The Blue State

North Korea nuke test was with a Bush-era bomb

Intelligence officials report that the North Korea nuclear blast resulted from its plutonium-based program, which was restarted during the Bush era.  It was Bill Clinton who helped halt the program in 1994, and therefore not one plutonium bomb was built by North Korea when he was president.  It's interesting that Clinton is being blamed, even though this plutonium-based development happened between 2002 and 2006 -- under George W. Bush's watch.

Even though North Korea's nuclear test is old news, the academic community and other East Asia studies experts were waiting for weeks to find out whether the bomb that was detonated was uranium-based or plutonium-based.  It may not seem that important.  However, this discovery literally tell us whether or not Bill Clinton's policy was a failure.  We now have our answer -- and don't expect the traditional media to talk about it at all.

It has been concluded by U.S. intelligence officials that the bomb was plutonium-based:

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that North Korea's test lastweek was powered by plutonium harvested from its small nuclear reactor,according to officials who have reviewed the results of atmosphericsampling since the explosion.

So why is this important, you ask?  Under Bill Clinton, North Korea's plutonium-based nuclear program was halted thanks to the 1994 Agreed Framework.  It was not until 2002 when North Korea restarted its plutonium-based program, after being threatened by President Bush in his Axis of Evil speech.

It is important that we all know the difference between North Korea's plutonium and uranium-based programs.  The plutonium program was the most advanced, and the Clinton Administration dealt with it immediately.  The 1994 Agreed Framework put an end to the program for the rest of his presidency. 

Conservatives have every right to complain that Clinton did not do enough to curb North Korea's uranium-based program.  However, uranium-based nuclear weapons are harder to come by.  So what Clinton did was he focused more on the plutonium threat.

Once North Korea conducted its test just a few weeks ago, East Asia experts wanted to know whether it was from uranium or plutonium?  If it was uranium, then it would prove once and for all that both Bush and Clinton policies were a failure -- since the uranium program was operational under both their watches.  If it was plutonium, it would show that Clinton was right about it being more of a threat, and that the bomb that was tested was built under George W. Bush's watch.  The latter turned out to be true.

Had it not been for Clinton's 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea would have 50 nuclear weapons today.  The Clinton policy worked, and no new weapons were built during his presidency.  Clinton is not the one to blame.

And now word is that North Korea is planning to conduct a second test with yet another plutonium-based bomb.  It looks like that Axis of Evil speech has really paid off!

Response to UN Resolution on North Korea nuclear proliferation

If President Bush had put as much effort into curbing North Korea's uranium-based nuclear program as Bill Clinton did with North Korea's plutonium-based program, then we would not be in this situation today.  But we are in this position regardless, and the UN resolution that passed yesterday was needed to prevent the selling of North Korean unconventional arms to terrorist groups.

But before I go any further, you all should know where I am coming from.  I studied post-Cold War U.S. relations with North Korea over the course of spring quarter in 2005 at the Jackson School of International Studies.  I was taught by a professor that fled from North Korea when he was a little boy during the Korean War.  In more than forty hours of lecture and thousands of pages worth of multiple texts that covered our half a century long ceasefire with North Korea, I developed my own empirical conclusions as to why our policy towards that country has not been working, and what we need to do in order to maintain stability on the Korean Peninsula.  When I write about North Korea, I am not writing as a progressive activist -- I am writing as a former student of a professor that put me and the rest of my classmates through an intense three months of study. 

Unlike with Iraq and the issue of how to fight terrorism in general, I don't see President Bush's North Korea policy as a larger domestic agenda of deliberately misleading the American people in order to scare them into voting Republican.  Bush's missteps on North Korea have little to do with Karl Rove's political strategy, and more to do with the neoconservative's flawed intellectual take on East Asia studies.

Now that I got all this out of the way, I don't plan on going into detail on how the Bush and Clinton policies on North Korea differed.  You can read my North Korea Index page to read my take on that.

