Tag Archives: North Korea

Nuclear freelancing with Kim Jong-il

January 8, 2004Center for Security Policy

The North Korean regime is encouraging some Jimmy Carter-style freelancers to get involved in nuclear weapons negotiations with the US – this at a time when the Bush Administration is turning the screws on Pyongyang.

The strange part is, Why isn’t the State Department preventing such self-appointed emissaries from traveling to the isolated country in the first place, as it has the right to do?

Former State Department figure Jack Pritchard’s recent trip to Pyongyang is a dangerous move. It is inconsistent with the very nature of American democracy which requires that diplomacy not be practiced by individuals other than those charged with such responsibilities under the Constitution – and accountable to it.

Pritchard’s Kim Jong-il-approved junket produced a North Korean negotiating position that the Wall Street Journal says "boils down to this: Trust us that this time we really will abandon our nuclear programs, and we will agree to let you pay us even more money."

According to the Journal, "he deal they are offering now is essentially the same one they offered us back in 1994, the last time they manufactured a nuclear crisis. Come to think of it, it was a similar private initiative back then, by former President Jimmy Carter, that helped force a deal at a moment when Bill Clinton was taking a harder line. We all know how that Agreed Framework turned out."

Pritchard retired from the State Department nine months ago. "The really interesting question is why someone so at odds with official Bush policy was kept on so long," writes the Journal, "but then again much of the State Department often seems to be a Dean Administration in waiting."

Deja vu all over again in North Korea

January 6, 2004Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): In today’s editions, the Wall Street Journal forcefully editorialized about what the Center for Security Policy has described as “unhelpful freelancing” by a long-time critic of President Bush’s fully justified, hard-line stance towards Communist North Korea. Unfortunately, the mission to Pyongyang being undertaken this week by Charles “Jack” Pritchard will be more than a platform for a proponent of the sorts of irresolute policies that enabled the North to realize its nuclear ambitions.

As the Journal observes, such a trip will inevitably offer the North Korean regime an opportunity to complicate U.S. efforts to contain the threat from that quarter, to put their “thumb in Mr. Bush’s eye” politically and to “embarrass” the administration – even as Mr. Pritchard once again promotes the idea that further concessions should be made to Kim Jong-Il and Company. The result: a lose-lose outcome for the United States.

With an apt reference to the deja-vu-all-over-again theme of the movie “Groundhog Day,” the Journal‘s editors remind us that this is not idle speculation. We have tried this approach and demonstrably gotten the short end of the stick. In fact, for six years, the Clinton Administration tirelessly “engaged” and appeased North Korea in the hope that the rogue regime would finally, actually eschew nuclear weapons. The failure of the Pritchard strategy was unmistakable when the so-called “Agreed Framework” was effectively eviscerated by the North’s admission last year that it possessed nuclear weapons.

As the Center for Security Policy argued yesterday, the sort of “freelancing” being undertaken by Mr. Pritchard “is utterly inconsistent with the very nature of democracy” which requires that “diplomacy [not] be practiced by individuals other than those charged with such responsibilities by their government – and accountable to it.” For this reason, among others, the Bush Administration should not only disassociate and the U.S. government from diplomatic missions by self-appointed emissaries like Jack Pritchard; it should take such steps as are necessary to preclude them from occurring.

Groundhog Day in Pyongyang
The Wall Street Journal, 6 January 2004

So Jack Pritchard is finally getting those bilateral talks with the North Koreans he’s long been promoting. We trust, however, that when Kim Jong Il’s minions sit down with the former State Department official and the delegation he’s traveling with to Pyongyang this week, they’ll notice something very different: This time the only one Mr. Pritchard will be speaking for is himself.

That will be healthy for everyone to keep in mind while Mr. Pritchard visits at the invitation of Pyongyang with a ballyhooed private delegation that also includes Stanford professor John Wilson Lewis and Sigfried Hecker, the former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Reports suggest that the North Koreans may allow the delegation into the Yongbyon nuclear facility. This would be the first time the site was opened to foreigners since the North expelled United Nations nuclear inspectors in 2002.

Their visit comes at a particularly delicate time, scarcely a month after the breakdown of the planned six-party talks (with U.S., China, Russia, Japan, North Korea and South Korea) that the White House insists is the proper venue for resolving the nuclear standoff. Though the Bush Administration did not stop the visit, a State Department spokesman did warn that the Administration was leery of anything that might “complicate” these multilateral talks.

