North Korea Blows-up Nuclear Reactor Cooling Tower, to Reap Benefits of Pseudo Engagement
by Richardson ~ June 27th, 2008. Filed under: Axis of Evil, Diplomacy, Election 2008, Engagement, History, Kim Jong-il, Korean Politics, Nuclear Proliferation, Six-Party Talks, WMD.Update: Probably it would have been better to get these answers *before* announcing plans to delist North Korea and remove other trade barriers, as that is what the agreements actually called for:
North Korea did not answer U.S. suspicions of enriching uranium and proliferating technology when it released an inventory of its nuclear plans this week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Saturday.
[…]
“Thus far we don’t have the answers we need on either,” Rice said…
[…]
“At end of this, let me just emphasize again, at the end of this we have to have the abandonment of all programs, weapons and materials,” Rice said.
Original post: In an almost entirely symbolic display – since the facility was dilapidated and probably past the point of safe use – North Korea blew-up the cooling tower of the disabled Yongbyon nuclear reactor on 26 June.
See video of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor cooling tower exploding.
This came after North Korea finally provided a 60-page declaration of nuclear programs to Chinese officials in Beijing, fifteen months after the original deadline of April 2007, and six months past the extended deadline of 30 December 2007.
With the declaration, however, North Korea provided far less that it agreed to. Per the February 2007 deal (DOC), North Korea was to provide, “a list of all its nuclear programs.” North Korea has plutonium-based nuclear weapons which are not declared, and it is an established fact that they had (or possibly have) a highly enriched uranium (HEU) program, neither of which are included in the declaration. Also not listed are the numerous other known and suspected nuclear sites throughout North Korea.
The lack of these items make the declaration, in practical terms and per the original intent of disclosing them, worthless.
Incredibly, traces of HEU were found on the documents North Korea provided to help clear up the amounts of plutonium it has processed, even though they denied every having a functional HEU program. There is also a suspected nuclear link between North Korea and Syria, which violates a number of nuclear-related agreements North Korea is party to.
Considering the reasons behind requiring a nuclear declaration from Pyongyang, what was provided is utterly insufficient and accepting it represents a complete failure of the Bush administration and the Six-Party Talks process. The possibility that U.S. officials had a hand in drafting the incomplete declaration for North Korea is even more damning.
Throughout this process North Korea has made the U.S. – the State Department in particular – go back on what they said on numerous occasions. For example, the “broken window” theory on the importance of not missing deadlines, and on offering a clear picture of HEU activities.
Despite this and in response to the declaration and symbolic display, President Bush announced his intention to have North Korea removed from the list of terrorist sponsoring nations. This is being done even though North Korea’s nuclear program is not related to the numerous terrorist acts the nation has committed, several reportedly planned by the current leader, Kim Jong-il.
President Bush’s approach to North Korea over the past year and a half has caused rifts within his administration and with the Republican Party, yet have yielded only an incomplete and probably inaccurate declaration, not even half of what was agreed to. Yet Bush pays the ransom.
The reason the delisting is so important to North Korea is that it removed trade barriers (never mind that North Korea’s ideology of Juche calls for complete self-reliance and rejection of capitalism), which will dramatically improve chances of the Kim Jong-il regime of surviving longer. In North Korea this is accomplished by a combination of taking care of the regime elite (inclining senior military) with special perks (like food, electricity, cars, etc.) while at the same time keeping alive the very real threat of sending even perceived dissenters to concentration camps, where probably no fewer than 200,000 North Koreans now live (and die). Delisting means income for the regime, and money translated into more power for the regime.
Also see:
- Analysis from Don Kirk and Ralph Cossa on these developments.
- OFK for more on North Korea’s incomplete declaration.
- Japan Probe (via ROK Drop) for a video of Charles Jenkins speaking about North Korea being removed from the list of terrorist sponsoring nations.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
WASHINGTON — Two days ago, during an off-the-record session with a group of foreign policy experts, Vice President Dick Cheney got a question he did not want to answer. “Mr. Vice President,” asked one of them, “I understand that on Wednesday or Thursday, we are going to de-list North Korea from the terrorism blacklist. Could you please set the context for this decision?”
