Appeasing North Korea

...market for Pyongyang’s exports, could enable the regime to reverse this decline...

...Their delegation arrived at the new round of talks with the United States in Berlin on November 15 with their usual stony faces and militant posture, confident that the threat of force will protect them from international pressure to reform...

...The lesson here—bellicosity is rewarded with improved relations—would seem to make the development of weapons of mass destruction an attractive course for despots clinging to power in failed states...

...The advisory group found, however, that the new reactors will not end Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program in and of themselves...

...The new report, released November 3, is the work of the North Korea Advisory Group, a panel of nine Republican members appointed by speaker Dennis Hastert...

...emergency food aid is not used as leverage for the agricultural and economic reforms (notably the shifting of resources from the military industries to civilian development) needed for North Korea to feed itself...

...North Korea has had extensive contacts with the nuclear establishments in Pakistan and Russia and has attempted to acquire uranium enrichment technologies from Europe and Japan...

...BY WILLIAM R. HAWKINS It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation, To puff and look important and to say...

...The North Koreans have recently emphasized their work on nerve agents...

...North Korea’s missile program is also not covered by the Framework Agreement...

...North Korea “is a greater threat to international stability primarily in Asia and secondarily in the Middle East” than it was in 1994, concludes the advisory group...

...Ben Gilman, chairman of the International Relations Committee, headed the group, whose members included the chairmen of Armed Services (Floyd Spence) and Intelligence (Porter Goss...

...The United States remains vulnerable to this threat because the Clinton administration has refused to move forward with the deployment of a national missile defense system...

...In the meantime, the United States is supplying, free, roughly half of North Korea’s oil supplies as compensation for the closing of its Soviet-supplied 25-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon, the source of the country’s existing supply of weapons-grade plutonium...

...As for biological warfare, Pyongyang’s “effort is believed to have focused on the traditional agents: plague, typhoid, cholera, anthrax, smallpox, yellow fever, botulinum toxin, and hemorrhagic fevers...

...It is a louder message by far than the pieties about nonproliferation that Clinton administration officials trot out whenever necessary and convenient...

...elaborate, there were, in fact, two major reasons for Hussein’s “restraint”: The United States threatened massive— implicitly even nuclear—retaliation for any use of such weapons...

...As the report states, “This means that the United States cannot discount the possibility that North Korea could produce additional nuclear weapons outside of the constraints imposed by the 1994 Agreed Framework...

...According to the advisory group, the goal of nonproliferation has not been achieved...

...Rudyard Kipling, “Dane-Geld” Kipling’s verses, written at the dawn of this century about the tribute the Saxons paid to the Danes a millennium ago, capture the conservative view of history as a recurring pattern of problems and competing solutions...

...Based on current trends, that total will likely exceed $1 billion next year,” says the advisory group, adding, “This aid frees other resources for North Korea to divert to its weapons of mass destruction and conventional military programs...

...And that is called paying the Dane-geld...

...Just such brave words were heard recently during the debate over the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty...

...Under the Framework Agreement, North Korea is to receive two light-water nuclear reactors, valued at over $4 billion, financed by South Korea, Japan, and the United States...

...Though Washington could refuse to supply the new reactors with fuel, other sources of supply might be available...

...Having learned tactics from the Soviet Union, North Korea has weaponized these chemical and biological agents for use on a variety of systems, from heavy mortars to ballistic missiles...

...This is precisely the approach the United States should apply to North Korea...

...Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you...

...The crux of their findings: that Pyongyang’s development of weapons of mass destruction “has advanced considerably over the last five years...

...Business and Industry Council...

...Though Russia and China are generally cited as potential suppliers, global competition in the nuclear industry might open up other, ostensibly commercial, possibilities...

...The advisory group concluded that the aid already given to North Korea has helped the regime to maintain control...

...We have proposed a comprehensive move towards normalization with Korea...

...The Clinton administration’s lifting of sanctions, allowing investment in North Korea and the opening of the U.S...

...For the same reasons, U.N...

...In particular, the panel cited evidence that North Korea is still developing nuclear weapons, even though activity was frozen at the Yongbyon and Taechon sites targeted by the 1994 agreement...

...And Saddam Hussein feared provoking the coalition to go beyond the liberation of Kuwait and overthrow his regime...

...Believing that the heavily militarized, Stalinist regime in Pyongyang is simply too dangerous to confront, the administration has chosen instead to pay it tribute: When North Korea challenges with weapons, the United States responds with concessions...