But complicating U.S. policy is exactly what the North Koreans have in mind by choosing to invite this entourage. Mr. Pritchard is the former Clinton official and later Bush State Department special envoy to North Korea who went out with a media bang back in August. As he was quick to make both clear and public, he favors two things that President Bush has ruled out: bilateral negotiations with the North Koreans, and concessions to get them back to the table.

Given this background it’s hard to read his invitation to Pyongyang as anything but a North Korean thumb in Mr. Bush’s eye. Just in case the ever-subtle Korean Communists might be misunderstood here, they have at the same time announced that the only way they’ll ever come to the negotiating table is if the U.S. first agrees to cough up some new economic aid. The North Korean negotiating position boils down to this: Trust us that this time we really will abandon our nuclear programs, and we will agree to let you pay us even more money.

If all this is beginning to sound like the North Korean version of “Groundhog Day” — the movie in which Bill Murray is forced to relive the same day over and over — it’s because this has been North Korean procedure from the get-go. And until Mr. Bush arrived on the scene and vowed there’d be no more rewards for bad behavior, the North Koreans had done pretty well by it.

So well that the deal they are offering now is essentially the same one they offered us back in 1994, the last time they manufactured a nuclear crisis. Come to think of it, it was a similar private initiative back then, by former President Jimmy Carter, that helped force a deal at a moment when Bill Clinton was taking a harder line.

We all know how that Agreed Framework turned out. In exchange for promising to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions, the U.S. promised to help build them some reactors to alleviate their energy needs. For a while everyone was happy as the real problem — North Korean lack of compliance — was papered over.

But in 2002 the deal came crashing down when North Korea unilaterally expelled U.N. inspectors from its facilities at Yongbyon, turned off the TV cameras that were monitoring the nuclear fuel, withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and then sat back and began threatening to manufacture nuclear weapons (with the unsubtle threat of proliferating them to our enemies) unless Uncle Sam rushed in and offered them even more money to start renegotiating.

It is this same path that Mr. Pritchard and his intellectual and political allies now propose to take us down again. To his credit, while at State he evidently made no bones about his disagreement with the change in direction that President Bush was pursuing. Last April, he finally offered his resignation. The really interesting question is why someone so at odds with official Bush policy was kept on so long, but then again much of the State Department often seems to be a Dean Administration in waiting.

Maybe by opening the door to Mr. Pritchard and Co. the North Koreans figure they can embarrass Mr. Bush or play into the Presidential campaign. But for those who believe that the North Koreans can be sweet-talked into a new deal — and that we should believe them this time — the irony is that this high-profile invitation to one of the Administration’s leading critics may only stiffen the Bush resolve. We hope so.

Unhelpful freelancing

January 5, 2004Frank Gaffney, Jr.

The Bush Administration takes a dim view of the freelance diplomacy that will inevitably attend visits to North Korea now being undertaken by several former government officials and congressional staffers. White House spokesman Claire Buchan said last week that the visitors were not “acting on behalf of or with the approval” of the U.S. government. Her State Department counterpart, Adam Ereli, added that, “Certainly any efforts that complicate prospects or undertakings to reconvene the six-party talks and to achieve forward movement in dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program aren’t helpful.”

Grounds for Concern

The Administration is right to be concerned about the potential for mischief attending the trips by former Los Alamos National Laboratory director, Siegfried Hecker, former National Security Council staffer Charles “Jack” Pritchard and two senior staff members one Republican, one Democrat of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The North Koreans are past masters at using such delegations to “divide and conquer,” or at least to confuse and undermine, Western governments with whom they are negotiating.

Notable examples were missions to Pyongyang in 1994 by former President Jimmy Carter and then-Congressman Bill Richardson. Their North Korean interlocutors told the self-appointed emissaries what they wanted to hear: Concessions by the United States would be rewarded with better behavior on the part of the Stalinist “Hermit Kingdom.”

The American freelancers benefitted handsomely from their respective missions. Carter got a Nobel Peace Prize for his (although the chairman of the awarding committee in Oslo made clear that an even more important reason was to poke a finger in George Bush’s eye). The relentlessly self-promoting Richardson parlayed his diplomatic fandango in Pyongyang into posts at the UN, as Secretary of Energy and now as Governor of New Mexico.

