korea even while the United States has tried to cut off its major sources of revenue.
Any moron in the administration who thought that North Korea would fall in eight years doesn't deserve to be there, and that goes double for the president if that was his own thinking. It's nice to make inroads, but North Korea has to be dealt with the same way the Soviets were in the seventies and eighties. (Granted, Carter was about worthless during his four-year stint at derailing the Soviets.) The point being is that sanctions--especially now with North Korea's economy sagging--would be prudent. Negotiations to begin disarmament is smart, but as Reagan stated, "Trust, but verify." To prevent their nuclear weapons from ending up in the wrong hands, it must be made clear their nuclear weapons building ends now, or no deal.
In his first term, Mr. Bush said repeatedly that he would never "tolerate" a nuclear North Korea. Now he rarely discusses the country's suspected weapons. Instead, he has met in the Oval Office with escapees from the country and used the events to discuss North Korea's prison camps and the suffering of its people.
Mr. Bush has also been under subtle pressure to change the first-term talk of speeding change of government. "Focusing on regime change as the road to denuclearization confuses the issue," former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger wrote in a lengthy op-ed article that appeared in The Washington Post on Tuesday. Noting that the negotiations have been conducted by Christopher R. Hill, a seasoned diplomat who played a major role in the Dayton peace accords, which halted the civil war in Bosnia, he said, "Periodic engagement at a higher level is needed."
A classified National Intelligence Estimate on North Korea, which was circulated among senior officials earlier this year, concluded that the North had probably fabricated the fuel for more than a half-dozen nuclear weapons since the beginning of Mr. Bush's administration and was continuing to produce roughly a bomb's worth of new plutonium each year. But in a show of caution after the discovery of intelligence flaws in Iraq, the assessment left unclear whether North Korea had actually turned that fuel into weapons.
Regardless of the intelligence in hand, we know that Kim Jong-Il's ambitions have been roughly the same as Ahmadinejad's. They were the ones who announced having the bomb. They made a big production out of it, including the testing surrounding it. So if we're wrong, at this point, who is to blame? I'd say the blame lies at their feet for proclaiming that they had a nuke. Personally, I believe they have about a half-dozen nukes based on the intel in hand right now. And yes, I do believe the intel we have in hand.
With the six-nation negotiations over North Korea's nuclear program appearing to go nowhere, the drive for a broader strategy was propelled by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and one of her top aides, Philip D. Zelikow, who drafted two papers describing the new approach.
Those papers touched off what one senior official called "a blizzard of debate" over the next steps that eventually included Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been widely described by current and former officials as leading the drive in Mr. Bush's first term to make sure the North Korean government received no concessions from the United States until all of its weapons and weapons sites were taken apart. It is unclear where Mr. Cheney stands on the new approach that emerged from the State Department.
If this is the same Dick Cheney being villified practically everyday in the media, then I'd say he thinks this idea is a dead horse in the longest race of its life. No, I doubt the veep would have even considered this approach unless something big has happened recently to change his mind. North Korea is still a communist regime, and has a horrible history of human rights abuses. I get the fact that the president is someone seriously concerned with human rights. But, at some point people have to admit that North Korea--working to change it right now--is a losing proposition.
Now, said one official who has participated in the recent internal debate, "I think it is fair to say that many in the administration have come to the conclusion that dealing head-on with the nuclear problem is simply too difficult."
The official added, "So the question is whether it would help to try to end the perpetual state of war" that has existed, at least on paper, for 53 years. "It may be another way to get there."
An agreement that was signed in September by North Korea and the five other nations involved in the talks — the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia — commits the country to give up its weapons and rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty "at an early date" but leaves completely unclear what would have to come first: disarmament or a series of steps that would aid North Korea.
It also included a sentence that paves the way for the initiative recommended to Mr. Bush, declaring that "the directly related parties will negotiate a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula at an appropriate separate forum." But it does not specify what steps North Korea would have to take first.
Um, how about giving up their nuclear ambitions first, coming completely clean about their nuclear weapons, and destroying them--verifiable by the members of the six-nation accords? Sound good to you? It sure as Hell sounds good to us.
As described by administration officials, none of whom would speak on the record about deliberations inside the White House, Mr. Bush's aides envision starting negotiations over a formal peace treaty that would include the original signatories of the armistice — China, North Korea and the United States, which signed on behalf of the United Nations. They would also add South Korea, now the world's 11th-largest economy, which declined to sign the original armistice.
Japan, Korea's colonial ruler in the first half of the 20th century, would be excluded, as would Russia.
