CHAMBERLAIN-CARTER-CLINTON: THE NORTH KOREAN NUCLEAR PROBLEM WON’T BE SOLVED BY MORE TALKING
(Washington, D.C.): The spectacle of
former President Jimmy Carter treating
with Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang marks a new
low in the Clinton Administration’s
mismanagement of U.S. security policy. So
does the purported
“breakthrough” he is claiming
credit for creating with his freelance
mediation.
Mr. Carter is the very talisman of
American weakness and indecision. Yet, he
has clearly not been discouraged from
inserting himself into the midst of this
crisis — a crisis precipitated by North
Korea’s now-naked ambition to “go
nuclear” and compounded by mixed
signals and transparent bluffing from
Washington. To the contrary,
notwithstanding the half-hearted
disavowals from Clinton Administration
officials (many of whom worked for the
Carter presidency), one thing now seems
clear: The most discredited U.S.
president since Herbert Hoover is
actually engaged in what amounts to an
official mission for Mr. Clinton.
In a thoughtful op.ed. article in
yesterday’s Wall Street Journal
concerning the Korean nuclear crisis,
Karen Elliott House made clear how this
disastrous choice of an emissary fits the
larger profile of Clinton bungling:
“Negotiations, pleas and
promises of cooperation for good
behavior haven’t the slightest
effect. This has been amply
demonstrated under both President
Bush and Clinton. The evidence is so
clear that even most wishful thinkers
don’t seek to perpetuate this policy.“Nevertheless, we now have
the spectacle of global arbitrator
Jimmy Carter, who sought to pull U.S.
troops out of South Korea during his
presidency, traipsing off to
Pyongyang when President Clinton
ought to be sending Norman
Schwarzkopf — perhaps with a few
sample photos of high tech warfare in
the Gulf.”
‘There He Goes Again’
CNN reported this morning that
President Carter has played to type by
announcing after his first three-hour
meeting today with Kim Il Sung that it
was important to “address some of
the misunderstandings” that
have arisen between the United States and
North Korea and “[to] try to
overcome them.” Mr. Carter also
characteristically enthused about the
Korean despot, noting his impressive
grasp of the issues in dispute. “I
found him to be completely aware of and
thoroughly familiar with all of the major
issues, including the details of reactor
design and the comparison between the
different reactors.”
Indeed, the real problem is
one of the North Korean dictator understanding
too well. Kim has correctly
taken the measure of the U.S.
administration as being feckless to the
point of paralysis. The Clinton team’s
encouragement — if not commissioning —
of the Carter mission can only have
confirmed that perception, witness his
astounding toast at a banquet today in
Pyongyang: “The time has
come to establish full friendship and
understanding, open trade exchange of
visits and full diplomatic relations
between our two countries.”
Perhaps this Chamberlainesque toast to
“peace in our time” was what
prompted Kim Il Sung to play even harder
ball with the appeasement-minded
Carter-Clinton gang. In exchange for
renewed direct negotiations with the
United States, Mr. Carter says North
Korea has offered: not to eject two
essentially symbolic international
inspectors and some surveillance
equipment; to “continue” to
adhere to the Non-Proliferation Treaty
that it is, in fact, violating; and to
consider replacing its present nuclear
program with light-water reactor
technology less susceptible to diversion
to nuclear weapons purposes. Predictably,
President Clinton has agreed to resume
direct talks with North Korea at the U.N.
aimed at establishing whether, in his
words, these comments represent “a
new situation.”
In other words, thanks to
President Carter’s intervention, Kim Il
Sung has bought himself more time,
restarted his confidence-building
“dialogue” with the United
States and assured that there will be no
movement toward even ineffectual
sanctions in the U.N. Security Council.
And this has been achieved without having
to give up his nuclear weapons program or
allow the sort of comprehensive
inspections needed to establish its true
dimensions and certify its elimination.
What the Time Has Really
Come For
Over the past fifteen months, the
Center for Security Policy has repeatedly
called for the United States to take
steps needed to: reinforce the 37,000
U.S. troops in South Korea; enhance the
in-place deterrent to another North
Korean attack across the Demilitarized
Zone; and provide realistic options for
destroying — or at least disrupting —
Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.(1)
The Center has called particular
attention to the current, acute problem
of defending South Korea and Japan
against North Korean ballistic missile
attacks — a prime example of the
nation’s need for effective, global
anti-missile systems.(2)
And it has noted the importance,
particularly in the absence of such
defenses, for the United States to
maintain and deploy within striking
distance of North Korea weapons that
would give the President credible nuclear
strike options against the North should
they be necessary.(3)
An Emerging Consensus?
