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Category: Proliferation

January 17, 2009

Hostile Policy Not Quite Dead

History will record that President Bush experienced just one brief glint of success at influencing the North Koreans during his entire presidency. Naturally, our State Department had nothing to do with it. In fact, when State realized that another cabinet department (Treasury) might actually solve the North Korean problem once and for all, it dove in to rescue failure from the jaws of success. Most people in Washington tend to think in terms of dealing with national security threats in...
Categories NK Economics/Proliferation/WMD
January 16, 2009

That’s Weapons Grade Uranium

The debate about North Korea’s uranium cheat should be over with even Hillary Clinton’s acknowledgment of it, but Condi Rice’s statement that North Korea possesses some unknown quantity of weapons-grade, highly enriched uranium isn’t a fact we should just gloss over. That’s the first time I’ve seen that reported. Update: The Daily NK has more recent statements from the Administration on this topic, including from President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. The President stated during the last press conference of his...
Categories Proliferation/WMD
November 21, 2008

You Don’t Say

The U.N. is beginning to suspect that those Syrians and North Koreans may have been up to something suspicious after all. “It cannot be excluded” that the Syrian facility “was intended for non-nuclear use,” the IAEA report says.However, it continues, “The features of the building . . . along with the connectivity of the site to adequate pumping capacity of cooling water, are similar to what may be found in connection with a reactor site.” Pre-attack photographs show a “containment...
Categories Proliferation/WMD
November 2, 2008

Yet again, Kim Jong Il caught proliferating right under Chris Hill’s nose.

Sometimes, I wonder why I even bother. India blocked a North Korean plane from delivering cargo to Iran in August, responding to a U.S. request based on fears about the spread of weapons of mass destruction. This, nine weeks before President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, ostensibly to reward it for some sort of good behavior. According to the Western and Asian officials, the North Korean plane, an Ilyushin-62 long-range jet owned by...
Categories "United" Nations/Proliferation/WMD
October 9, 2008

S. Korean JCS Chair: N. Korea Building Lighter Nuclear Warheads for Missiles

You  might have thought  that an agreement whose nominal objective is nuclear disarmament ought to be reasonably clear about dismantling, disabling, or dissing those arms in some specific way.  If so, you thought wrong, and here are the consequences of that.  In fact, Chris Hill’s February 2007  disarmament deal was intentionally vague about North Korea’s existing nuclear arsenal.  Until this summer, State had insisted that the North’s nuclear weapons  were covered by the phrase “all nuclear programs,” although North Korea’s...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/NK Military/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/WMD
October 7, 2008

How Many Divisions Does Ban Ki Moon Have?

Since October 2006, U.N. Security Council resolution 1718 has prohibited North Korea from trafficking in  major weapons systems or WMD techonology.  So sit down for this one: “The Middle East remans on the receiving end of the DPRK’s reckless activities,” Israeli delegate David Danieli told the meeting, referring to North Korea by its acronym. “At least half a dozen countries in the region … have become eager recipients” of the North’s black market supplies of conventional arms or nuclear technology,...
Categories "United" Nations/NK Military/Proliferation
September 17, 2008

Ho Hum, North Korea Violates 2 More U.N. Resolutions, World Yawns

Remember that fancy new North Korean missile test site that was in the news the other day?  North Korea has reportedly conducted an engine ignition test for a long-range missile, presumably the Taepodong-2 missile with a range of 6,700 km, at a new long-range missile test site under construction in Dongchang-li, North Pyongan Province. For the test, the rocket engine of a missile is laid out horizontally at the test site and ignited to test its performance. The test confirms...
Categories "United" Nations/Proliferation/WMD
August 22, 2008

Leon Sigal: Never mind that reactor in Syria

If you read enough obscure publications about North Korea and our policies toward it, you’ll eventually run across something by Leon V. Sigal, who is the Director of something called the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project  (note the word “hegemony” in its url.)   A reader forwards me this piece by Sigal published on  Napsnet, a publication  of the Nautilus Institute, which was also published in the Japan Focus. Sigal’s piece is entitled,  “How A Mock Trial Could Turn Victory...
Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
July 24, 2008

For the Thousandth Time, Secretary Rice, We Are Not Giving Up Our Nukes.

Somehow, I don’t think Condi Rice’s “‘very strong message’ about  [North Korea’s] nuclear disarmament obligations” quite got through: North Korea reportedly asked to be recognized as a nuclear state at a meeting of foreign ministers from countries in six-party talks on Wednesday. North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun urged the U.S. to stop its hostile policy toward the North, saying verification of the nuclear facilities and stockpiles it has declared is not a duty but cooperation.  [Chosun Ilbo] Somewhere, Jack...
Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
June 30, 2008

The New York Times: Now 33% as Coherent as Dick Cheney!

