Escape from Munich

[Update:    The Washington Post declares a  conservative revolt against the Not-Quite-Agreed Framework.  E-mailing another activist today, I noted the irony that after years of being on President Bush’s side and getting no media traction, we’re far more likely to attract media attention now that we oppose his new policy.  Just watch.  This will be  a fascinating experiment in media behavior.]

[Update 2:   More at MSNBC.  The Administration is now  furiously “clarifying” that it will  interpret the terms strictly, which we can only hope means that the Administration’s tolerance for cheating  must  narrow.  ht.]

Maybe Richardson is right.  Maybe this  deal is hardly a deal at all.  Maybe  it is certain to fracture along one of many points of failure.   Last year, I might have agreed that it was.  This year, it may not be, depending  on  just how determined this Administration is to ignore the dismally predictable  “reinterpretations” that are already  being broadcast  from Pyongyang, and the lies that are sure to follow.   The answer, I think, is very determined, which means that  the Administration will do exactly what this deal, on  its vague face, invites:  exchanging regime-sustaining benefits for illusory promises.  This deal not only  fails to achieve  America’s goals, it surrenders  a very real  chance  that we might have achieved them.  Worse, its weakening effect will persist.  Even if it collapses tomorrow,  this deal  sets a new bar  from which North Korea’s next set of opening demands will be drafted sometime  in 2009.

There would still be a case to be made for this deal, notwithstanding  its agonizing compromises,  if there were any real chance of it disarming North Korea and securing us from the proliferation of Kim Jong Il’s weapons.   But who  can say  that?  Who is?  Who is even willing to try?  Those who have an opinion  about this deal really fall into two groups:  those (like me) who despise this deal and long for it to fail quickly and cleanly, and those who despise this President and want his every endeavor to fail in prolonged agony.  As bad as even they know this deal to be, they remain mostly mute because they  took every option but  appeasement  off the table in 1993.

Thus,  while  the left-of-center  establishment offers halfhearted and cautious approval (or mutes its  skepticism)  of a deal between a president they despise and a tyrant they can’t defend, most conservatives avow their disgust.  The Wall Street Journal  wins Best Title  by calling this  “Faith-Based Nonproliferation.”  It notes  that this deal will soon relax  extraordinarily powerful financial pressure in exchange  for  dubious promises.   After running through a long list of the “agreement’s” flaws, it concludes:

[T]his is far from the nonproliferation model set by Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s ouster in 2003. Gadhafi relinquished his entire nuclear program up front, and only later–once compliance was verified and the nuclear materials removed from the country–did the U.S. take Libya off the terror list and provide other rewards.  Perhaps Mr. Bush feels this is the best he can do in the waning days of his Administration. Or perhaps, in the most favorable interpretation, he wants to clear the decks of this issue in order to have more political capital to control Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Iran may look at this deal, however, and conclude it has little to lose by raising the nuclear stakes. We’d like to believe this will turn out better, but history doesn’t support such faith.

I would only disagree with the WSJ in one regard:  this deal is every bit as bad as the Agreed Framework.  Yes, the Clinton Administration could be forgiven for not knowing what pathological liars the North Koreans were in 1994 (but not by 1997).  Bush does not have the same excuse.   He made this deal —  yes, with the cards he had to play, but also with undeniable knowledge of Kim Jong Il’s bad faith  — and  he alone bears the blame for doing so.  National Review concludes:

The longstanding debate about North Korea in U.S. diplomatic circles has been whether to attempt reforming the regime through negotiations and incentives or forcing its eventual collapse through sanctions and isolation. After Kim’s nuclear test, the Bush administration moved forcefully in the latter direction. Much to everyone’s surprise, it managed to bring the U.N. Security Council along with it. Kim’s promise now to behave himself may well have been an act of desperation as the sanctions began to bite. This was no time to loosen their jaws. On the bright side, we’ve won a promise from a liar.

Will this criticism  be enough to stop the deal?  No, because Congress won’t interfere (and thus I am proven wrong in  predicting that the change in Congress would not result in any major shifts in Korea policy; clearly, it has sown our world with sprouting capitulations to those who would despise or threaten  us, regardless).  There are really only  four ways I see this capitulation being reversed. 

First, the North Koreans, through some inexplicable miscalculation, can violate or repudiate this deal in a way that’s simply impossible to overlook.

Second, this could all be some ingenious Rovian scheme to draw North Korea into a false sense of overconfidence, leading to some blatant violation or renunciation of the terms, thus strengthening Bush to say, “See?  They’re liars!” and drop some of  the economic and political hammers I had  suggested here.

Third, this could all be some terrible dream.  Maybe we’ll  all wake up in the same nightmare we found ourselves in last week, before  this  recklessly gullible betrayal of policy and principle.

The  fourth  chance lies in forcing the Administration to interpret this deal the way in which Kim Jong Hill would have us believe it is to be interpreted, if we want to believe it  badly enough:  strictly, and reasonably consistently with our government’s policy thus far.  That will require  enough  public and embarrassing renunciations of  this deal  that Bush is chained to some of  the  principles that his own Administration  had declared so recently (anyone remember “material support for a rogue government, its nuclear ambitions, and its human rights atrocities?“).  This deal, by effectively promising the North Koreans that we’ll lift economic sanctions, fails to account for the fact that it is illegal to import slave-made goods in the United States  (another senior State Department recently referred to Kaesong  labor as  “forced labor;” are we to imagine that things are better for workers deep inside North Korea’s interior?).  By effectively promising to remove North Korea from the terror list, it  betrays these victims of North Korean terrorism, among them  an American lawful permanent resident, in a manner almost as repellent as what we have seen from South Korea.  By putting us on track for full diplomatic relations, it defies the unanimous sense of Congress, though that will is unquestionably weaker than it was in 2004.  As I have previously mentioned, it is in tension with the spirit of U.N. Resolutions 1695 and 1718.  Finally, there is the personal betrayal of these people, into whose eyes Bush himself once looked and at  least implied some sort of effective action on their behalf.  Were they mere scenery in a play?  I still tend to think that at that time, they were not, but that’s what this deal has made of them.  Even the word of a politician ought to mean something. 

If the  Bush Administration is forced to  interpret  this deal with  at least some  principle and a basic  regard for the requirements of law,  he’ll  have to qualify  any promise to move toward  diplomatic relations  by demanding some  significant human rights improvements in the North first.  He’ll have to qualify promises of aid  by insisting  on fair and transparent distribution.  He can’t promise to fill the shelves of Wal-Marts with Kim Jong Il’s  slave-made goods when the law and the conscience of our society prohibit that.  If Bush says those things, the odds are at least fair that Kim Jong Il will renounce this deal himself, because he undoubtedly expects all of those benefits without conditions.