Bush on a sticky wicket with N. Korea

By F.J. Khergamvala

TOKYO, DEC. 20. As the Clinton administration winds down to give way to a Bush administration that threatens to make the national missile defence (NMD) an essential ingredient of its strategic plans, North Korea's missiles development policy waits at the crossroads between what has been offered to Mr. Bill Clinton and what is acceptable to Mr. George W. Bush.

The entire question of a Clinton visit to Pyongyang has boiled down to the missiles deal, which in turn, may lead to the U.S. lifting many sanctions and providing or blessing aid to North Korea. That in turn implies not merely recognition but firm intent on the part of the U.S. to help preserve the North Korean system. But aid also requires the so far absent consensus among the Republicans. North Korea gains prestige from a Clinton visit, but would probably give little away without assurances that Mr. Bush will pick up from where Mr. Clinton left.

When the Clinton administration began debating the overall viability of a national missile defence scheme, the real strategic motive was China but the U.S. used the ``rogue'' North Korean State's missiles capabilities to cloak its real justification. Mr. Kim Jong Il has put many missile related concessions up for bargain, but acceptance by the U.S. could also undermine the justifications advanced by Mr. Bush for developing the missile defence. The transition in the U.S. takes place at a time when the terms are still being negotiated. Mr. Kim Jong Il may have timed it such that a negotiation begun by one administration could either commit the next one, or at the very least lock any post-Clinton administration into his singular purpose, that of obtaining commitment to survival of the North Korean system.

The next Secretary of State, Gen. Colin Powell and the National Security Advisor, Ms. Condoleezza Rice have made fairly explicit that the Bush administration will go ahead with national missile defence. Neither have recently linked the NMD with North Korea. In a statement that bore no hint of a compromise on NMD, but which could only be inferred to include Pyongyang, Gen. Powell said the time had come to move in the direction ``to take away the currency associated with strategic offensive weapons and the blackmail that is inherent in some regime having that kind of a weapon and thinking they can hold us hostage.''

Over the past six years, the U.S. has negotiated successfully with blackmail, and reciprocally, so too has North Korea. Dr. William Perry, who as Defence Secretary, scarcely uttered a sentence without the term ``rogue State,'' two years later became the Clinton administration's chief coordinator for North Korea. He eventually did the carrot and stick deal with the North. It was a deal conceptually founded on the South Korean President, Mr. Kim Dae Jung's sunshine policy of engagement but negotiated by brandishing U.S. military power and financial influence in international lending institutions. But it was also Part II of the 1994 Agreed Framework on Pyongyang's nuclear capabilities.

Many saw the contradiction between the rhetoric about the North as a ``rogue State'' (now ``States of concern'') and constant, serious engagement with North Korea over six years. North Korea's shrewd policy-making architects also saw the opportunity to follow through the 1994 deal and advance its foreign policy of extortion.

In 1994, the U.S. and North Korea were absolutely on the brink of war on Pyongyang's nuclear programme. A back down by both led to an Agreed Framework, whereby the North would abandon, step by step its nuclear programme, if a U.S. led consortium would take step by step measures to provide it with two replacement 1,000 megawatt light water reactors and heavy fuel oil until the new reactors were ready. If a deal could be done on the nuclear programme, the North felt the U.S. might also see fit to engage it on a bargain on missiles.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : International
Previous : Taliban not to hand over Osama
Next     : U.K. panel seeks to rein in rabble-rousers