Dick Cheney  and the New York Times have one thing in common:  both have  opinions about  the latest version of  Bush’s  North Korea policy: Cheney froze, according to four of the participants at the Old Executive Office Building meeting. For more than 30 minutes he had been talking and answering questions, without missing a beat. But now, for several long seconds, he stared, unsmilingly, at his questioner, Steven Clemons of the New America Foundation, a public policy institution. Finally, he...
Categories Appeasement/Media Criticism/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/WMD
May 14, 2008

N. Korea Human Rights Bill May Have Passed in House

[Update: I can’t confirm the final outcome, but I’m led to believe that the vote on these bills was put off at the last minute.] Someone supplied me (thanks) with this press release from Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s office, dated yesterday: (WASHINGTON) ““ The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to approve two North Korea-related bills today coauthored by U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), including an initiative to improve procedures for resettling refugees and funding programs to promote human rights. Separate...
Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics
May 11, 2008

Honestly, Baby, It’s Not Mine

Sometimes, I’m tempted to pity some of the more fervent faith-based deniers of North Korean nuclear proliferation: “I don’t buy everything in the video,” said Jon Wolfsthal, a nuclear expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.  Mr Wolfsthal, who has spent time monitoring the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon on which the Al-Kibar facility was allegedly modelled, said the evidence appeared to support the allegations that Syria was constructing a plutonium reactor. Mr Wolfsthal said the evidence pointing...
Categories Proliferation
May 9, 2008

Leaked to OFK: Internal House Memo on N. Korea’s Support for Terrorism

Update: Link fixed, sorry. A reader and friend has provided me with an unclassified memo (thank you) summarizing a more detailed report by Larry Niksch of the Congressional Research Service (CRS).  The memo is addressed from Ranking Member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to fellow House Republicans.  The memo reveals details that do not appear in this December 2007 CRS Report.  Although the links  to the Japanese Red Army are old news, there  is some alarming information...
Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
May 5, 2008

Out With a Whimper: Scholars and Policymakers on Bush’s Legacy of Indecision and Weakness on North Korea

Last week, I attended a program at the American Enterprise Institute about Bush’s new North Korea policy, in which we are reduced to negotiating against our positions of last year, while the North Koreans observe with a mixture of arrogance and befuddlement.  The sum total:  the Administration has lost all will and all backbone.  Don’t expect any policy changes toward accountability or reciprocity.  Instead, expect the lesson to be that you can proliferate nukes to anyone and not just get...
Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
May 1, 2008

House Republican Leaders Denounce Bush Administration for Withholding Syria Intelligence

Between the Stephens nomination and this, I’d say the Bush Administration has a congressional relations problem on its hands when it comes to Korea policy: The Bush administration’s failure to fully brief Congress on North Korea and Syria has done more than jeopardize the relationship between our two branches of government. It has denied the administration the benefit of congressional support that could have ensured an agreement with North Korea that avoided needless risks, instead of one that may be...
Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
April 29, 2008

You Mean Like in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2006, 2007, and 2008?

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says the Bush administration should have sought direct dialogue with North Korea earlier. The Illinois senator said Sunday he felt disturbed to hear the North is likely to have helped Syria pursue a covert nuclear program. He said such suspected activities took place while the U.S. suspended direct talks with Pyongyang.  [KBS] Which would distinguish those suspected activities  from these suspected activities, which took place during  The Gilded Age of Peace in Our Time,...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
April 29, 2008

David Albright, Call Your Office

CIA Director Michael Hayden said Monday that the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in September would have produced enough plutonium for one or two bombs within a year of becoming operational.  [AP, Pamela Hess]   And according to this report, the Syrian reactor was “nearing completion.” What Bruce Cumings is to North Korean history, David Albright is  to  North Korean proliferation. 
Categories Proliferation
April 24, 2008

Chris Hill Resignation Watch: Nuke Disclosure Starts a Category 3 Sh*tstorm

[Update: Watch the CIA’s video on the al-Kibar reactor: I’d love to know how they got those photographs of the reactor’s interior, and I can only guess that some trusted person who is now in a much safer place took them.] How stupid and how evil does Kim Jong Il have to be to get the attention of Congress in an election year?  This stupid and this evil: The United States on Thursday released an intelligence document with photographs of...
Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics