Rogue State Rollback

...We cannot countenance a global order in which nuclear technology available to the highest bidder reorders world affairs in favor of our enemies...

...North Korea's actions are driven by its expectation, which we have nurtured, that a policy of extortion through threat of attack will once again compel us to appease the regime of Kim Jong Il...

...Only if North Korea is prepared to surrender the enriched uranium it secretly attained, the spent fuel rods that would yield enough plutonium for three to five nuclear weapons, as well as dismantle the reactor it now threatens to restart, should we or any other country consider any assistance that might help North Korea escape the certain destiny of a failed state...

...We chose to avoid them, and our irresolution has placed us in even greater danger...

...That is all the more reason to take whatever action necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from becoming a threat of equal magnitude and just as difficult to confront...

...North Korea itself has declared the Agreed Framework dead and withdrawn from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty...

...But this would only instruct other rogue states in the benefits of threatening America...

...Freezing Pyongyang's nuclear program in place while we and our allies prolong the reign of the world's last Stalinist regime does not accomplish that objective, but merely encourages future attempts at nuclear blackmail...

...Failure to disarm Pyongyang will encourage grave challenges to our security elsewhere, as the North peddles its wares to other rogue states and terrorists...

...By indulging in the same wishful thinking and finger-crossing as its predecessor, it has allowed this false debate to supplant a more honest and corrective appraisal...

...But South Korean policy today seems motivated more by fear than by logic...

...And the Chinese would surely want to avoid an American military occupation of North Korea in the event of war with Pyongyang, or the possibility that Taiwan might seek nuclear weapons in response to regional proliferation...

...The greater danger it poses is...

...Both the president and secretary of state publicly ruled out the use of force, although force could eventually prove to be the only means to prevent North Korea from acquiring a nuclear arsenal—a dangerously shortsighted precedent that even the Clinton administration did not publicly suggest...

...Those who counsel a return to the status quo fail to grasp the danger of rewarding threats with retreat and concession...

...The dream of reunification held by most Koreans, and the desire of many for a reduction in the U.S...

...Regrettably, the Clinton adminisJohn McCain is the senior senator from Arizona...

...America's challenge in Asia is to compel North Korea's nuclear disarmament, protect ourselves and our allies from the insecurity caused by the nuclear ambitions and nature of North Korea's regime, and demonstrate to other rogue leaders that America will not be blackmailed into violating first principles of sound statecraft...

...Today, North Korea poses a greater danger than Iraq, and confronting it presents a more difficult challenge...

...The agreement was frontloaded with benefits for North Korea, even allowing it to retain material to develop more nuclear weapons and advanced missiles that will soon be capable of striking the continental United States...

...There can be no going back...

...military presence, are not served by policies that extend the reign of the North Korean dictatorship...

...BY JOHN MCCAIN NORTH KOREA'S PURSUIT of a nuclear arsenal directly threatens the security of the American people, as well as our ability to shape the international order so as to strengthen the stability of Asia, defeat the global threat of terrorism, and enhance the security of the united states and our allies...

...We should move aggressively to help our allies deploy missile defenses to protect them from the North Korean threat...

...In the face of North Korea's nuclear provocation, a return to the failed policies of the past is unacceptable...

...Pyongyang now flaunts the failure of u.s...

...The use of military force to defend vital American security interests must always be a last resort, as it is in this crisis...

...Security Council, accompanied by interdiction of critical shipments into and out of North Korea...

...But if we fail to achieve the international cooperation necessary to end this threat, then the countries in the region should know with certainty that while they may risk their own populations, the United States will do whatever it must to guarantee the security of the American people...

...We should negotiate nothing with the North Korean regime so long as it maintains its right to develop nuclear weapons...

...We should encourage international efforts to freeze the $4 billion in personal wealth Kim Jong Il has salted away in offshore accounts...

...Those nations with the greatest interest in North Korea's denuclearization do not seem to have grasped the threat a nuclear North Korea poses to their interests...

...We should immediately pursue the imposition of multilateral sanctions at the U.N...

...The United States should reimpose the sanctions on Pyongyang it lifted in 1999...

...Policies that sustain Kim Jong Il's regime do not serve the long-term interests of the Korean people...

...But the greater difficulty of resolving the Korean crisis is not the central concern...

...In exchange, North Korea—a regime infamous for its deceit, hostility to the united states and its allies, and the megalomania of its ruler—provided a mere promise of future good faith...

...Yet, the Bush administration must accept part of the blame...

...Proliferation would flourish...

...tration pursued a policy that was all carrot and no stick...

...North Korea and Iraq present different faces of the same danger...

...We clearly enjoyed a false peace from 1994 to 2002...

...After first responding appropriately to North Korean violations of the agreement and refusing even to discuss with North Korea its extortion demands, the administration now appears to have embraced, and in some respects exceeded, the style and substance of Clinton's diplomacy...

...And spare us the usual lectures about American unilateralism...

...We should encourage China to open its border to North Korean refugees...

...This doesn't absolve us of the responsibility to meet and overcome the threat any more than it replaces the necessity of overcoming the threat from Iraq...

...policy by trumpeting its nuclear progress and seeking to extort even more concessions...

...Many of us questioned how this could possibly serve our security interests...

...The administration's public rejection of North Korean demands for new negotiations gave way to public offers of direct talks, then one day later to a public offer to discuss formally assuring North Korea that the United States would never be the first to use force on the peninsula...

...Our security depends on preventing North Korea from possessing a nuclear arsenal...

...The views of our South Korean ally are important...

...To overcome it we should lead our allies in the aggressive, multilateral isolation of North Korea...

...Beijing should see that a nuclear standoff in Asia threatens the stability on which China's economic growth depends...

...North Korea began a secret uranium enrichment program after 1995...

...This rapid deterioration of our resolve is as reckless as it is disingenuous...

...Nine years ago we faced a difficult set of options...

...Regrettably, the debate over the Korean crisis has been limited to arguments over whether the Bush administration's rhetoric and initial skepticism about North Korea's good faith provoked it, when it is plain that the flaws in the 1994 agreement, and the Clinton administration's ensuing diplomacy, as well as the nature of the North Korean regime, led inevitably to the current dangerous state of affairs...

...Instead, they immorally prolong the suffering of North Koreans...

...Most important, we should make clear to China and others the consequences of acquiescing to North Korea's nuclear ambitions, including Japan's emergence as a nuclear power...

...In 1994, faced with a similar challenge, the united states agreed to provide North Korea half a million tons of fuel oil annually and construct two civilian nuclear reactors in return for a freeze on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs...

...It thus mistook for resolving the North Korean crisis what merely postponed its apogee...

...By granting North Korea the time and the means to improve its nuclear and missile capability, the agreement made America and our allies less, not more, secure...

...Japan, understandably, will be under enormous pressure to deploy nuclear weapons absent North Korean disarmament, setting off a proliferation race in Asia with serious consequences for China's ambitions...

...North Korea is the world's greatest rogue arms merchant...

...That must be the primary object of our diplomacy...

...We would prefer the company of North Korea's neighbors, but we will make do without it if we must...