The
North Korean bomb
and the media hype
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
June 30th, 2004
LONDON - The main thing we've
learnt so far about the Bush Administration's self
proclaimed ambitions to curb nuclear proliferation is its
all too obvious ability to influence how the press treats
the issue. If it wanted to whip up hysteria on Iraq's
"weapons of mass destruction" the press was a willing, if
now rueful, victim. If it wants to blow hot about North
Korea's ambitions to have a nuclear-armed rocket that can
strike Alaska it can do that too.
It can also do cold. Watch it right
now as it moves, after three years of outright hostility
to North Korea, to start using the soft touch in time to
meet the imperatives of the electoral calendar when it
wants to be crisis free. Too much of the media (European
too) follows its given cues as meekly as a well trained
circus dog. The latest round of talks last weekend with
North Korea, when for the first time the Bush
Administration offered negotiating concessions, was
thriftily covered. Yet the North Korean bomb has not gone
away. And North Korea's bomb research is much more
advanced than it was when Bush first characterized the
regime as part of the " axis of evil".
Nuclear bombs are a good scare
story - when the administration wants it to be. It plays
on fears we all have. I'm embarrassed to say that years
ago I wrote a column saying if North Korea got a nuclear
weapon it should be bombed. When the CIA first spooked
president Bill Clinton with its carefully leaked
revelation that North Korea had a nuclear weapon he had
Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft and Robert Gates on his
back telling the press loudly that the North's stock of
spent fuel rods should be bombed before they were
reprocessed into plutonium. But none of them could
provide an answer what to do if in retaliation North
Korea made use of the nuclear bombs they said it already
possessed. And when Clinton, all wound up and ready to
order an invasion of North Korea, consulted the Pentagon
he found that war might lead to the deaths of 50,000
American soldiers and the obliteration of Seoul he too
pulled back.
Then ex-president Jimmy Carter,
briefly seizing the headlines, bravely ventured into
Pyongyang and mapped out with the old dictator Kim Il
Sung a trade off between nuclear armaments and economic
aid. Clinton happily grabbed the deal, and then the press
largely went quiet until when, years later, Bush
ratcheted up the rhetoric and confrontation.
And today the press seems content
to be spoon fed the lie pushed by the Bush Administration
that it was the North Koreans who broke the trust of
Washington when they reneged on the undertakings made to
Carter/Clinton and admitted (in 2002) that whilst they
closed down its plutonium-based bomb producing line they
had opened up an alterative uranium-enriched
one.
In fact the trust - that precious
ingredient of all deals - was broken long ago. The 1994
agreement was clear: the North agreed to close its
plutonium plant and seal up the cooling rods from which
weapons grade plutonium could be extracted. In return the
U.S. with Japan and South Korea agreed to build two
modern, non-plutonium producing nuclear power stations to
be in production by 2003. Also the U.S. agreed that it
would end its economic embargo and help the North with
food, oil and electricity
Militant Republicans in Congress
managed to sabotage the implementation of the American
side of the bargain, pushing the Administration to slow
food supplies and oil deliveries on a number of
occasions. There was a successful effort in Congress to
break the promise of ending sanctions, delaying action on
this until 1999 when they were finally but only partially
lifted. Not least, was the slowdown on the building of
the new reactors, with the prospect of them being
completed five years behind schedule in 2008.
Then when George Bush came to power
the U.S. leant on South Korea to slow down its so-called
"Sunshine" policy of reconciliation. It also refused to
talk about other sources of electricity supplies and
prohibited South Korea from honoring a promise to send
electricity to the North. Later, after the North's
"confession", it froze both oil supplies and reactor
building.
Given the reflex hostility of both
the American government and media it should not surprise
us that North Korea returned to its bad old ways.
Confrontation, Pyongyang reasoned, was the only way to
get results. And, after three years of it, it is indeed
producing results. Bush is ready to negotiate, but
quietly. And the press has gone quiet in lockstep. Yet
still North Korea has the weapons of mass destruction
that Iraq didn't.
Copyright © 2004 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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