A Denuclearization Agreement, But Without the ‘Denuclearization’ Part

It’s Day 21 since Peace in Our Time Day, and here’s the latest “peace in our time” update: Yonbyong is running; no IAEA inspectors have gone to North Korea and none have been invited; there have been no substantive six-party sessions since March; North Korea denies having the uranium program it previously admitted; North Korea may or may not be running away with the ransom in dirty money that held this deal up, even though it wasn’t part of the deal; and North Korea refuses to discuss its abductions of Japanese citizens. But Japan is standing firm, and America may actually be yielding to Japan’s insistence:

The United States will not remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism until progress is made regarding the North’s kidnapping of Japanese citizens decades ago, a White House official said Thursday.

Dennis Wilder, a senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council, said President George W. Bush will reaffirm that position while meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe this week. [….]

“We aren’t going to de-link the abductee issue from the state sponsor of terrorism issue,” Wilder told reporters. [Joongang Ilbo]

What are we prepared to do about this? Not much, apparently.

“We hope the process is back on track very soon,” Alexander Vershbow said in a speech to civic groups today in Seoul…. I can’t say when our patience will run out” [Bloomberg, Heejin Koo].

Chris Hill is lowering expectations as if his career depends on it:

“I know there is a lot of concern and I share that concern about the missed deadline,” Christopher Hill, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told a forum in Washington.

But he added, “I think we can put ourselves into the position that by the latter part of this calendar year, we can get through phase one and phase two and for us to work on phase three.” [AFP]

In other words, the Administration’s plan to run out the clock and pop smoke proceeds apace, and the abject failure of it all is mostly unnoticed for now, because most of the media don’t want to talk about the failure of something almost all of them support, results notwithstanding.

The one good thing to be said of giving up everything is that there’s nothing else to give up once the experiment fails. Should we license them to print our money? Forget the uranium program they already admitted having? Set even fewer firm deadlines, and say even less when North Korea ignores them? Forget inspections completely? How much worse can you do than an agreement “Kim Jong” Bill Richardson tries to claim credit for? Well, I can imagine. But then why not just drop the pretense that it’s a denuclearization agreement and call it an aid program for the world’s most oppressive oligarchy?

No matter what you think our Korea policy should be, the Bush Administration gives you something you can detest. To defend it, however, you have to be prepared to sacrifice either your principles, on one hand, or the pleasure you’ve taken in hating George W. Bush, on the other.