With regard to the UN resolution that was passed yesterday, it was a necessary step for a number of reasons.  First, it proved that the United States is still able to work with the rest of the world in an organized institution such as the UN -- even if our Ambassador, John Bolton, despises that kind of a forum.  Secondly, the economic blockade of North Korea will minimize arms shipments throughout the world.  Thirdly, it proved to the North Koreans that China and South Korea -- two countries that have been skeptical of US policy on North Korea ever since 2001 -- are willing to hold Kim Jong IL's regime accountable when the pressure is on.

Obviously it never should have come to this.  The fact that a nuclear device was even tested in the first place was living proof that the Bush policy of nonproliferation on the Korean Peninsula was a disastrous failure.  We should have engaged with the North Koreans bilaterally, even if it was still within the framework of the Six Party Talks.

That opportunity has not passed.  Since China and South Korea signed off on the resolution, North Korea is completely isolated.  Kim Jong IL has no choice but to settle for some sort of deal, or else his regime will find itself on the brink of a financial catastrophe.  On the same token, we also have every reason to want a deal fast, or else there will be a humanitarian crisis (which we will be blamed for) and a flood of refugees into China.  The only way to resolve this fast -- since that is what both sides want -- is for the United States to engage in bilateral, face-to-face talks with the North Koreans while still in the framework of the Six Party Talks.  We can't simply outsource our foreign policy to China, as we have been doing.  China should be a player in talks.  But keep in mind that China is our military and trade competitor, and therefore would like nothing more than for the United States to get bogged down with this conflict.

Ultimately, the Administration needs to let diplomacy run its course by holding direct, face-to-face bilateral talks at the DMZ.  Send Bill Clinton, Colin Powell or James Baker to negotiate on behalf of the United States.  Russia, South Korea, Japan and China could be there during the talks.  But ultimately it needs to be the United States and North Korea that solve this mess.  It's not an impossible task.  Even considering how narrow-minded the Bush policy has been on North Korea ever since 2002, there still is a possibility for success.  But the longer we wait, the more that the North Korean economy will starve, and the more desperate Kim Jong IL could get.  As we have learned over the course of history, desperation is often a precursor to irrational behavior.  Let's not provoke war, and then wish some day that we had taken a different approach.  It's only our future that is on the line.  Let's be smart.

Clinton Sec Def: Bush inaction results in Asia nuclear arms race

Former Clinton Secretary of Defense William Perry on what impact North Korea's nuclear test will have on non-nuclear East Asia states like Japan and South Korea:

This test will certainly send an undesirable message to Iran, andthat damage has already been done. But it is important to try to keepthis action from precipitating a nuclear arms race in the Asia-Pacificregion. Both Japan and South Korea have the capability to move quicklyto full nuclear-weapon status but have not done so because they havehad confidence in our nuclear umbrella. They may now reevaluate theirdecision. We should consult closely with Japan and South Korea toreassure them that they are still under our umbrella and that we havethe will and the capability to regard an attack on them as an attack onthe United States. This may be necessary to discourage them from movingforward with nuclear deterrence of their own.

Our government'sinattention has allowed North Korea to establish a new and dangerousthreat to the Asia-Pacific region. It is probably too late to reversethat damage, but serious attention to this problem can still limit theextent of the damage.

Late last night, I wrote almost all that I possibly could about why Bush's Regime Change Through Isolation Policy between 2002 and 2006 ultimately resulted in a nuclear North Korea.  You can read that to get a sense of where I am coming from.  You can also read my entire North Korea index.

This is an issue that is near and dear to me because I spent a whole quarter in 2005 studying U.S.-DPRK post-Cold War relations.  I was taught by an immigrant who fled North Korea as a child during the Korean war, and went on to become a professor that now teaches at the Jackson School of International Studies.  It was the most challenging class that I have ever taken.