In recent days, other influential
voices have echoed these recommendations.
On 24 May 1994, one of the U.S. Senate’s
foremost military experts, Sen. John
McCain (R-AZ), persuasively described the
feasibility of an Osirak-style attack on
North Korea’s nuclear weapons complex. On
2 June 1994, former National Security
Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and former
Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger
called on the “MacNeil-Lehrer
NewsHour” for the use of nuclear
weapons against North Korea if necessary
to stop its aggression against the South
before Seoul is lost. And yesterday,
former National Security Advisor Brent
Scowcroft wrote in the Washington
Post that the time had come to
destroy North Korea’s reprocessing
capability if it did not immediately
satisfy demands that this and other,
related facilities be opened for
inspection.
The Center welcomes these
pronouncements. It is regrettable — and
may prove appallingly costly — that such
policy prescriptions have not long ago
become Clinton Administration policy.
Certainly these steps, not more talk, are
now the order of the day:
- The United States should augment
the 37,000 U.S. troops
permanently stationed in South
Korea including airborne, naval,
air force, special operations and
intelligence elements. The
purpose should be unmistakably
to demonstrate U.S. resolve while
improving the self-defense
capability of American forces on
the peninsula and improving the
South’s near-term capacity to
deter aggression. - Washington should
stipulate that international
inspectors must be permitted unfettered
access to all North Korean
facilities suspected of housing
nuclear weapons-related
activities by a near-term date
certain. - Instead of seeking U.N. Security
Council approval of a yet another
ineffectual sanctions resolution,
the United States should
offer a resolution authorizing
the use of force to liquidate
such facilities if they remain
uninspected at that time.
Unfortunately, the effects of
sustained defense cuts have
significantly constrained the
United States’ ability to mount
such an operation. As Gen. Joseph
Hoar, the Commander-in-Chief of
the U.S. Central Command,
recently told Congress:
“Strategic lift in this
country is broken right
now.” He said the
shortage of giant long-range
military cargo planes and fast
cargo ships is so severe that the
military would be hard pressed to
fight even one war.
This reality argues for
putting as much manpower and
materiel in place on the Korean
peninsula as quickly as
possible — not waiting for
the “balloon to go up.”
It is offensive and
absurd for President Clinton to
suggest, as he did in his press
conference this afternoon, that
“there’s nothing to be
concerned about” with
respect to defending American
forces in Korea.
In the meantime, ships
equipped with nuclear-capable
sea-launched cruise missiles
should be ostentatiously deployed
within striking distance of North
Korean targets. Nuclear
air-delivered weapons and
nuclear-capable aircraft should
also be deployed in South Korea.
In the event China or Russia
threatens a veto, notice should
be served, as Karen Elliott House
suggested, that the
United States regards
denuclearizing North Korea as a
matter of vital interest; its
relations with nations that
obstruct that objective will be
affected accordingly.
The Bottom Line
Either way, steps must be
taken that will prevent North Korea from
obtaining or threatening the use of
nuclear weapons — or transferring them
to other dangerous actors. In
this connection, the Center for Security
Policy welcomes the resolution passed
overwhelmingly in the U.S. Senate this
afternoon at the initiative of Sens.
Robert Dole (R-KA) and John McCain. It
expresses the “Sense of the
Senate” that any and all means
should be used to protect South Korea and
U.S. forces based there.
It is to be hoped that the sense of
the Senate will knock some sense into
President Clinton. Only when Mr.
Clinton acts to take this and the other,
aforementioned steps will a signal
conducive actually to moderating Kim Il
Sung’s behavior be sent — one involving
the credible threat of force and the
demonstrated will to use it —
in contrast to the message of appeasement
and indecision chronically transmitted by
the Clinton-Carter gang, the sort of
signal that is certain to result in war,
later if not sooner.
– 30 –
1. See, for
example, the Center’s Decision Brief
entitled, What to Do About
North Korea’s Nuclear Threat: Execute the
‘Osirak’ Remedy, (
19 March 1993).
2. See the
Center’s Decision Briefs
entitled, U.S. Reinforcement
of South Korea Must Not Stop With
Patriots; Why is No Better Missile
Defense Available? (
January 1994) and Flash —
Kim Il Sung Doesn’t Approve of Patriots:
Do We Need More to Buy Global Missile
Defenses? (
January 1994).
3. See the
Center’s Press Release entitled,
Center’s Gaffney Joins
Krauthammer in Urging Clinton to apply
the Stick — Not More Carrots — to North
Korea (
5 November 1993).
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