A National Security Council spokesman declined to comment on any internal deliberations on North Korea policy and referred all questions to the State Department, which has handled the negotiations with the North. The State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, declined to discuss the recommendations made to Mr. Bush and said, "The most important decision is with North Korea — and that is the strategic decision to give up their nuclear weapons program."
I don't know about our readers, but a red flag just popped up in my head. Sorry, but I still don't trust State. It has, for too long, been in opposition to the White House. If this is a State thing, this could be as disastrous as the Democrat's ideas for national and border security.
"They signed a joint statement," he added, "but they have yet to demonstrate that they have made a decision to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs."
Then nothing goes forward until they do. We want solid conviction behind that process. If there's none, then this whole approach is a moot point. A nuclear North Korea can't be accpeted in almost any circumstance. Right now it is intolerable, and should be one of the nations we are putting a lot of focus on. If it's true that the administration is turning a blind eye to a member of the "axis of evil" then they have some serious explaining to do.
In justifying its refusal to return to talks, North Korea has complained bitterly about the financial sanctions imposed by the United States, which have been aimed at closing down the North's banking activities in Macao and elsewhere in Asia. The United States has described those steps as "defensive measures" intended to stop the country from counterfeiting American currency and exporting drugs and missiles.
And in obtaining things that they're not supposed to have. I'm sorry, but we don't want a revisit of Saddam Hussein in North Korea. The weapons they play with are far deadlier than any in a Saddam stockpile. They may very well have nuclear weapons. WE believe they do. We don't make the decisions in the White House, but after doing extensive research regarding North Korea and it's nuclear program (and yes, the sites are difficult to find) we can't allow them to build any more of them.
Even if peace treaty talks started, officials insisted, those sanctions would continue. A month ago, Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, told a small audience of foreign policy experts that the sanctions were "the first thing we have done that has gotten their attention," several participants in the meeting said.
Some intelligence officials say they believe the protests may have arisen in part because they affected a secretive operation in North Korea called Unit 39 that finances the personal activities of Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, providing the money he spends for his entertainment and to win the loyalty of others in the leadership.
A distinct possibility, but the fact of the matter remains that if we do engage North Korea this way, it must be done under the premise that they will disarm, they will be transparent, and any violation of the agreement is a deal breaker. We can't play the Clinton "go-along, get-along" game. It's not wise, and has proven irresponsible in the past. With North Korea, we can't give them an inch.
Iran is a concern now because of Ahmadinejad's rhetoric, boasts, and accomplishments. To have two rogue nuclear nations running loose isn't dangerous.
It's suicide. And it's not worth it to obtain a signature; nothing more than "ink on a page" to the likes of Kim Jong-Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In addition to that, I have a simple worry. Maybe it's unfounded, and maybe it's nutter, but as I understand it, the Korean War was a UN mission. China, North Korea, and the United States signed on behalf of the United Nations. The Times acknowledges this fact. So, what if the UN decides it should have a say in this affair? Right now that would be a grossly unwise decision. The proverbial "other shoe" has yet to completely fall on the Oil-For-Food scandal. And need we forget the human rights abuses conducted by UN peacekeepers in the Congo?
Yes you read that right.
No, I'm not on drugs, nor am I intoxicated (though I did partake in a couple "brown liquor drinks" early last night. The New York Times is seriously reporting this:
President Bush's top advisers have recommended a broad new approach to dealing with North Korea that would include beginning negotiations on a peace treaty, even while efforts to dismantle the country's nuclear program are still under way, senior administration officials and Asian diplomats say.
Aides say Mr. Bush is very likely to approve the new approach, which has been hotly debated among different factions within the administration. But he will not do so unless North Korea returns to multinational negotiations over its nuclear program. The talks have been stalled since September.
North Koreans have long demanded a peace treaty, which would replace the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War.
For several years after he first took office, Mr. Bush vowed not to end North Korea's economic and diplomatic isolation until it entirely dismantled its nuclear program. That stance later softened, and the administration said some benefits to North Korea could begin to flow as significant dismantlement took place. Now, if the president allows talks about a peace treaty to take place on a parallel track with six-nation talks on disarmament, it will signal another major change of tactics.
And people in Hell have demanded ice water, but it still hasn't been delivered. If this is truly a new approach by the White House, I'd advise against it. Kim Jong-Il isn't someone who can be reasoned with, and any "treaty" signed by him will only be broken. Anyone remember the 1994 agreement regarding nuclear fuel to North Korea for their compliance that they wouldn't develop nuclear weapons? The same agreement that Madeline "Half"-Albright claimed we were duped in? And the administration wants to try and wheel and deal with this little, sawed-off dictator with the bad haircut? Please, people. Let's get real here.