What I offer on this issue are not my partisan leanings, but rather the real specifics of what transpired between when the 1994 Agreed Framework was signed and North Korea's first nuclear weapons test last weekend.  Although I do agree that Clinton could have done a better job focusing on curbing North Korea's desire to enrich uranium, his 1994 deal with the North did stop the advanced plutonium-based program.  Had it not been for Clinton's Agreed Framework, the plutonium program would have continued and North Korea would have as many as 50 nuclear weapons today.  So I call Clinton's policy a 90% success.

George W. Bush, on the other hand, had a different philosophy.  His war cabinet believed that if you isolate the regime to the point of economic starvation, then it would implode and Kim Jong IL would be overthrown.  Instead, Bush's approach has made North Korea even more centralized and militarily advanced than ever before.  To make things worse, immediately after the 2002 Axis of Evil speech, North Korea restarted its plutonium-based program because it felt threatened.  So now it has plutonium and uranium nuclear programs.  Kim Jong IL's regime is more of a threat today because of President Bush's approach.

Again, I could go on about this forever.  If you want to read more about my take, just view my North Korea index.

McCain is dead wrong about Clinton's North Korea policy

From John McCain's comments about the Clinton Administration yesterday, you can gather that we are in the middle of a political season.  Republicans need to do everything they can over the next three weeks to divert attention away from Iraq and the Foley scandal, even if it means blaming Bill Clinton for North Korea's nuclear test.

As a student who was taught in the spring of 2005 by a North Korean refugee about post-Cold War U.S.-Korean relations, I find it frustrating to listen to some of the stuff that is being said about the current nuclear standoff. 

But first thing is first: although I am a progressive Democrat at heart, I was taught about North Korea by a honorable and scholarly individual with little partisan loyalties at all other than his yearning for peace and security on the Korean Peninsula.  Almost everything that I know about North Korea today I learned from him.  This is a man who fled his country as a child during the Korean war.  He went on to live in South Korea -- going from a refugee to a hard-working student, who eventually moved to the United States and became a U.S. citizen.  He now teaches at the University of Washington's Jackson School of International Studies.

When I write about North Korea on this blog, I am almost always writing about what I know based on many dozens of hours worth of research papers and fabulous lectures that I experienced in that class.

Let me get to the reason why I am writing this blog entry.  Yesterday, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) blamed the former Clinton Administration for the inability of the United States to stop North Korea in the totalitarian regime's pursuit of nuclear weapons:

"I would remind Senator (Hillary) Clinton and other criticsof the Bush administration policies that the frameworkagreement of the Clinton administration was a failure," McCainsaid in a statement, referring to a 1994 deal under which NorthKorea agreed to halt work on a plutonium-based nuclearfacility, partly in exchange for free fuel oil deliveries.

..."We had a carrots-and-no-sticks policy that only encouragedbad behavior. When one carrot didn't work, we offered another."

What McCain said about Clinton was 90% inaccurate.  In concluding that it was a "carrots-and-no-sticks" policy, the Arizona Senator forgets that the Clinton Administration almost launched a preemptive attack on the nuclear reactor in 1994.  There were definitely both carrots and sticks being implemented.  The 1994 Agreed Framework prevented war and forced North Korea to abandon its plutonium-based nuclear weapons program.  According to former U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson, if it had not been for the Clinton Administration's Agreed Framework that put a halt to the plutonium build-up, North Korea today would have 50 nuclear weapons.  Between when the deal was signed and when Clinton left office, North Korea produced no new nuclear weapons and in no way posed the same kind of threat to East Asian stability that it does today.  In that regard, Clinton needs to be commended, if anything.

As any East Asia scholar will tell you, the Agreed Framework was far from perfect.  For example, it did not solve the problem of uranium enrichment.  However, what people need to know is that there is a sharp difference between a plutonium-based nuclear program and a uranium-based nuclear program.  Going the plutonium route allows weapons to be built at a much faster pace.  Uranium enrichment takes a lot more effort, and it is more difficult to build mass quantities of such weapons if you are up against the clock.  In other words, if you had to pick one to deal with first, it was definitely the plutonium issue -- which Clinton did.

