From Today’s Wall Street Journal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1035841423156683751.djm,00.html
October 29, 2002
COMMENTARY
Battling the Bribers
By DANNY GITTINGS
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The battle in Washington over how to handle North Korea has erupted into a bitter foreign-policy dispute within the administration.
On one side are the president’s political appointees, and George W. Bush himself. In addition to publicly branding North Korea part of an “axis of evil,” the president has made plain in internal meetings his contempt for Pyongyang’s nasty dictator. According to two administration sources, he has labeled Kim Jong Il a “political pygmy” and a “nasty dictator,” and questioned why South Korea’s appeasement-minded government shows so little concern for the awful way the gulag state mistreats its people.
In theory, what the president says should hold sway. But that has not stopped career foreign-service officers and holdovers from the Clinton administration, such as Charles Pritchard, the U.S. special envoy on North Korea, from fighting a vigorous rear-guard action to continue their failed policy of bribery and accommodation.
That stance often involves turning a blind eye to reality, even the recent revelation of Pyongyang’s uranium-enrichment program and intelligence reports of a Pakistani exchange of possibly strategic materials for a North Korean missile, both transported by a U.S.-built cargo plane. Indeed, during an internal meeting to come up with a response to North Korea’s recent nuclear threats, one prominent member of the appeasement camp characterized it as a “desperate cry for help.”
The battle within the administration over North Korean policy is fiercer than on other issues such as Iraq because the reputation of the appeasers is on the line as they battle to defend their track record of failed agreements. During the Clinton administration, the bribers dangled one gift after another in front of Pyongyang in the forlorn hope of persuading the evil regime to mend its ways.
The most infamous of these was the 1994 Agreed Framework – now thankfully on its last legs – which gave North Korea two nuclear reactors and large supplies of free oil in return for freezing a plutonium-based bomb-making program it never even admitted existed. After that, bribery became a habit, with extra food aid provided in return for being allowed to inspect a suspected nuclear site in 1999, and the Clinton administration officials scrambling to sign a deal on space-launch vehicle technology during their final days in office, until lack of time put paid to this.
The advent of a new presidency initially put a dent in the bribers’ plans. But with the Bushies’ attention distracted by other foreign-policy crises, from the war on terror to the need to tackle Iraq, it was only a matter of time before the appeasers began to claw back lost ground.
By July, they were almost back on track as, under pressure from South Korea and Japan, the administration agreed to resume a dialogue with Pyongyang by dispatching James Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, who is generally sympathetic to the bribery policy. Had that visit gone ahead as planned in July, Mr. Kelly would have been able to push the U.S. back toward the path of appeasement by dangling an array of agreed concessions before Pyongyang in return for promises of better behavior.
But, as two officials in different branches of the administration told me, North Korea’s dictator proved his own worst enemy. Only two days after being offered the Kelly visit, Kim allowed his navy to open fire on a Southern patrol boat in disputed waters off the west coast of the peninsula. Four South Korean sailors were killed. So too was any prospect of the Kelly visit going ahead as scheduled, despite frantic efforts to save it by officials in the East Asian and Pacific Affairs Bureau, the bribers’ headquarters within the State Department.
Within weeks, evidence emerged to pull the Bush administration back from the quagmire of appeasement.** U.S. intelligence discovered that a C-130 transport plane had been flown from Pakistan to North Korea, and returned carrying a Nodong missile, one of the proliferating regime’s favorite exports. It’s not clear exactly when the flight took place, although the C-130s were only supplied to Pakistan earlier this year as part of U.S. assistance in the war on terror.**
**American intelligence has reportedly been unable to establish what the C-130 transported to North Korea. But they know the cargo came from the Khan Research Laboratory in Pakistan, which has a centrifuge plant for enriching uranium for Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. And that it was valuable enough for Kim’s cash-strapped regime to send not only a missile in return, but also transfer $75 million into a bank account linked to the laboratory.
According to sources, the use of a U.S.-supplied plane for such proliferation purposes has been raised in several conversations between U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Gen. Pervez Musharraf. But after initially denying any knowledge of the transfers – a stance echoed in Islamabad’s public statements on the issue – the Pakistani leader’s subsequent responses were reportedly inconsistent and evasive. **
Together with evidence of the transfer of centrifuges from Pakistan to North Korea several years earlier, that was enough for the Bush administration to conclude in August that Pyongyang was violating the 1994 agreement. There was also evidence that Russian and Chinese companies supplied some of the equipment used in North Korea’s nuclear program. But these all involved dual-use technologies such as high-speed computers, and are seen by the U.S. as less of a cause for concern.
Despite this proof of Pyongyang’s cheating, the bribers still sought to push ahead with engagement. The East Asian and Pacific Affairs Bureau succeeded in rescheduling the Kelly visit for early October. They even drew up plans to deliver a friendly letter from President Bush to Kim, and hold banquets to toast North Korean leaders – overtures which U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice promptly scotched. Although the visit was allowed to go ahead, at a meeting attended by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld more hawkish officials insisted on rewriting Mr. Kelly’s “talking points,” the agreed list of topics for the trip, to put Pyongyang’s nuclear cheating at the top of the agenda.
With no choice but to follow his new script, Mr. Kelly confronted North Korea over its uranium enrichment program during his now banquetless trip. Pyongyang’s admission was a surprise to all. Neither faction within the Bush administration wanted such a confrontation at this point. Once the appeasers succeeded in arranging a visit, the hawks had no choice but to press the nuclear issue.
The hawks know that confronting Pyongyang right now will only distract from the move to topple Saddam Hussein. Indeed there are dark suspicions among some in the administration that this is part of the agenda of the State Department, which has shown some enthusiasm for drawing parallels between North Korea and Iraq. That also explains the reluctance of some officials who are hawks on other issues, such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, to take a tough stance toward Pyongyang.
But the bribers’ primary objective is to save the Agreed Framework, on which they have staked their reputations. They have already scored an initial victory by persuading President Bush to allow one oil shipment to be delivered to North Korea after the revelation of its nuclear deception. However, that policy is now under review and U.S. allies in Asia have reportedly been told there is little prospect of securing congressional approval for any further oil shipments next year.
On Friday, the appeasers went a step further and told the Washington Post that the U.S. might try to salvage parts of the Agreed Framework, despite North Korea’s admission of cheating. That brought a sharp retort in the same newspaper a day later, when a senior Bush administration official complained of “a serious breach” in official policy and “a State Department in revolt” over this and other issues.
The reality is that although the bribers are on the defensive after being proved so badly wrong by Pyongyang, they are far from beaten. A firm response from the president would probably be enough to put them in their corner once and for all. But that would require Mr. Bush to divert attention from Iraq. As the administration increasingly focuses on ousting Saddam Hussein – almost to the exclusion of all other foreign-policy issues – the appeasers will continue to claw back the ground they have lost, just as they have done before.
Mr. Gittings is The Asian Wall Street Journal’s deputy editorial page editor.