Lessons from North Korea for Israel and Iran
On January 20, President Obama told a New York reception that “we’re not going to tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of this Iranian regime.” Four days later, in his State of the Union address, he issued this declaration:
Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal.
The words were as direct as presidential language gets: we will not “tolerate” an Iranian nuclear weapon and will take “no options off the table” — complete with Obama’s trademark preface, “Let there be no doubt.” In his Super Bowl interview on Sunday, Obama reiterated that “no option is off the table.”
But this is not the first time an American president declared he would not “tolerate” a nuclear weapon, insisted on dismantlement of a nuclear weapons program, applied crippling sanctions — and then declined to act after the regime violated an explicit presidential warning.
George W. Bush said it in 2003 with respect to North Korea; issued the warning in 2006; failed to act in 2007; and left office with an expanded North Korea nuclear weapons program in place, which expanded dramatically under Barack Obama.
The North Korea story is important not only in itself, but because of its obvious implications for the current face-off with Iran. As Iran evaluates President Obama’s seemingly clear words, it knows what happened — or didn’t happen — with respect to similar rhetoric in the case of North Korea. From the memoirs recently published by George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice, we can now piece together what occurred. The story places Obama’s recent words in a context that leads to an important conclusion.
In 2001, the Bush administration inherited a failed North Korea policy. The Clinton administration had negotiated an “Agreed Framework” in 1994 after North Korea threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Agreed Framework provided $4.5 billion in aid and assistance in exchange for North Korea’s promise to suspend work on its covert nuclear weapons program, but the promise was not kept. The incoming Bush administration was told that the most pressing national security question was North Korea, which was threatening again to expel all inspectors and restart its facilities.
Bush decided the Clinton approach had been backwards: U.S. concessions had been made for North Korean promises of future performance. Bush told his national security team that henceforth North Korean performance would precede any additional U.S. aid or diplomatic concessions. The new administration considered the North Korean nuclear program and its possible proliferation a global, not just a regional, issue — a concern magnified by the events of September 11 and the inclusion of North Korea in an “axis of evil” with Iraq and Iran.
There were raucous debates within the Bush administration about how to respond to North Korea. Everyone agreed North Korea was engaged in serious violations, but they differed on how to respond. Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, together with John Bolton in the State Department, favored regime change, believing the existing regime would never make a deal (or at least not one worth making). Regime change had occurred in Iraq, and late in 2003 Libya gave up its nuclear weapons program out of concern for its own regime.
On May 23, 2003, at a joint press conference with the Japanese prime minister, Bush declared the U.S. would not “tolerate” nuclear weapons in North Korea, and he defined what that meant:
We will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea. … We will not settle for anything less than the complete, verifiable, and irreversible elimination of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Rice favored a policy of “tailored containment” — combining pressure with sending a U.S. envoy and expanding the group of nations to negotiate. She personally prevailed on Bush to support that approach, recounting in her memoir that she had a “heart to heart” talk with him, telling him it “was surely a long shot, but maybe Kim Jong-il could be induced, step by step, to give up his nuclear ambitions in exchange for benefits, which would also be doled out step by step.” Her approach was to unite other countries on a strategy of insisting not on regime change but simply a change in regime policy, while developing defensive measures.
The “Six Party Talks” began in 2003 and from the beginning made almost no progress. But in September 2005, Rice’s envoy, Christopher Hill, reported he was close to getting agreement on a “Joint Statement” that would set a “framework” for denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. In her memoir, Rice calls the Joint Statement a “breakthrough” document. But here is how she describes what happened after that:
Unfortunately, the North Korean issue would soon settle into a kind of predictable pattern; cooperation from Pyongyang and progress in negotiations followed by misdeeds and stalemate. In November, the talks stalled once again, and they would lie fallow for more than a year as North Korea probed for division among the parties and an opportunity to walk back past agreements.
The talks not only stalled but broke down. On July 4, 2006, North Korea test-fired seven missiles, including an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), ignoring multiple warnings not to do so. The United States and Japan sponsored stronger sanctions at the UN.