After the plutonium program had been halted, in 1997 Pakistan sent key technological information to North Korea to help them enrich uranium.  The Clinton Administration was furious at the move, as was Japan.  In 1998, North Korea launched a missile over the island of Japan, which led to the Japanese scaling back all of their annual North Korean aid money.  Later in the decade, Secretary of State Albright was sent to North Korea to begin dialogue about the uranium enrichment program that the U.S. believed needed to be dismantled.  No deal was completed in the final year that Clinton was in office.  But as I wrote earlier, Clinton did succeed in using both carrots and sticks to halt North Korea's plutonium-based nuclear program.

Now this is where Bush comes into the picture.  When Bush came into office, he decided to ignore Colin Powell and enact a policy crafted by the neoconservatives that called for no bilateral talks with North Korea.  Hearing this, the North Korean government upped its military expenditures.  Following President Bush's famous axis of evil speech, North Korea restarted its plutonium-based nuclear program.  In other words, following that speech and continuing on into today, North Korea has both its uranium and plutonium programs working.  All the effort that the Clinton White House put into successfully stopping the plutonium program had been over-turned by one lousy Bush speech.

Since 2002, the U.S. policy towards North Korea has been regime change.  In response, North Korea's economic and political policies have centered around regime survival.  So while Bush was busy pursuing regime change, Kim Jong IL was busy pursuing regime survival -- making the two policies offset.

Specifically, the U.S. policy of regime change consists of isolating the North Korean regime by depriving them economically and politically from the international community -- all in hope that Kim Jong IL would be deposed.  Bush's policy of regime change has been enacted from 2002 through today, and has produced the following results:

• The regime is still intact and more centralized than ever.
• Both its plutonium and enrichment-based nuclear programs are now functioning.
• Military expenditures are at a higher percentage than they were before.
• Long-range missile capability is better than it has ever been.
• The regime conducted its first official nuclear weapons test.

Once again, to hear someone like John McCain blame Bill Clinton for the nuclear standoff is insulting to history.  While Clinton's 1994 Agreed Framework was not perfect, had it not been enacted North Korea would have 50 nuclear weapons today.  On the other hand, the Bush policy of isolation and regime change has produced the opposite effect, and has even encouraged the regime to become the next nuclear state.

So please, Mr. McCain, you can offer any strategy that you want for solving the nuclear standoff -- even if that means following the same broken Bush policy of regime change through isolation.  However, please don't revise history.

So how has the Axis of Evil been doing these days?

From now on, every time the Republicans try to use the North Korean issue to scare voters, we need to stand up and point out the truth.  Ever since January of 2002 when President Bush gave his Axis of Evil speech, the three countries he mentioned -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea -- have all become more dangerous.  How does this translate into being strong on national defense?

Call it "civil war" or just plain old "sectarian violence", Iraq is now one of the most dangerous places on the planet.  There are 800-900 attacks each day.  The most alarming stat of all is only five percent of the Sunni insurgency consists of al Qaeda -- meaning when you factor in the radical Shiites, al Qaeda's influence in the overall insurgency is about half that (2.5%) or less.  In Afghanistan, all of the insurgency consists of al Qaeda and Taliban.  We only have 20,000 troops in Afghanistan, and 150,000 in Iraq.  You mean to tell me that Afghanistan is one-seventh as important as Iraq?  Come on.  So by going to war there, we turned a country that was fearful of stateless terrorism into an unstable hotbed of radicals.

Iran and North Korea are building their nuclear arsenal.  What has President Bush done other than talk?  These threats have helped the Iranian president nationalize his country around his rule, and quell the younger generation, which tends to favor democratic reform.  North Korea, well we know about them.  They went from the capacity to build maybe two nuclear weapons in 2000 to now having the capacity to build twelve.

Again, how does this translate into being strong on defense?  Democrats need to speak up.  The Axis of Evil is now the "Excess of Evil" -- as Newsweek's Christopher Dickey writes.