...But we’ve proved it again and again, That once you have paid him the Dane-geld You never get rid of the Dane...

...Five years of economic aid has accomplished what appeasement usually does...

...In short, appeasement is buying Pyongyang the time it needs to extend the reach of its weapons, until they can threaten the United States itself...

...aid to North Korea has grown from zero to more than $270 million annually, totaling $645 million over the last five years...

...Thus, the Framework Agreement is not the technological fix the administration has claimed it to be...

...The core purpose of the initiative was deterrence through strength: to retain “the military, political, and economic capacity to retaliate against those who might contemplate the use of [weapons of mass destruction], so that the costs of such use be seen as outweighing the gains...

...policy is not effectively addressing the threat posed by North Korean weapons of mass destruction, missiles and their proliferation, . . . [while] U.S...

...Economic sanctions combined with the collapse of much of North Korea’s unreformed Stalinist economy have greatly undermined Pyongyang’s conventional military strength...

...The lack of hard currency has curtailed the importation of modern weapons, and fuel shortages and starvation (which has claimed an estimated one million lives in a country of 24 million people in the last five years) are taking their toll on military readiness...

...Current U.S...

...Its three-stage Taepo Dong 1 was test-launched in 1998, and it continues to develop the larger and more powerful Taepo Dong 2. Although Pyongyang suspended long-range missile tests in September in exchange for the easing of economic sanctions, the advisory group concludes that, “Unlike five years ago, North Korea can now strike the United States with a missile that could deliver high explosive, chemical, biological, or possibly nuclear weapons...

...Indeed, they will provide North Korea with enough plutonium to produce 100 bombs a year, should the regime decide to reprocess the material...

...The latest manifestation of the Dane-geld folly is the Clinton administration’s policy toward North Korea...

...A policy of reforming . . . would also take time— more time than it would take [North Korea] to proceed with its weapons and ballistic missiles programs...

...As Perry explained to CNN a few weeks before the report was issued, with provocations by the North challenging the “uneasy deterrence” on the Korean peninsula, it was “necessary to move forward in a more positive way with North Korea...

...The report cited the experience of Desert Storm, noting that Saddam Hussein had refrained from using his large stock of chemical weapons against the coalition forces...

...This is the gist of the report released on October 12 by the president’s North Korea policy coordinator, former defense secretary William Perry...

...Washington should leave no doubt whatever in Pyongyang that any deployment of weapons of mass destruction would be met with superior strength, and that any use of such weapons would bring the regime to a swift end...

...We will therefore pay you cash to go away...

...aid is not well-enough monitored to prevent its being used first and foremost to sustain the regime, its loyalists, and its instruments of tyranny and aggression...

...Earlier, they could be found in the Counterproliferation Initiative contained in the 1995 report of the secretary of defense, none other than William Perry...

...The Framework Agreement covers only nuclear facilities...

...The advisory group found that Pyongyang “is generally credited with possessing a full range of chemical warfare agents, including nerve, blister, choking, and blood agents...

...The Clinton administration’s policy achieves the opposite...

...This sends a message about the usefulness of nuclear weapons that is heard well beyond Korea...

...The policy team believed that the North Korean regime would strongly resist such reform,” says the report, “viewing it as indistinguishable from a policy of undermining...

...Pyongyang has produced and deployed missiles and has exported them to Iran and Pakistan...

...Since survival is the top priority of the North Korean leaders, that survival should be made dependent on good behavior, not saber-rattling...

...Not surprisingly, the North Koreans have concluded that defiance works...

...It is also believed that [they are] interested in developing binary nerve agents...

...Although the report did not William R. Hawkins is visiting fellow at the U.S...

...But maybe not for long...

...As for the idea that the United States should press for political and economic liberalization in North Korea, Perry rejected it...

...All of which only validates Kipling’s final verse: So when you are requested to pay up or be molested, You will find it better policy to say: We never pay any one Dane-geld No matter how trifling the cost, For the end of that game is oppression and shame, And the nation that plays it is lost...

...The group found that the flow of U.S...

...U.S...

...assistance sustains a repressive and authoritarian regime...

...As a new assessment of relations with North Korea by House Republicans confirms, Washington has been rewarding Pyongyang’s militancy ever since the two nations signed a Framework Agreement in 1994 “freezing” North Korea’s nuclear program in exchange for substantial economic assets...