THOSE WON'T SAVE YOU

Disconnect in Beijing (Marc Erikson, Asia Times)

"See, they're back to the old blackmail game," US President George W Bush told NBC-TV anchor Tom Brokaw late Thursday. That's pretty close to, "I told you so," and reveals - if revelation were necessary - that major factions in the Bush administration never thought much of talking to North Korea about its nuclear programs in the first place. Even allegedly dovish Secretary of State Colin Powell weighed in with some quite heavy artillery, saying: "The North Koreans should not leave the meetings in Beijing, now that they have come to a conclusion ... with the slightest impression that the United States and its partners will be intimidated by bellicose statements or by threats." He added that the US was looking for ways to "eliminate" the threat posed by any North Korean nuclear weapons program and had "not taken any options off the table" - diplomatese for not ruling out military action.

Of course, the North Koreans, on their part, will not exactly have pleased their Chinese hosts, who had worked long and hard to bring about US-North Korea-China talks, by telling US chief negotiator James Kelly that they were in fact in possession of atomic bombs, were ready to test and even sell them, and had already reprocessed 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods to extract weapons-grade plutonium (enough for six to eight nukes).

Where the Korean nuclear standoff goes from here is anyone's guess. Understandably, "honest broker" China wants to put the best possible face on the outcome of the discussions at Beijing's Diaoyutai State Guest House, their early conclusion (to avoid the term "breakdown") notwithstanding. Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said the meeting "signifies a good beginning", and his ministry said in a later statement that all sides "agreed to maintain contacts through diplomatic channels regarding continuing the process of talks".

But the course the talks took between Wednesday and Friday morning was hardly encouraging. In opening remarks, the United States reiterated that it wants to see immediate and verifiable dismantling of North Korea's nuclear programs before talking about anything else; Pyongyang chief negotiator Li Gun repeated the Iraq war had proved that nations need a strong deterrent to protect their sovereignty; China urged compromise. And that, pretty much, was already the end of three-way discussions.

If they have nukes, it's all the more important that we attack them, to demonstrate that such weapons--far from being a deterrent--are a guarantee of regime change. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 25, 2003 4:57 PM