Kim Win-Win
Pending nuke deal with North Korea would appear to let Kim Jong Il have his cake and eat it, too. He keeps his nukes and gets a fuel and energy handout. The phased approach should provide great opportunities for a master chiseler like Kim. No details on how big the first installment in the fuel-and-energy shakedown will be, but this sounds like a deal that gives Kim’s obscene regime a new lease on life.
The deal is expected to require North Korea to close and seal its main nuclear reactor within six weeks and also allow international nuclear inspectors into the country for the first time in more than four years. North Korea would receive energy and economic assistance, as well as security guarantees, but the timetable for these rewards remained unclear.
… In Washington, hard-liners in the Bush administration have been deeply suspicious of taking a diplomatic approach and have argued that North Korea has no intention of abandoning its nuclear weapons. Mr. Hill, who has spent much of the past two months traveling the world to resuscitate the talks, has described the objective as a step-by-step process that would dismantle the North’s nuclear arsenal rather than freeze it.
Pending approval, Mr. Hill said the new working groups could be quickly established while chief negotiators would likely reconvene in Beijing as soon as next month. He said the tentative agreement would create a succession of deadlines that would need to be met as a precondition of the deal.
“This is only one phase of denuclearization,” he said. “We’re not done.”
Indeed, the task of forcing North Korea to agree to a schedule and process for turning over its existing nuclear weapons and fuel has not yet been addressed.
International nuclear inspectors would be expected to return to North Korea by this spring. In 2002, North Korea expelled inspectors and withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty after the Bush administration accused North Korea of violating its 1994 disarmament deal with the Clinton administration.
The Bush administration has criticized the 1994 agreement because it called for a “freeze” of North Korea’s nuclear activities, and Mr. Hill has repeatedly sought to differentiate the current framework from that earlier agreement. He has described a step-by-step process that is steadily moving toward denuclearization as opposed to freezing the status quo.
I’ll be very surprised if this deal buys any kind of nuclear security in northeast Asia or end to the North Korean threat that can’t be accomplished by simply explaining that we will level the country if they try anything. The North Korean regime is well established as a mob of lying, thieving, cheating, counterfeiting, abducting thugs who are utterly unreliable for anything not involving the abovementioned activities. They must be overjoyed to have a long, drawn out process ahead with numerous opportunities to throw tantrums, stage crises, and otherwise set the stage for further extortion.
In the interest of maintaining the status quo, avoiding a refugee crisis and the massive upheaval and instability that the regime’s fall could bring, the other five parties have agreed to subsidize Kim’s nation-sized concentration camp.
One Free Korea: “Uh oh. … And how sad for the people of North Korea that we’re prepared to bail out a hideously brutal regime that was showing tangible and accelerating signs of bankruptcy and collapse.” But OFK doesn’t think it’s going to last.
Tigerhawk is considerably more optimistic than I am. He sees it as, potentially, a huge multilateral diplomatic coup for George Bush, with the verifiable dismantling of the nuke program and a chance to look around inside North Korea. He also likes Christopher Hill a lot. I think the problem with the deal is that it is that one of the parties at the multilateral table is North Korea.
Topics: North Korea
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:10 pm on Monday, February 12, 2007
5 Responses to “Kim Win-Win”
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February 13th, 2007 at 1:27 am
Forget North Korea. They will do what the Chinese tell them to do. The real question is whether the Chinese tell the NoKos to stick to the deal.
February 13th, 2007 at 9:20 am
North Korea
Twelve of the best sites about the country of North Korea. Know of another site that should be listed here? Leave your suggestion at the bottom of this page.
1. North Korea (10/06) - Extensive look at North Korea from the perspective of the U.S. Depart…
February 13th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
The definition of insanity is to keep making the same mistake over and over, expecting a different result.
February 13th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
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February 13th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Kim Win-Win