Is it ever "silly" to question Bush?

I'll admit, Tony Snow is a darn good White House Press Secretary.  He can talk an owl out of a tree -- even if there is no owl.  But today he went off the deep end, saying that it is silly to even ask whether President Bush handled the North Korean situation effectively since he came into office:

QUESTION: Looking back, is there anything that the president wouldhave done differently? Does he believe he has made any mistakes in thisregion?

SNOW: Oh, my goodness.

QUESTION: It’s a fair question.

SNOW: No, it’s a silly question.

Saying it is "silly" to ask whether Bush has had a sound North Korea strategy in place is about as Orwellian as last month when President Bush uttered the line, "It is unacceptable to think."

Bush flexes his encyclopedic knowledge of North Korea

This is from Bob Woodward's book State of Denial.  It's within the first 13 pages.  Thanks to Rox for finding this:

George W. pulled Bandar aside.
     "Bandar, I guess you're the best asshole who knows about the world. Explain to me one thing."
     "Governor, what is it?"
     "Why should I care about North Korea?"
     Bandar said he didn't really know. It was one of the few countries that he did not work on for King Fahd.
     "I get these briefings on all parts of the world," Bush said, "and everybody is talking to me about North Korea."
     "I'll tell you what, Governor," Bandar said. "One reason should make you care about North Korea."
     "All right, smart alek," Bush said, "tell me."
   "The 38,000 American troops right on the border." ..."If nothingelse counts, this counts. One shot across the border and you lose halfthese people immediately. You lose 15,000 Americans in a chemical orbiological or even regular attack. The United State of America is atwar instantly."
     "Hmmm," Bush said. "I wish those assholes wouldput things just point-blank to me. I get half a book telling me aboutthe history of North Korea."
     "Now I tell you another answer tothat. You don't want to care about North Korea anymore?" Bandar asked.The Saudis wanted America to focus on the Middle East and not get drawninto a conflict in East Asia.
     "I didn't say that," Bush replied.
   "But if you don't, you withdrawl those troops back. Then it becomesa local conflict. Then you have the whole time to decide, 'Should I getinvolved? Not involved?' Etc."
     At that moment, Colin Powell approached.
   "Colin," Bush said, "come here. Bandar and I were shooting the bull,just two fighter pilots shooting the bull." He didn't mention the topic.
     "Mr. Governor," Bandar said, "General Powell is almost a fighter pilot. He can shoot the bull almost as good as us."

Hopefully by now I have made it perfectly clear on this blog why it is dangerous for Bush and his Republican allies to be in power at a time like this.  The above is just one more example.  We are fighting a war on terrorism and our commander-in-chief had hardly any knowledge about one of the most prominent arms-exporting states in the world.

(Video) Bush's policy encouraged North Korea to obtain nuclear weapons

Following President Bush's speech in response to North Korea's first ever nuclear weapon test, NBC's Matt Lauer and Tim Russert discuss the political implications of this nuclear event, and how Iraq has diverted U.S. focus away from solving the North Korea standoff:

Click to watch video clip

--- Partial Transcript ---

LAUER: "Is it getting harder for the President to say, 'Hey look, we're safer?'"

RUSSERT: "I think that's the debate we're going to have over the next thirty days before the midterm elections, Matt...This time I don't think the Democrats will be very timid in saying to the President, 'When you took office in 2000, North Korea had the capability of building two nuclear devices.  It's now estimated that he can build at least twelve.  It happened on your watch.  What did you do about it, Mr. President?  And were you distracted by Iraq?  I think that's a debate we're going to have.'"

Here is my view.

In the post-Cold War era, the international community is a structure-based system.  Structure forces states to act within an expected and fixed range of alternatives -- making states more predictable.  North Korea is not part of this structure, making their actions less predictable.  By further isolating North Korea from the structure of the international community, they will continue to act irrationally and out of desperation, and will pose a greater risk to our sphere of democratic capitalist influence in East Asia.  That is realism.

