Kim Jong Il’s Moment of Truth, and Bush’s

Not off to a very encouraging start, are we? 

Of North Korea’s intentions and attitudes, we already know plenty from past experience.  The real question is what our own government is willing to do for a few friendly headlines.  I think personalities in the State Department who would overlook inspection, verification, and proliferation to please their Chinese and South Korean friends  have the tiller firmly in their grasp.  Bush is worn  down from bleeding wounds to his ankles,  going through the motions, taking the path of least resistance, and getting ready to pop smoke.  If his true goal was to show the futility of dealing with liars, he certainly took great pains to miss a perfect opportunity to do that.  Here is the dirty little secret of Bush’s foreign policy:  aside from the elephantine exception of Iraq, it has been remarkably similar to Bill Clinton’s.

I could be wrong.  I hope I am.  And  unless Washington’s ability to keep secrets shows rapid and dramatic improvement, we’ll know soon.  First, the South Korean election will soon be over, and one important political motive for keeping things low-key will have passed.  Second, we’ll soon see just how many nuclear weapons and facilities North Korea is willing to fess up to:

North Korea’s “data declaration” may come this week. It merits close examination, for it will test both Pyongyang’s willingness to abandon its nuclear ambitions, and Washington’s resolve to hold the rogue nation to strict verification standards. The latter is critical, because the vague language of the agreement does not clearly delineate North Korea’s responsibilities. That opens the door to misinterpretation or deliberate malfeasance by Pyongyang.

U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill insists “nuclear programs” is an all-encompassing term that requires North Korea to provide data on its nuclear weapons. North Korean Kim Gye-gwan disagrees, claiming the North “can’t declare nuclear weapons this year, because if we do it at this stage, our nuclear weapons technology level will be revealed. Such “interpretations” do not ease skeptics’ anxiety.

Recently suspicions about the firmness of U.S. resolve to confront Pyongyang’s abhorrent behavior heightened even more when the Bush administration refused to address congressional concerns about possible Korean initiatives in Syria. Were those Korean-assisted nuclear facilities that Israel bombed there last month?

Perhaps seeking to dispel suspicions of softness, President Bush has now asserted Pyongyang must disclose all of its past proliferation activity in the declaration. Certainly this is not spelled out in the agreement, but here’s hoping we will hold North Korea to this higher standard.  [Washington Times]

That’s the  Heritage Foundation’s Bruce Klingner (must-read).  You have to hope that  Chris Hill  made it clear early on that North Korea’s declaration should include weapons and proliferation.  If not, Hill is an incompetent for not doing so, and for engaging in an amorphous and eternal  negotiation in which both sides continuously  reinvent the deal’s terms.  And we all know that North Korea will do that even without an open invitation.

Expect the next eternal negotiation to be over North Korea’s disclosure.  They’ll give an incomplete declaration, of course.  Publicly, Hill will try to conceal this.  Privately, he’ll meekly ask, “What about . . . ?”  Next, we’ll come under intense pressure from Russia, China, and South Korea not to rock the boat.  I predict that the negotiation over what else  the North Koreans should have disclosed  will last through at least January 2009.

Verification, of course, is the key to ensuring Korean compliance. Pyongyang’s violation of four previous nuclear agreements and its refusal to allow international inspectors to visit two suspect sites in 1992 makes such a requirement inviolable. Quite simply, without verification, there should be no agreement. That the United States is preparing to accept a data declaration without first insisting on an extensively detailed verification protocol is extremely troubling.

U.S. National Technical Means, including imagery satellites, are useful, but no substitute for on-site inspections. Classified collection systems can alert us to suspicious activity, but suspicions can only be conclusively resolved by inspectors on the ground.

It would be immodest for him to say this himself, but Klingner has extensive experience in the intelligence community and knows what he’s talking about here.

This part will leave a mark:

The U.S. could enter into arms control treaties with the Soviet Union confidently only because Washington insisted on effective verification. “Trust but verify” was the strategy then, and Bush administration should accept nothing less now.

That’s a pretty sad contrast to draw, and a potent one  in the midst of a Republican presidential nomination contest.  Pressure from an outspoken Republican contender could be the last best hope for bringing President Bush to his senses about a regime that proliferates even while agreeing to disarm.  Predictably, the media are giving Bush a free pass for behaving like Jimmy Carter.  That removes much of the incentive for Bush to stop stonewalling Congress about proliferation to Syria or secret deals to remove North Korea from the terror list (while  Kim Jong Il  gets to keep the hostages  he’s holding  for ransom “reparations“). 

The Administration is now about to ask Congress to appropriate funds for this deal while  withholding  its full terms, or even  evidence that North Korea may already be violating it.  Will Congress really agree to that?  Probably.