More importantly, North Korea was rewarded for its dalliance with the freelancers. The Clinton Administration agreed to make the sorts of concessions Messrs. Carter and Richardson argued would secure new promises from the North to forego nuclear weapons. Predictably, the North Korean leadership pocketed the proffered billions of dollars in nuclear technology, oil and humanitarian assistance, then lied about its intentions. It wound up using the succeeding decade to build a small nuclear arsenal thought sufficient to deter attack when Pyongyang formally renounced last year its past non-proliferation pledges, then declared its intention to acquire additional bombs to wield and to sell.

Even if past freelancing had not had such unsatisfactory repercussions, the Administration would be justified in worrying about the visitors now in North Korea. In particular, during his stint at the NSC, Jack Pritchard adamantly opposed President Bush’s fully justified hard line vis a vis the world’s last Stalinist regime and repeatedly sought to scupper it by urging negotiations on Pyongyang’s terms. It is a safe bet that at least he, if not others there now, will use whatever access (say to the North’s declared Yongbyon nuclear facility) and blandishments are served up by the “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong-Il, to advance this agenda.

‘Useful’ Idiocy

Unfortunately for the Bush team, its efforts to stymie this exercise in freelance diplomacy cannot have been helped by the enthusiasm it expressed last month for an even more notorious example of the phenomenon. In December, Secretary of State Colin Powell went so far as to meet with two private citizens, Israeli Yossi Beilin and Palestinian Abed Rabbo, who had taken it upon themselves to negotiate the so-called “Geneva Accords” a purported “comprehensive” peace agreement between their respective peoples.

In the face of strenuous objections from Israel that such meetings would not only dignify the freelancers’ accords but advance their avowed purpose namely, to undermine the policies of a democratically elected government of an allied nation Mr. Powell actually said: “I think it’s useful to have different ideas out there percolating for people to take a look at. And we welcomed these…initiatives, but they are just ideas. They don’t represent anyone’s position, other than the authors’. But I think this is a challenging moment for the Middle East and to the extent that there are people who are thinking about these issues and offering ideas, I think they should be welcomed.”

This statement is, of course, wholly disingenuous. If anything, the “useful” initiatives being promoted by Beilin, Rabbo and others are more troubling than Hecker, Pritchard and Company’s activities that “aren’t helpful.” For one thing, the Geneva Accords are not simply ideas; they are represented to be a fully fleshed-out package deal that “resolves” all the issues in dispute between the Palestinians and Israelis. For another, these accords would leave Israel with indefensible borders and, inevitably, an armed Islamist Palestine on the high ground next door. Given Israel’s small security margin-of-error, they would constitute for the Jewish State a death warrant something that even a bad deal with North Korea is unlikely to be for the United States.

The Bottom Line

The truth of the matter is that whether the focus of such “ideas” is the Mideast, North Korea or some other international flashpoint it is utterly inconsistent with the very nature of democracy to let diplomacy be practiced by individuals other than those charged with such responsibilities by their government and accountable to it. For this reason, the Logan Act prohibiting freelance diplomatic missions was adopted early in the life of this Republic. The Bush Administration, and the national interest, would be well served by consistent adherence to the logic of that act.

Is Bush’s commitment to democracy a ‘sometime thing’?

December 1, 2003Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): President Bush’s Thanksgiving Day visit to the troops in Baghdad was but the latest and to date most courageous personal testament to his commitment to the spread of democracy and liberty around the globe. His words to the Iraqi people were powerfully underscored by his presence: “You have an opportunity to seize the moment and rebuild your great country, based on human dignity and freedom.”

‘Rhetorical Trifecta’

This trip and his remarks marked a sort of rhetorical trifecta. On two previous occasions this month, Mr. Bush spoke, as in Iraq, of his determination to promote freedom. On November 6th, he told an audience at the National Endowment for Democracy:

“The advance of freedom is the calling of our time; it is the calling of our country….America has put our power at the service of principle. We believe that liberty is the design of nature; we believe that liberty is the direction of history. We believe that human fulfillment and excellence come in the responsible exercise of liberty. And we believe that freedom — the freedom we prize — is not for us alone, it is the right and the capacity of all mankind.”

Then in London on the 19th, the President declared to our British allies: “Freedom, by definition, must be chosen, and defended by those who choose it. Our part, as free nations, is to ally ourselves with reform, wherever it occurs.”

Mr. Bush’s willingness not only to talk about freedom but actually to fulfill his commitment to defend it beyond Iraq is increasingly being put to the test.