The Bush Administration has had six years to allow North Korea to join this structure-based international community.  They chose a strategy of isolating North Korea in hope that Kim Jong IL would be deposed -- when instead what they got was a more centralized nuclear North Korea.  The North Korean civilian economy is in shambles, forcing them to rely more on their military economy: selling arms to other countries.  Now they have a nuclear arsenal to sell as well.  If a terrorist organization offered North Korea the right amount of money, what is to prevent North Korea from selling nuclear material in an attempt to offset some the debt that their weak civilian economy has produced?

Again, we had six years to welcome North Korea into the international system by engaging them bilaterally.  This would have included helping North Korea develop a strategy to fix its civilian economy in exchange for the disarming of its nuclear arsenal and allowing IAEA inspectors to preside over this denuclearizing process.  Instead, the Bush war cabinet chose to isolate the Korean regime -- a strategy that only encouraged North Korea to obtain nuclear weapons.

The Bush war cabinet's North Korea strategy is a perfect handbook for how to be weak on national security.

BREAKING NEWS: North Korea conducts nuke test

North Korea tests a nuke:

SouthKorean government officials said North Korea performed its first-evernuclear weapons test Monday, the South's Yonhap news agency reported.

South Korean officials could not immediately confirm the report.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun convened an urgent meeting of security advisers over the issue, Yonhap reported.

The North said last week it would conduct a nuclear test as part of its deterrent against a possible U.S. invasion.

The North Korean Central News Agency says that the test was conducted underground, and the surrounding area is 100% safe.

This is serious.  It proves once and for all that the Bush Administration's weak approach to confronting North Korea has produced no results over the last six years.  They have outsourced the job of disarming North Korea to China, our number one trade competitor.  It's a disgracefully bad strategy.

LATE NIGHT UPDATE: The U.S. geological survey reports a 4.2 magnitude seismic event.  Google Earth shows where the nuclear blast came from.  Again, it was reportedly underground.  There is no word whether any civilians were exposed to the radiation.

Read more of my blog entries on North Korea.

The Iraq war is hurting our ability to confront North Korea and Iran

In terms of "hard power", it's not enough to just threaten war in order to get an adversary to cooperate.  It's about being in a position to legitimately show that you are capable of going to war and winning it.  Talk is only talk.  Geopolitical position is everything.  When you threaten someone, that adversary will evaluate your geopolitical position -- and based on that position, they will respond appropriately.  So what I am I getting at, you ask?

We are bogged down in Iraq and our military is stretched thin almost to a breaking point.  Iran and North Korea know this fact and therefore have absolutely no reason to abandon their nuclear programs -- barring a huge economic incentive package.  It's not that we couldn't bomb them by air.  But Iran would respond by sending waves of their commando units into Iraq to make the region ungovernable.  Meanwhile, the Shiites down in Basra, Iraq would turn against us (since they for the most part are loyal to the Mullahs in Iran).  If we attacked North Korea by air, they would immediately started shelling Seoul, South Korea -- a country where over 30,000 of our armed services are based. 

Aside from their responses being brutal, our ability to fight four wars at a time (Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea) would require a draft because of how over-extended we are.

Remember, I am not saying we should attack Iran or North Korea anyway.  But my point is that in order for "hard power" to work in diplomacy, we have to be in a position to legitimately threaten force and not have our adversaries think we are bluffing.  In that respect, our current situation in Iraq is hurting our efforts to halt the nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea.  And all it takes is for one terrorist to buy a nuke from a government official in either country and the United States is in danger.  Military-wise, this is what I mean when I say that the Iraq war is hurting us.

Speaking of Iran and North Korea, Tony Karon of Time Magazine wrote a piece on how the fact that our military is stretched thin will force us to give either North Korea or Iran whatever they want.

Lastly, if you are unsure what I mean by "hard" or "soft" power, read this article by realist Joseph Nye.  This guy is practically my idol in terms of international policy.  You can Google his name and you'll find even more interesting articles by him as well.