A few months later, North Korea exploded an underground nuclear device. The next day, Bush went before cameras at the White House and declared that North Korea was “one of the world’s leading proliferators of missile technology, including transfers to Iran and Syria.” Then he issued this warning:
The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable of the consequences of such action.
Rice thought the North Korean missile tests and underground explosion gave the U.S. the “upper hand” in public relations, and that it was therefore time to . . . engage. She argued for a strategy of offering North Korea a “grand bargain” (her words) — a peace treaty recognizing the regime if it would give up its nuclear weapons.
In early 2007 she pushed ahead, sending Hill back to North Korea in hopes of moving the process forward, and the U.S. agreed to ease sanctions and provide fuel oil in exchange for North Korea agreeing once again to a process for dismantling its nuclear weapons program.
In the Spring of 2007, however, the U.S. also learned that North Korea was secretly assisting Syria in building an undeclared nuclear reactor — one capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium. The head of Israeli intelligence met at the White House with Vice President Cheney and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, going over photos and other intelligence material. The pictures showed the reactor had a “striking resemblance” (the same phrase is used by Bush, Cheney, and Rice in each of their books) to the North Korean one.
After reading this, one begins to wonder if there is some law that only idiots & naive fools can be part of our government!
Yes, it’s the “Inviolate Law of Bureaucracies”. In a bureaucracy if you do what’s always been done then you can never fail. If the project fails then no blame comes your way as you did what’s always been done. On the other hand, if you step outside of “procedure” then you’ll automatically be deemed a failure. If the project works then it would have worked better had you followed “procedure”, if it doesn’t work then it would have had you followed “procedure”. In a bureaucracy results don’t matter (in fact good results are frowned upon as they put undue pressure on your co-workers), what matters is how you did the job and how everybody feels about it.
Seems to me, when push came to shove, whether its the republicans or the democrats, no one wanted to risk a million dead in a second Korean War to enforce nuclear non-proliferation, for which the legal basis for such a holocaust is certainly problematic when a nation can withdraw from the treaty. Of course, no such mass risk to life and limb was existent when Israel took out the Syrian reactor or Sadam’s reactor twenty years earlier. Democrats seem to have a history of taking liberties with international authorizations to enforce international rules of conduct, the most recent being the creative use and abuse of no fly zones in Libya to facilitate a change in tribal government, much to the consternation of the Russians, the Chinese, and the Arab League who were allegedly duped into going along. No wonder the Russians and Chinese refuse to be fooled again and sign off on a security council resolution to implement the Obama administration’s humanitarian ideals and goals for a Syrian no fly zone.
Great article.
Bush should have never listened to both Rice and Gates in the first place. It is because of these 2 losers who had given to the demands of Europeans, Russians and Chinese that we are here with nuclear armed North Korea. And we are still here to face an even more dangerous scenario, a nuclear armed Islamic Regime hell bent on gaining total control of the region and beyond into Europe and Americas.
The lesson from all of these failures is not to ever make the mistake thinking that you can bargain with totalitarian regimes who openly say what their goal is and have no shame and fear for doing so!!! This means both the Islamic Regime and Syria.
I always said no matter what people think of Cheney as a character, he is a brilliant mind along with John Bolton. Bush should have taken their advice instead of putting his faith in Rice and Gates who were considered more of moderate policy makers in those times when Bush was being loathed as a warmonger and wanted to fix his image. And if he meaning Bush did take Cheney’s and Bolton’s advice, we would have not have these arguments 4 years later at this time.
As a reminder, Reagan was furious when Israel bombed Saddam’s reactor at Osirak in 1981. The US supported a UN resolution condemning Israel for it. Ten years later when US troops were in Iraq it was another story.
Look what is going on in Syria now. I dont see anyone lining up to thank Israel for destroying their nuclear program. Hey Turkey! You are welcome!
Israel was ready to go against Iran in 2008 and Bush would not give them airspace or the bombs.
