Back in Business – North Korea

The disruption of Internet services during our recent move made it impossible to transmit JINSA Reports. We hope you noticed. We are back and will try to cover a number of subjects of crucial importance. To begin our renewed series, we are bringing you an article by Peter Brookes, Asian Studies Director of the Heritage Foundation, who was a speaker at the JINSA November Board Meeting.

We’ve botched the North Korea situation? How?

The disruption of Internet services during our recent move made it impossible to transmit JINSA Reports. We hope you noticed. We are back and will try to cover a number of subjects of crucial importance. To begin our renewed series, we are bringing you an article by Peter Brookes, Asian Studies Director of the Heritage Foundation, who was a speaker at the JINSA November Board Meeting.

We’ve botched the North Korea situation? How?

Supposedly, we blew it because President Bush named North Korea a member of the “axis of evil” in last year’s State of the Union speech. As if North Korea doesn’t starve and repress its people to maintain its million-man army. As if it hasn’t breached four international arms-control pacts and threatened to resume producing nuclear weapons. As if it hasn’t proliferated ballistic missiles to some of the world’s most volatile regions, like South Asia and the Middle East. As if it doesn’t run drugs and counterfeit currency.

Did any of this begin after the president’s speech? Clearly not.

And why shouldn’t the United States publicly demand that North Korea honor its agreements and retrench on its nuclear program in a verifiable manner before direct negotiations? The fact that Kim Jong Il’s government is violating four weapons agreements should make us wary of jumping into another one with it. Why should we assume Pyongyang could be trusted now?

No one’s saying we shouldn’t allow diplomacy and international pressure to run their courses before we consider a more muscular policy. We can, and we should. But we must not reward bad behavior and encourage other rogues to use blackmail and extortion to force the U.S. to negotiate. Appeasement and weakness invite provocation.

Besides, North Korea likely will pursue a nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile program regardless of any agreement. Pyongyang seemingly wants to achieve nuclear-power status and all the prestige, notoriety and clout that go along with it. The president’s decision to move ahead on missile defense is a practical part of dealing with the likes of North Korea.

And why exactly should President Bush’s approach to North Korea be the same as his approach to Iraq? Yes, they are both led by regional despots who brutalize their people as they pursue weapons of mass destruction. But Saddam Hussein is an expansionist megalomaniac who wants to unite the Arab peoples of the Gulf region under his rule, while Kim Jong Il for the moment seems obsessed with regime survival.

There is no cookie-cutter approach to foreign policy. In the axis of evil, one size does not fit all – nor should it.