The decision to consider a change may have been influenced in part by growing concerns about Iran's nuclear program. One senior Asian official who has been briefed on the administration's discussions about what to do next said, "There is a sense that they can't leave Korea out there as a model for what the Iranians hope to become — a nuclear state that can say no to outside pressure."
The Iranians are run by a bunch of mad mullahs, whereas North Korea is led by a single madman. Isolation has served us well, at this point, and forced them to come back to the six-nation talks; a direct one-on-one relationship/negoptiation with the US was turned down as an idea by the president in the 2004 debates. We agreed with him then, and we still agree it's not a sound idea right now.
But it is far from clear that North Korea would engage in any new discussions, especially if they included talk of political change, human rights, terrorism and an opening of the country, topics that the Bush administration has insisted would have to be part of any comprehensive discussions with North Korea.
With the war in Iraq and the nuclear dispute with Iran as distractions, many top officials have all but given up hope that North Korea's government will either disarm or collapse during Mr. Bush's remaining time in office. Increasingly, they blame two of Mr. Bush's negotiating partners, South Korea and China, which have poured aid into North Korea even while the United States has tried to cut off its major sources of revenue.
Any moron in the administration who thought that North Korea would fall in eight years doesn't deserve to be there, and that goes double for the president if that was his own thinking. It's nice to make inroads, but North Korea has to be dealt with the same way the Soviets were in the seventies and eighties. (Granted, Carter was about worthless during his four-year stint at derailing the Soviets.) The point being is that sanctions--especially now with North Korea's economy sagging--would be prudent. Negotiations to begin disarmament is smart, but as Reagan stated, "Trust, but verify." To prevent their nuclear weapons from ending up in the wrong hands, it must be made clear their nuclear weapons building ends now, or no deal.
In his first term, Mr. Bush said repeatedly that he would never "tolerate" a nuclear North Korea. Now he rarely discusses the country's suspected weapons. Instead, he has met in the Oval Office with escapees from the country and used the events to discuss North Korea's prison camps and the suffering of its people.
Mr. Bush has also been under subtle pressure to change the first-term talk of speeding change of government. "Focusing on regime change as the road to denuclearization confuses the issue," former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger wrote in a lengthy op-ed article that appeared in The Washington Post on Tuesday. Noting that the negotiations have been conducted by Christopher R. Hill, a seasoned diplomat who played a major role in the Dayton peace accords, which halted the civil war in Bosnia, he said, "Periodic engagement at a higher level is needed."
A classified National Intelligence Estimate on North Korea, which was circulated among senior officials earlier this year, concluded that the North had probably fabricated the fuel for more than a half-dozen nuclear weapons since the beginning of Mr. Bush's administration and was continuing to produce roughly a bomb's worth of new plutonium each year. But in a show of caution after the discovery of intelligence flaws in Iraq, the assessment left unclear whether North Korea had actually turned that fuel into weapons.
Regardless of the intelligence in hand, we know that Kim Jong-Il's ambitions have been roughly the same as Ahmadinejad's. They were the ones who announced having the bomb. They made a big production out of it, including the testing surrounding it. So if we're wrong, at this point, who is to blame? I'd say the blame lies at their feet for proclaiming that they had a nuke. Personally, I believe they have about a half-dozen nukes based on the intel in hand right now. And yes, I do believe the intel we have in hand.
With the six-nation negotiations over North Korea's nuclear program appearing to go nowhere, the drive for a broader strategy was propelled by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and one of her top aides, Philip D. Zelikow, who drafted two papers describing the new approach.
Those papers touched off what one senior official called "a blizzard of debate" over the next steps that eventually included Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been widely described by current and former officials as leading the drive in Mr. Bush's first term to make sure the North Korean government received no concessions from the United States until all of its weapons and weapons sites were taken apart. It is unclear where Mr. Cheney stands on the new approach that emerged from the State Department.
If this is the same Dick Cheney being villified practically everyday in the media, then I'd say he thinks this idea is a dead horse in the longest race of its life. No, I doubt the veep would have even considered this approach unless something big has happened recently to change his mind. North Korea is still a communist regime, and has a horrible history of human rights abuses. I get the fact that the president is someone seriously concerned with human rights. But, at some point people have to admit that North Korea--working to change it right now--is a losing proposition.
Now, said one official who has participated in the recent internal debate, "I think it is fair to say that many in the administration have come to the conclusion that dealing head-on with the nuclear problem is simply too difficult."