Mr. Cheney froze, according to four participants at the Old Executive Office Building meeting. For more than 30 minutes he had been taking and answering questions, without missing a beat. But now, for several long seconds, he stared, unsmilingly, at his questioner, Steven Clemons of the New America Foundation, a public policy institution. Finally, he spoke:
“I’m not going to be the one to announce this decision,” the other participants recalled Mr. Cheney saying, pointing at himself. “You need to address your interest in this to the State Department.” He then declared that he was done taking questions, and left the room.
In the internal Bush administration war between the State Department and Mr. Cheney’s office over North Korea, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her top North Korea envoy, Christopher R. Hill, won a major battle against the Cheney camp when President Bush announced Thursday that he was taking the country he once described as part of the “axis of evil” off the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.
The administration sought to portray the move as a largely symbolic, reciprocal move, made in return for North Korea’s long-delayed declaration of its nuclear program to the outside world. It is the first step in what will be a long, drawn-out diplomatic process that is meant to lead eventually to establishing a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.
North Korea also said that it would blow up the cooling tower of its nuclear plant at Yongbyon on Friday, and it has invited news organizations to watch the event. North Korea probably has the fuel for several nuclear devices, according to United States intelligence estimates, but after the ambiguous result of its one test detonation, its nuclear status remains murky.
North Korea declared that it had slightly more plutonium than it had previously admitted. But the declaration falls short of the full accounting that the administration had sought, since it omits any information about North Korea’s suspected efforts to enrich uranium, or the extent of any of the North’s sharing of technology around the world.
Thursday’s announcement intensified a pitched battle in Washington, where Democrats and many foreign policy experts said the administration had dithered too long before reaching this deal, allowing North Korea to acquire enough plutonium to make several nuclear weapons. From the other side of the fence, conservative hard-liners complained that the United States gave away too much for too little, and should have adopted a more absolutist approach with the secretive North Korean government.
Speaking to reporters, National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley conceded that the administration had decided to accept incremental progress with North Korea instead of its previous all-or-nothing strategy. He said the notion that North Korea would quickly acquiesce to all of Washington’s demands “was probably unrealistic.”
Even so, many critics of Mr. Bush noted that the administration’s turnaround on North Korea did not come about until after North Korea exploded its first nuclear device in October 2006. Mr. Hill and Ms. Rice subsequently persuaded Mr. Bush that North Korea’s nuclear test had changed the rules of the game enough that the president should complete an agreement with North Korea and four other countries that led to Thursday’s declaration.
Accusing the North Koreans of violating a previous diplomatic accord on ending its nuclear program, called the Agreed Framework, which was negotiated during the Clinton administration, Mr. Bush pulled out of talks with North Korea in 2002 and pressed to isolate the North Korean government. The abandonment of talks gave North Korea greater leeway to produce plutonium and become a nuclear power, critics say.
Had Mr. Bush instead stuck with a diplomatic course, the critics say, North Korea might not have acquired enough plutonium to make a nuclear weapon.
“What is absolutely clear is the decision they took in 2002 to terminate the Agreed Framework gave North Korea the opening” to kick international inspectors out of its Yongbyon nuclear plant and press ahead with its work on the bomb, said Carlos Pascual, director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. “That was the tragedy of the Bush administration’s policy,” Mr. Pascual said. “That by opting for terminating our engagement, we opened the door to North Korea’s becoming a nuclear power.”
June 27th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Great run down Richardson and the article left by sasko makes me wonder if Cheney was in disagreement with Bush’s decision on this because he sure didn’t seem to happy about it.
June 27th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
I think it’s from the NYT - it’s linked to in the post.
June 27th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Looks like we need more members in the Axis of Evil: http://www.236.com/news/2008/06/26/theres_another_opening_in_the_1_7399.php
Time to start submitting applications.
June 28th, 2008 at 3:39 am
Looks like Zimbabwe is moving to fit that vacancy.