From American Politics Journal, Feb 20, 2007

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From American Politics Journal, Feb 20, 2007

So was it a good deal?

By Chris Gelken

It has been a week since parties to the six-way negotiations to close down North Korea ’s nuclear programs reached an agreement. So was it a good deal? After sifting through the comments of the best and the brightest, of the most informed, the simple answer is: we don’t know.

The step by step deal will, in the words of critics, “reward” Pyongyang with 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil in return for freezing activity at its main reactor in Yongbyon. As the North proceeds to dismantle its nuclear infrastructure, it will receive more benefits in return, including more fuel oil, security guarantees and diplomatic normalization.

The Bush administration dramatically toned down its rhetoric and relaxed its hardline stance, leaving the parties with essentially a warmed up version of the 1994 Agreed Framework. Democratic Sen. Carl Levin told Fox News that, “Bush took two steps backwards when he took office by refusing to speak with North Korea . He took two steps forward in the past week or so.” Two questions immediately spring to mind. What possessed a Democratic senator to speak to Fox News, and what prompted Bush into this spectacular turnaround?

C. Kenneth Quinones, a professor of Korean studies at Akita International University in Japan was a member of the State Department negotiating team that resolved the first Korean nuclear crisis. He describes as “bleak” any chance that this current agreement will be successful. That is, to clarify, “bleak at best.” Obviously, not a lot of optimism there. Odd, considering it is very similar to the deal he himself helped broker as a member of the negotiating team for the 1994 Agreed Framework.

Further describing the deal as a “rush job,” Quinones blamed Bush’s “preoccupation” with Iraq and Afghanistan . Preoccupation? You are preoccupied when you accidentally drive your shopping trolley into the heels of the person in front of you waiting at the supermarket checkout. When you are presiding over a war on two fronts, a hostile Congress, and 517,000 hits on Google for “Bush gaffes” – that goes well beyond “preoccupation.”

Quinones assessment is surprising, however. In August 2005 he wrote in the Mainichi Shimbun, “The pace of progress toward a peaceful diplomatic resolution may seem like a ‘never ending story,’ but such a process greatly enhances prospects for a peaceful outcome. After all, erasing half a century of animosity between the United States and North Korea cannot be accomplished quickly.”

That was 18 months ago, and he was commenting on criticism of the 30 months of negotiations since the six-party process began in 2003. Now he describes it as a “rush job.” How very odd.

He explains his position by saying he believes the Bush administration was “desperate for an agreement, overextended in the Middle East, it cannot afford instability on the Korean Peninsula . Thus it shifted abruptly from an extremely hard line, to being mushy on North Korea .”

The United States has been in Afghanistan since 2001 and was already in Iraq when Quinones wrote his Mainichi article. Bush may be many things, but “mushy” he isn’t.

Something changed, obviously. Did Bush “cave in” to the North Korean’s or to a Democrat-led Congress? The trail of events suggest the latter. Bush’s United Nation’s ambassador and North Korea hawk, John Bolton, “resigned” less than a month after he was re-nominated by Bush. His re-nomination for the post came just a few days after the Democrats captured Congress in November midterm elections. Bolton knew for a certainty that Congress would never confirm his appointment. Bush’s Security Council attack dog had been muzzled.

The December round of six-party talks was effectively the last “hurrah” for the hardliners. By January the Democrats had formally taken control of The Hill, and the whole dynamic was changing.

It would be fair to say that conclusion of the Feb. 13, 2007 Beijing Agreement was generally considered unthinkable in December 2006. But to illustrate just how much things had changed, we now see Bush slapping down former close associates. John Bolton was very quick and extremely vocal in criticizing the Beijing Agreement. Bush hushed him, and said of the man who just three months ago he had re-nominated to lead U.S. foreign policy in the United Nations; “He is just flat wrong.” How very, very, odd.

Also commenting on the Beijing Agreement, former House Speaker, Newt Gingrich. He said he is “most skeptical,” suspecting that “ North Korea is lying again as it did by developing the uranium program.”

However, according to sources considered more reliable than the former speaker, North Korea ’s alleged highly-enriched uranium program is precisely that -- alleged.

This is an issue that Quinones and other commentators seem to have brushed under the carpet. It was there, last week, for all to see. Physicist David Albright was recently in Pyongyang for high-level talks. He later told the Reuters news agency, “he believes the U.S. analysis was flawed and no information has emerged supporting the claim of a large-scale North Korean centrifuge plant. There may never have been a plant under construction or even planned.”

(Full report: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N09302593.htm)

There are other authoritative reports that Washington may have overstated the uranium claims, that there is no substantive evidence to suggest that North Korea is in fact engaged in a highly-enriched uranium weapons program. But somehow that snippet slipped beneath the media and pundit radar. It certainly slipped beneath Newt’s.

But given Washington ’s intelligence gaffes over the past several years, perhaps it wasn’t missed by the puppet masters who pull the strings at the State Department and perhaps even in the Oval Office. Perhaps they thought it time to face the reality of the situation and stop basing their negotiating strategy on “suspicions” and “allegations” -- and base it on what they actually know. Or think they know, or as Donald Rumsfeld once famously and succinctly put it: “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we don’t know we don’t know.”

Maybe, just maybe, the negotiators decided to go with the known knowns and leave the known unknowns and unknown unknowns for another time. Or is that too simple?

Postscript: As this article was being prepared, the head of South Korea ’s intelligence agency was quoted as telling a closed door parliamentary committee that he believes North Korea has a secret uranium enrichment program. Maybe something was lost in translation, but “believes” isn’t quite the same as “irrefutable, incontrovertible, evidence.”

(chrisgelken@yahoo.co.uk)

12:09:43 | 写入日志 | News and politics