Communist China Threatens Free Taiwan

The most immediately volatile example may be the threat posed to the people of democratic Taiwan by Communist China should the former have the temerity to hold a referendum concerning their nation’s status. Beijing’s fear is that the referendum could well establish that the Taiwanese want to assert their right to freedom freedom from the fiction that their country is just a province of mainland China; freedom from further Chinese threats of forced unification; and freedom for Taiwan to be recognized by the world for what it surely is: a sovereign state.

For some in Mr. Bush’s administration, the people of Taiwan’s desire for liberty is inconvenient, to say the least. Ever since 1972, when the United States abandoned the conceit that there was only one China and it was Taiwan — in favor of the conceit that there is only one China and it is the mainland, the policy of successive American presidents has been to accommodate Beijing’s insistence that Taiwan remain: unable to defend itself; unrepresented in practically all international bodies; and more or less the equivalent of a global diplomatic pariah. Our commitment to defend the fragile democracy on Taiwan was ambiguous at best.

The position George W. Bush adopted shortly after coming to office sought to eliminate that ambiguity by aligning the United States with the free people of Taiwan. In April 2001, he said in response to a question about what we would do if the Taiwanese were attacked by China that we have an obligation to defend Taiwan and would do “whatever it took” to help do that.

To be sure, in the days and months that followed, the “one China” policy was reaffirmed and the President made clear his hope that any differences between the two parties would be resolved peacefully. Now, however, he is reportedly being encouraged by, among others, NSC staff member James Moriarty to shift from not supporting Taiwan’s independence to actually “opposing” it. Such a shift would not only signal the evisceration of Bush’s commitment to defend Taiwan; it would seemingly support Beijing in any step it felt necessary to prevent an action both the PRC and United States opposed.

Shaking Off ‘Failed Policy’?

Such a stance would make a mockery of the centerpiece of Mr. Bush’s remarks to his British audience at Whitehall Palace less than two weeks ago: “We must shake off decades of failed policy…. In the past, [we] have been willing to make a bargain, to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. Longstanding ties often led us to overlook the faults of local elites. Yet this bargain did not bring stability or make us safe. It merely bought time, while problems festered and ideologies of violence took hold.

“As recent history has shown, we cannot turn a blind eye to oppression just because the oppression is not in our own backyard. No longer should we think tyranny is benign because it is temporarily convenient. Tyranny is never benign to its victims, and our great democracies should oppose tyranny wherever it is found.”

Trouble Elsewhere

As with Taiwan, President Bush is being pressed to render such brave words into hollow phrases with respect to the tyrannies of Iran, North Korea and Syria. If we “tolerate their oppression” and, for that matter, their pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and support for terror we will do nothing more than maintain the fiction of “stability” while dangers build.

At the same time, some of Mr. Bush’s subordinates are also actively encouraging an effort by a discredited, unaccountable Israeli ex-politician by the name of Yossi Beilin which will have the effect of subverting a friendly democracy and emboldening its despotic enemies. This is, as Charles Krauthammer observed in the Washington Post on Friday, “scandalous” and a “disgrace.”

The Bottom Line

Endorsing appeasement like Beilin’s, however, will be something more a strategic disaster if it and other departures from the Bush commitment to defend freedom contribute to the undoing of an American President and his principled agenda for a safer world.

Death of freedom in Hong Kong?

June 9, 2003Frank Gaffney, Jr.

(Washington, D.C.): Almost exactly six years ago, Hong Kong was surrendered by Great Britain to Communist China. In a Decision Brief issued from the scene, the Center reported:

The innumerable television cameras in town to record the surrender seem largely distracted by the pomp of various ceremonies attended by high-ranking U.S. officials and their counterparts from other free nations. These foreign representatives are content to mouth platitudes about “orderly transitions” and their intentions to “hold the People’s Republic of China accountable” for preserving Hong Kong’s freedoms.

For their part, the leaders of the PRC and the quislings they have anointed to govern Hong Kong are only too willing to play back what the West would like to hear. “Two systems, one country” is the mantra of the day. This evidently is meant to convey the idea that Hong Kong will be “free” — free to be a capitalist police-state along the lines of Singapore. China will pursue its own brand of state capitalism’ with a less-than-human face….

The Chinese Communists are counting on the Clinton Administration and the majority of the “business first” U.S. Congress to follow past practice. If so, it would seem a safe bet that the United States — empty rhetorical warnings aside — will look-the-other-way as Beijing crushes Hong Kong’s freedoms, so long as the PRC does so in a stealthful, incremental fashion. Will they be proven right? Is this what we have become as a people? If so, then more than Hong Kong will enter what Winston Churchill once termed “a new dark age.”

