Korean
Summit Is a Clinton Achievement -
If Only He Knew It !
By JONATHAN
POWER
June 7, 2000
LONDON - Endless confrontation can be endlessly
counterproductive. There is no conclusive evidence that
isolating or cornering a state succeeds in moderating its
behaviour. Engagement is the only way, short of war, to
produce results that move nations out of their entrenched
positions.
This may seem to many of my readers a controversial
statement. Of course it is. But it is my political credo.
And the best example I can give to sustain it is coming
to the boil right now- on the Korean peninsula. On June
12th South Korea's ex-political prisoner and human rights
activist and now democratically elected president, Kim
Dae Jung, will meet his opposite number Kim Jong Il,
president of North Korea, who inherited his position from
his notorious father Kim Il Sung, the communist warlord
who initiated the Korean War 50 years ago. For this much
of the credit must go to President Bill Clinton.
There have been any number of reasons why over the
last six years America could have decided to get tough
with a country that gave many indications that it had
serious ambitions not just to build a nuclear bomb but to
develop a long distance missile to deliver it. Even today
North Korea is the arch-demon for those who advocate the
necessity of building an anti-missile shield to "protect"
the U.S. from nuclear attack from a "rogue" country.
Yet, contrary to many of its basic instincts, the
Clinton Administration has used the soft glove rather
than the mailed fist. Indeed, North Korea is now the main
recipient of U.S. aid in Asia. The U.S. supplies free
much of the country's fuel oil needs and a good part of
its food requirements. At the same time South Korea and
Japan are building it free of charge a state-of-the-art
light-water nuclear reactor capable of supplying most of
North Korea's electricity needs for years to come.
In retrospect it seems amazing that debate in
Washington six years ago was almost dominated by those
discussing the best way of bombing North Korea. U.S.
intelligence had discovered that North Korea was about to
remove spent nuclear rods in a cooling pond to recover
plutonium, sufficient to make four or six nuclear bombs
to add to its supposed (but never proved) stockpile of
two or three. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger,
former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and
former CIA chief, Robert Gates went loudly public with
calls for battle. The saving grace was that they ended up
shooting themselves in each other's feet. Gates and
Scowcroft argued that the U.S. should immediately bomb
the North Korean reprocessing plant before the cooling
rods could be transferred to it. This, they said, would
minimise the risk of radioactive fallout.
Kissinger advocated immediate tough sanctions and
unspecified "military action". But his timetable
miraculously allowed time- a short three months while the
rods cooled- for both a conference of the nuclear-haves
and for sanctions to work. Military action should occur,
he said, only if North Korea refueled its reactor or
started to reprocess its plutonium from the cooling
rods.
However, this seemed to ignore Scowcroft's and Gates'
point about the dangers of an aerial bombardment on
reprocessing facilities. Nor did any of them appear to
worry that North Korea might use the two or three nuclear
bombs they said the country already had to repulse an
American attack.
In fact the three of them talked themselves into the
ground and made it easier for president Jimmy Carter to
journey to Pyongyang on a peace mission and pave the way
for a deal for Kim Il Sung to accept a nuclear freeze. In
return the U.S. would be committed to working with South
Korea and Japan to build two conventional power-producing
nuclear reactors.
In the intervening six years there have been all
manner of ups and down in the U.S.-North Korean
relationship. Congress nearly sabotaged the agreement by
reneging on White House commitments to begin liberalizing
its trade and investment and ending sanctions. In 1998,
when North Korea test fired a long range rocket over
Japan, it seemed that Pyongyang was determined to play
out its role as the world's number one agent provocateur.
Later in 1998 U.S. intelligence spotted a massive hole
being dug suitable to explode in secret triggers for a
nuclear weapon. In the end, for a payment, the U.S. was
allowed to inspect the hole and found that a hole was all
it was.
Not without a great deal of political contortion, the
U.S. over the years has managed in the end to convince
Pyongyang of its good faith. North Korea, for its part,
has reciprocated by drawing in its horns, albeit often at
the last moment. Most important it has honoured the
freeze.
Meanwhile, Kim Dae Jung in the South has pursued his
so-called "sunshine policy" with the North. Despite
immense opposition from the old guard, he has succeeded
in sustaining it to where the temperature of the Cold War
between North and South has begun to rise to the point
where the waters are unfrozen enough for this summit to
take place.
Everyone knows holding the summit raises the stakes.
There can be no going back. But can the North and the
South agree on which way forward is? Also, how much
further is the U.S. prepared to go? Having made so much
progress in dampening the North's nuclear ambitions, is
it prepared to throw this softly softly course to the
wind, move into a tougher, more antagonistic, stance,
build its anti-missile shield and, in the process,
undermine the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and alienate
both Russia and China, perhaps triggering a new round of
the nuclear arms race between the big powers?
The North Korean peace is one of Mr Clinton's three
great positive foreign policy achievements. (The others
are his North American Free Trade Area and his recent
victory to persuade Congress to give China permanent
most-favoured-nation trading status.) If only he had
applied the same determination to engagement in
disarmament with Russia, detente with Iraq and Iran and
support of the United Nations. Perhaps the problem is
that Mr Clinton has not digested quite just how much
progress his policy of the carrot more than the stick has
made in North Korea. Maybe the summit will provide a
measure of his achievement and, although too late to have
any influence on his presidency, do something to make
sure his successor doesn't imitate so many of his
mistakes.
I can be reached by phone: +44 385 351172 or by
e-mail:JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2000 By JONATHAN POWER
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