Now Iran is “Israel’s problem” and everything is under a mountain. All this dithering around while Iran prepares defenses. It may not be possible now for Israel. US could do it but not much chance of that. I get the feeling that Obama is willing to confront Iran right up to the last dead Israeli.
Half the problem now is everyone involved knows that Obama has no credibility. As the article points out we have heard this tune from American presidents before. Obama is bluffing and the Iranians are much better at that game.
Why are Pyongyang and Tehran still standing?
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Given China’s support for North Korea, did the Bush administration have any realistic options to achieve regime change and/or and an end to the nuclear program in North Korea?
I think don (#2 above) has it right about one reason, maybe the main reason that Bush did not hit North Korea. NK could have killed not just a million, but millions within hours of being attacked, using its CBW weapons against South Korea and perhaps Japan.
Iran does not have nearly as credible a threat, but it probably thinks it has.
Complicating matters is the fact that most Iranians, including those who hate the regime, want Iran to have a nuke.
Finally, if starving NK has a nuke, isn’t it likely that Iran has it too, and the rest of this stuff is partly for show to get the Norks off the hook (and to create eventually an independent Iranian capability)?
Iran has orbited satellites. An orbiting nuke represents a dramatic threat to the US through an EMP attack. Even a fission-only weapon (which is all Iran is likely to have) is enough to devastate parts of the US and kill tens of thousands to tens of millions. I hope Obama fully appreciates this, and doesn’t imagine that his new toys, Seal Team 6, are all it takes to stop this threat. ST6 is awesome, but real military power counts too.
How ironic that North Korea is helping Syria gain nuclear capabilities!
The GWB administration warned Gadhafi that he would meet the fate of Saddam Hussein unless he gave up his nuke program. He complied, and faced much the same fate anyway, thanks to Obama who did not feel bound by any of GWB’s assurances.
Tinpot dictators are observant and have good memories. Why would anybody listen to us now?
We have NO options other than to take out Iran’s nuke program by force or to assist Israel to do that.
It is quite clear neither GW Bush nor BH Obama have the guts , the intellectual lucidity, the calm resolve of Winston Churchill, or Margaret Thatcher. THe actual resident in the White House is a narcissistic teenager who spends his time looking at himself in a golden frame mirror and asks the mirror ” who is the most liberal, the brightest , the smartest guy in Washington DC ? ”
His view of the world is himself, and not beyond.For this kind of unachieved character , the normal way of dealing with the world is through escape, delusion, illusion, fantasy, theory, and body language.This handful of deceptive tricks were enough to convince a majority of US voters in 2008. But the grand illusion could not last on the outside world scene. For a good poker player, ( like the russian , the iranian chess players, ) BH Obama is read as a bluff, and the butchers of Damascus, & Teheran hare so happy to play cat and mouse with such a weak figure.So BH Obama is the perfect partner for the worst enemies of the USA, Europe, Israel.Now that you americans are aware of the BH Obama character , it is necessary to go beyond and to analyze how BH Obama operates on the outside world. Considers the iranian and syrian popular revolts:BH Obama is standing on the fence, despite all his liberal creed being openly raped by the butchers of Damascus and Teheran. At this point one must ask himself : Is BHO weak ? is BHO lucid about his own weakness ? Is BHO a silent accomplice of those regimes ? I decrypt his actions are much closer to complicity since it is flagrant to any observer that those regimes are enjoying BHO as a perfect partner : Just enough resilient thanks to his reprobation on moral ground, but without any teeth to bite and react. This also the exact situation in the mounting confrontation between Iran & Israel: BHO has decided he will ” help ” Israel to be neutralized and left without any real military options while I the same time he will enforce economic sanctions which are only a smokescreen.For the petro-nazis rulers in Teheran BHO is the perfect partner, exactly as Neville Chamberlain was the perfect partner for the nazis in 1938. The borderline between weakness , and plain complicity is now the most burning question: is BHO’s behavior the behavior of a traitor, a real foe of the western world ? Did you americans landed in the White House an Aldrich Ames, a an Alger Hiss ?