Over to You, President Bush

This pregnant question is now confronting not the Clinton Administration, but its successor and the Republican-controlled 108th Congress. For the PRC is poised to effect its latest — and perhaps terminal — effort to strip the people of Hong Kong of their freedoms: a legislative initiative expected, all other things being equal, to be adopted on July 9 by the Beijing-controlled Hong Kong Legislative Council under Article 23 of the so-called “Basic Law.” It could be used to deny freedom of religion, press and expression guaranteed by the Chinese when Britain agreed to turn over its colony in 1984.

One of the most courageous of Hong Kong’s minority of democratically elected legislators, Martin Lee, has warned that “It is no overstatement to say that this is truly a last opportunity to preserve the freedoms of the people of Hong Kong.”

After a meeting with Mr. Lee last week, the chairman and vice chairman of the bipartisan U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Roger Robinson and Richard D’Amato, respectively, warned in a letter sent Friday to the Senate and House leadership that the “legislation…would give the Beijing-sponsored Hong Kong Government the ability to criminalize a wide range of religious, political and journalistic activities without due process or basic legal standards.” The congressionally mandated commission urged that “Congress take strong action as soon as possible opposing the proposed legislation and requesting that the Hong Kong Government withdraw the bill from consideration” and that “the President and Secretary of State should argue forcefully against the bill with their Chinese counterparts.”

Bad Excuses for Inaction

As during the Clinton years, of course, there are countervailing pressures. The trade lobby will resist anything that might upset Beijing. President Bush is, moreover, being told that China can be helpful with its ever-more belligerent client, North Korea (although the PRC appears to enjoy the leverage that flows from the bad behavior of a proxy it equipped with nuclear and missile technology).

Mr. Bush also wants Beijing’s help on the war on terror (even though China, like Russia, has long had ties with all the state-sponsors of terror and some of the organizations they harbor and abet). And the Administration wants the Chinese government to stop its companies, like Norinco, from proliferating ballistic missile and other dangerous technology to the likes of Iran (as if this could have happened in China’s police state without government knowledge and clandestine approval).

The Bottom Line

Unfortunately, were Mr. Bush now to turn a blind-eye to the crushing of what remains of Hong Kong’s freedoms, it is predictable that the Chinese Communists’ ominous aspirations to extend their sway still further will be greatly encouraged. Coercive pressure will be applied against democratic Taiwan; it is even possible that an avoidable cross-strait war might be inspired by the West’s failure to stand up for Hong Kong. Inevitably, Beijing will be reinforced in its belief that, in due course, it will be able to displace the United States as the preeminent Asian power and once again dominate that land-mass and the Western Pacific.

China’s new power play on Hong Kong’s Article 23 thus poses a momentous challenge for President Bush: As he commendably seeks to bring freedom to those around the world who have never known it, will he sit idly by as freedom is taken away from those in Hong Kong who yearn to continue to enjoy it?

Why China isn’t helping disarm North Korea

February 25, 2003Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): According to today’s Washington Post, Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday said that the People’s Republic of China’s is “eager to play a positive role in helping to resolve the crisis” arising from North Korea’s now-unmasked nuclear ambitions. Unfortunately, Beijing’s idea of a positive role seems to be basically one of supporting Pyongyang in its insistence that it will only participate in direct, bilateral negotiations with the United States, aimed at advancing the North’s extortionist agenda.

As Haesook Chae points out in the Los Angeles Times today, the PRC is not being helpful to the Bush Administration for a very simple reason: The Communist regime in North Korea is serving today, as it has for decades, as Beijing’s proxy in a struggle to challenge — and ultimately to displace — the United States in East Asia, thereby restoring China to what it considers to be its rightful place as the dominant power in the region.

President Bush is absolutely right to insist on an approach to North Korea based on the proposition that South Korea, Japan, Russia, the European Union, the International Atomic Energy Agency and its parent organization, the UN, and — most especially — China share responsibility for contending with Pyongyang’s misconduct. That policy, and Washington’s strategy for advancing it, must be informed, however, by an appreciation of China’s not-so-secret “zero-sum” agenda, not for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, but a U.S.-free Asia.

