You tell me if this constitutes appeasement under Mr. Rumsfeld’s definition. At the UN debate on possible sanctions against on North Korea, Bush is going soft in order to please Russia and China:
UNITED NATIONS (AP) – The United States dropped the possibility of using force against North Korea over the regime’s purported nuclear test, a concession to Russia and China in the hope of seeing a U.N. Security Council resolution on the standoff passed by Friday. […]
The United States reported significant progress Thursday night in bridging differences with Russia and China after more than two hours of negotiations among ambassadors from the five permanent council nations – the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France – and Japan’s ambassador, the current council president. […]
“We have made very substantial progress,” U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told reporters after the meeting.
Moscow and Beijing have wanted a more moderate response to Pyongyang’s nuclear brinkmanship in the belief this might lure the reclusive communist nation back to disarmament talks.
China wanted to ensure that nothing in the draft could trigger military action, and the new U.S. draft circulated Thursday night eliminated a blanket arms embargo in the previous text. Under the new version, nations would be barred from selling to or supplying North Korea with specific weapons – including missiles, tanks, warships and combat aircraft.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Bush has many options here. If he wants to get a sanctions resolution passed by the UN Security Council, he must compromise on its terms in order to forestall either Russia or China from using their veto. What this does point out, however, is the rank hypocrisy of the Bush administration’s rhetoric regarding Iran. Not that long ago, Bush and Co. were claiming that those who suggested that it might be a good idea if we engaged in negotiations with Iran were appeasing Islamofascism. Yet, when it comes to North Korea, a far more serious danger at this time (since we know that it possesses enough plutonium to make several atomic bombs), Bush is more than willing to engage North Korea in concert with our allies, and is even willing to make concessions on proposed UN sanctions, including the removal of the one option that he claims he never takes off the table when it comes to Iran, the use of military force.
It seems more than disingenuous for Bush and his senior officials such as Rumsfeld to allege that critics of the administration’s policy toward Iran are advocating a policy of Neville Chamberlain style appeasement under the circumstances. North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is a clear and present danger to the interests of America and its allies in East Asia. It’s already been established that North Korea has derived hundreds of millions of dollars from the export its ballistic missile technology. It isn’t that far fetched to assume that North Korea has, or will, engage in the sale of its nuclear technology to states or non-state actors which are willing to meet its price:
(cont.)
The greatest danger from Monday’s underground nuclear test may lie not in the potential for a missile attack on another country, but in the export of nuclear devices or technology, to which US President George W. Bush referred in his first remarks on the explosion.
Peter Beck, of the International Crisis Group in Seoul, said: “I’m not worried about them using one of their warheads on a neighbour because that would be suicide. But given their record of selling whatever they have – drugs, missile technology, counterfeit currency – the primary concern has to be proliferation.”
That Bush’s inaction and inattentiveness toward the threat posed by North Korea has been a major foreign policy blunder goes without question. One very real consequence of that failure is the increased risk of a nuclear arms race in East Asia with Japan and South Korea the most likely nations to consider adding nukes to their nation’s military arsenals. Could this have been prevented through a policy of active engagement with the North such as the one pursued by the Clinton administration? We will never know. Once Bush put a target on Kim Jung Il’s head by making him a charter member of the Axis of Evil and made regime change in North Korea the official policy of the United States, the North’s acquisition of nuclear weapons became a foregone conclusion.
Regrettably, I fear that Mr. Bush will absorb the wrong lesson from this debacle. Rather than push him toward a greater diplomatic engagement with Iran over its much less dangerous nuclear program, I suspect it will only harden his resolve to seek a military solution to the Iranian crisis. By failing to employ all the tools available to him as the leader of the world’s sole remaining superpower to contain North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, he has made the United States look either weak and feckless, or dangerously inept, when it comes to dealing with threats to both our national security and the security of our allies. Sadly, I fear he is well on his way to making an even greater mistake with respect to Iran.