The official added, "So the question is whether it would help to try to end the perpetual state of war" that has existed, at least on paper, for 53 years. "It may be another way to get there."
An agreement that was signed in September by North Korea and the five other nations involved in the talks — the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia — commits the country to give up its weapons and rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty "at an early date" but leaves completely unclear what would have to come first: disarmament or a series of steps that would aid North Korea.
It also included a sentence that paves the way for the initiative recommended to Mr. Bush, declaring that "the directly related parties will negotiate a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula at an appropriate separate forum." But it does not specify what steps North Korea would have to take first.
Um, how about giving up their nuclear ambitions first, coming completely clean about their nuclear weapons, and destroying them--verifiable by the members of the six-nation accords? Sound good to you? It sure as Hell sounds good to us.
As described by administration officials, none of whom would speak on the record about deliberations inside the White House, Mr. Bush's aides envision starting negotiations over a formal peace treaty that would include the original signatories of the armistice — China, North Korea and the United States, which signed on behalf of the United Nations. They would also add South Korea, now the world's 11th-largest economy, which declined to sign the original armistice.
Japan, Korea's colonial ruler in the first half of the 20th century, would be excluded, as would Russia.
A National Security Council spokesman declined to comment on any internal deliberations on North Korea policy and referred all questions to the State Department, which has handled the negotiations with the North. The State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, declined to discuss the recommendations made to Mr. Bush and said, "The most important decision is with North Korea — and that is the strategic decision to give up their nuclear weapons program."
I don't know about our readers, but a red flag just popped up in my head. Sorry, but I still don't trust State. It has, for too long, been in opposition to the White House. If this is a State thing, this could be as disastrous as the Democrat's ideas for national and border security.
"They signed a joint statement," he added, "but they have yet to demonstrate that they have made a decision to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs."
Then nothing goes forward until they do. We want solid conviction behind that process. If there's none, then this whole approach is a moot point. A nuclear North Korea can't be accpeted in almost any circumstance. Right now it is intolerable, and should be one of the nations we are putting a lot of focus on. If it's true that the administration is turning a blind eye to a member of the "axis of evil" then they have some serious explaining to do.
In justifying its refusal to return to talks, North Korea has complained bitterly about the financial sanctions imposed by the United States, which have been aimed at closing down the North's banking activities in Macao and elsewhere in Asia. The United States has described those steps as "defensive measures" intended to stop the country from counterfeiting American currency and exporting drugs and missiles.
And in obtaining things that they're not supposed to have. I'm sorry, but we don't want a revisit of Saddam Hussein in North Korea. The weapons they play with are far deadlier than any in a Saddam stockpile. They may very well have nuclear weapons. WE believe they do. We don't make the decisions in the White House, but after doing extensive research regarding North Korea and it's nuclear program (and yes, the sites are difficult to find) we can't allow them to build any more of them.
Even if peace treaty talks started, officials insisted, those sanctions would continue. A month ago, Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, told a small audience of foreign policy experts that the sanctions were "the first thing we have done that has gotten their attention," several participants in the meeting said.
Some intelligence officials say they believe the protests may have arisen in part because they affected a secretive operation in North Korea called Unit 39 that finances the personal activities of Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, providing the money he spends for his entertainment and to win the loyalty of others in the leadership.
A distinct possibility, but the fact of the matter remains that if we do engage North Korea this way, it must be done under the premise that they will disarm, they will be transparent, and any violation of the agreement is a deal breaker. We can't play the Clinton "go-along, get-along" game. It's not wise, and has proven irresponsible in the past. With North Korea, we can't give them an inch.
Iran is a concern now because of Ahmadinejad's rhetoric, boasts, and accomplishments. To have two rogue nuclear nations running loose isn't dangerous.
It's suicide. And it's not worth it to obtain a signature; nothing more than "ink on a page" to the likes of Kim Jong-Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In addition to that, I have a simple worry. Maybe it's unfounded, and maybe it's nutter, but as I understand it, the Korean War was a UN mission. China, North Korea, and the United States signed on behalf of the United Nations. The Times acknowledges this fact. So, what if the UN decides it should have a say in this affair? Right now that would be a grossly unwise decision. The proverbial "other shoe" has yet to completely fall on the Oil-For-Food scandal. And need we forget the human rights abuses conducted by UN peacekeepers in the Congo?
Personally, I couldn't condone any such inclusion of the United Nations in this matter. But it's something that keeps nagging at me (which is why I had to come back and address this notion). It makes me uneasy that this is even being (allegedly) considered by the administration, and the thought of the United Nations being involved--possibly--makes me "as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs."
Publius II
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 12:03 AM
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