For the Bush Administration, the Moment of Truth
We learn today that China intends to veto a resolution that would impose binding sanctions on North Korea’s missile trade. Got that? No binding sanctions on a starving nation’s trade in … missile components.
China and Russia introduced a resolution Wednesday deploring North Korea’s missile tests but dropping language from a rival proposal that could have led to military action against Pyongyang.
Excuse me? Who said anything about “military action?” Unless they mean intercepting their nukes, missiles, and dope on the high seas, in which case, the term seems deliberately intended by China, Russia, and the reporter to set up the false choice of a flaccid, toothless Hans Brix response or Korean War II — something the reporter knows absolutely no serious person is considering. This is fetid, amateurish reporting on an issue where the most of the media have failed miserably to give the story sufficient coverage to put it into perspective. And when they turn their attention to it, naturally, they fuck it up. China’s sudden attack of pacifism is most amusing of all, following its bellicose threats against Taiwan, South Korea, or the United States (need I restate that we’re only asking for sanctions here?).
World powers agreed Wednesday to send Iran back to the United Nations Security Council for possible punishment, saying the clerical regime has given no sign it means to negotiate seriously over its disputed nuclear program.
I don’t know if our asking the U.N. for two favors in one week squanders our capital or puts more pressure on Russia and China not to obstruct all meaningful responses to dangerous psychopaths. Our friend Nicholas Burns is running our Iran diplomacy, so my suspicion is that we’re taking a gradualist approach on Iran. The conventional wisdom is that they’re a few years from having nukes (ergo, we can afford to let the clock run out and get serious when they actually have them).
On North Korea, however, we are at The Moment of Truth. There is no more justification for this Administration’s gradualist approach, or for trying to win over a deeply unpopular Roh Administration that’s opted for “camp diplomacy” as a wholly-owned subsidiary of our nation’s enemies. Kim Jong Il has smacked us with his white glove. Our credibility rests on our next move. At this moment, we either get serious about wetting the soil from Kim Jong Il’s arteries or prove to all that our lame duck government is no longer producing testosterone. This Administration is out of time. It acts now, or never.
Yes, a U.N. resolution that would bind China, Russia, and South Korea would be nice to have, but it isn’t going to happen. That said, we can still use the United Nations as a forum for humiliating China and South Korea, and for recruiting domestic support for more robust policies and less deference to our foes at the U.N. We can denounce China as the abetter of democide against North Korea’s “expendable” classes without doing appreciable harm to their willingness to sell us things, just as our failure to say those things will earn us no good will from the Mandarin commisars and won’t stop the unilateral arms race that they have started.
Instead of being the object of everyone’s U.N. delusions of moral grandeur, let’s wring some residual use from that failed institution and do some grandstanding of our own. Let’s withdraw the Japanese draft and introduce a comprehensive and binding arms embargo resolution on North Korea. Let’s put in language permitting the seizure of North Korean assets for the feeding of its people, via a tightly-monitored and audited U.N. aid program. Let’s talk about the two million-plus people those missiles have already killed, how China has made comfort women of the survivors, and how the UNHCR has stood by and checked itself for rectal polyps while it all happened. Dare the Chinese, before the entire world, to veto a resolution that blocks North Korea from buying arms while its people are starving. Speak forthrightly about the choice North Korea is making to let its people die.
And when China vetoes that resolution — and it will — let America again debate why the United Nations is a good use of America’s tax revenue, and how other venues where China and Russia have no veto are not better investments for the pursuit of our interests. Let the U.N. run on rubles and yuan. It has no power to obstruct us that we don’t give it. For that matter, let the South Korean military run on won.
We have other options. Isolate the regime. Engage the people.