Oracle Online

Way back in 1994, before North Korea was dubbed a member of the Axis of Evil by our own saber-rattling leader, North Korea and the United States signed the Agreed Framework treaty. This agreement was not an official treaty recognized by the Senate, but a mutual understanding that was recognized by the UN Security Council. The big concern was that North Korea would reprocess spent fuel from its reactor to produce plutonium.

Under the Agreed Framework, North Korea discontinued its production of plutonium in exchange for the construction of light water reactor power plants paid for mostly by South Korea and Japan. This appeared to be effective at significantly delaying North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
In October 2002, nine months after Bush’s Axis of Evil comments, United States officials went to North Korea to confront the government about the alleged discovery of a secret uranium enrichment program. Transforming uranium into a legitimate weapons-grade compound would have taken North Korea a very long time. Regardless, the United States halted compliance with the Agreed Framework immediately. Shipments of fuel oil ended. The consortium of nations working on North Korea’s light water reactors stopped construction. North Korea immediately withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, another component of the Agreed Framework. North Korea expelled weapons inspectors and announced it would resume reprocessing plutonium.

The Bush administration reacted with the tough talk with which we have become so familiar. In July, North Korea tested missiles capable of carrying a nuclear device. The missiles sputtered and harmlessly crashed into the Sea of Japan. Stephen J. Hadley, Bush’s national security advisor, said the tests “defied the international community.” A few days before the actual test, the State Department declared that a North Korean test would be “an unacceptable threat to peace and stability.” Again, North Korea called the bluff.

North Korea is in no position to fire a long-range nuclear missile at the United States. Few regard North Korea’s weapons program as a significant threat to any nation. But this doesn’t mean we’re in the clearčfar from it.

Japan and South Korea are quite capable of producing nuclear weapons, but have not done so in lieu of the United States’ very expansive nuclear umbrella. Their governments may begin to reconsider this policy with a nuclear-armed North Korea in their backyard. William Perry, Clinton’s Secretary of Defense from 1994-97, wondered aloud in a Washington Post column if this test would spark an arms race in the Asia-Pacific region.

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned that as many as 30 countries could soon have technology which would allow them to produce atomic weapons. Chief among this group, Iran is quite unlikely to be deterred after the United States’ lackluster effort in preventing North Korea from going nuclear.

Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary of Political Affairs and third-ranking State Department official, bragged that the recent sanctions were “among the toughest ever imposed on any country by the United Nations.” UNICEF and other humanitarian aid groups are very concerned that the sanctions will do little to undercut the North Korean government and instead hurt its own peoplečdependent on foreign aid for food for most of the past decade. And this aid has already been slipping as a result of missile tests and other government gestures.

Last Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a statement declaring the U.N. sanctions sent a “clear message.” A clear message that North Korea will become another foreign policy failure.