China’s little Korea secret

by Haesook Chae

Los Angeles Times, 25 February 2003

Why won’t China rein in North Korea in the current nuclear crisis? The answer lies in Beijing’s secret goal of getting U.S. troops off the peninsula. The prevailing understanding on China is fundamentally flawed. The consensus is that China shares common interests with the U.S. and nations in the region in denuclearizing North Korea. Therefore, it ought to play an active and leading role in resolving the crisis, especially because Beijing seems to have the most leverage over North Korea.

Much to the disappointment of the U.S., however, China has excused itself from the “relevant parties.” Beijing insists that this is really a matter exclusively between the United States and North Korea. Furthermore, China does not believe that the U.S.-North Korean dialogue ought to include the United Nations; Beijing has vociferously opposed efforts to bring in the world body to bear on the issue. The question is, why?

The key to understanding China’s behavior is realizing that exclusively bilateral talks could produce what China secretly craves: the removal of the U.S. military presence from the Korean peninsula.

In a multilateral setting, the emphasis would be on North Korea’s violation of the international Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and its threat to the region and the world. Thus, various multinational measures to disarm North Korea would be discussed. U.N. involvement would remove the onus on the U.S. to negotiate on its own.

However, if the situation were framed solely as a dispute between the U.S. and North Korea, the focus would be shifted to what North Korea is demanding in exchange for nuclear disarmament. North Korea, with its far-reaching missile capability, would then be perceived as a direct threat to U.S. security. Combined with South Korea’s strong resistance to taking military action against the North, the U.S. could well be cornered into conceding to North Korean demands, namely, a nonaggression treaty and a military withdrawal from South Korea. China would then have achieved its short- term goal of removing U.S. troops from the peninsula.

Ejection of the U.S. military presence is an essential first step toward China’s ultimate long-term goals: reunification with Taiwan and reassertion as the dominant regional power.

After a U.S. withdrawal, China would be likely to find two friendly Koreas on its southern border. Post-Cold War South Korea is no longer a hostile country but an important trading partner. And if a united Korea emerges, it would probably be amicable toward China.

Further, if Japan rearms and goes nuclear in reaction to the new circumstances on the Korean peninsula, the rationale for the U.S. military presence there may be diminished as well.

In this best-case scenario for China, with American forces removed from Korea and Japan, Far East geopolitics would enter a new era. China could reassert its historical status as the dominant regional power and eventually reabsorb Taiwan.

This crisis may well drive the U.S. off the Korean peninsula. With this in mind, why should China help the U.S. to maintain its military presence in South Korea by pressuring North Korea to give up nuclear weapons?

That China appears constrained by anxieties over the potential flood of starving refugees that would be created by North Korea’s economic collapse only serves as a cover for China to prop up North Korea’s bargaining position. China’s sales of a key chemical ingredient for nuclear weapons development to North Korea, as recently as December, should be understood within this context. China wants North Korea to maintain its strong leverage in any bilateral talks with the U.S.

Only when viewed from this perspective are China’s inaction and stubborn insistence on direct talks between Pyongyang and Washington comprehensible; indeed, it is a profound and brilliant strategy.

Haesook Chae is an assistant professor in the political science department of Baldwin- Wallace College in Ohio.

North Korean scorecard

January 13, 2003Frank Gaffney, Jr.

(Washington, D.C.): The headlines these days are chock-a-block with warnings of nuclear war from North Korea. Scarcely less shrill are the sounds of teeth-gnashing from former U.S. government officials and others who insist that Washington must negotiate with Pyongyang to avoid this dread outcome.

It’s time to take a deep breath and consider what we have learned so far in this “crisis,” lest the combined effects of such hyperbole lead the Bush Administration to do what it has pretty much refused to do to this point: embrace and prop-up one of the most odious regimes on the planet — that of Kim Jong-Il in North Korea.

First, Kim’s regime is evil, indeed monstrously so. President Bush should be commended, not assailed, for having identified North Korea as one of the members of the “Axis of Evil” that threatens the security of the United States, its allies and interests around the world. That statement certainly discomfited those in foreign capitals and the U.S. State Department who have pretended since 1994 that the North Korean government had become a nation with whom we could safely do business. But we did so at our peril — and only by studiously ignoring the danger that it continued to represent.

This danger is evident in the North’s unchecked proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction technology to virtually all the world’s rogue states and possibly to terrorist organizations like Osama bin Laden’s. (According to the Times of London, such sales — Pyongyang’s only hard currency-earning export — were worth some $560 million to the bankrupt regime in 2001.) It can also be seen in the persistent deceit that has made a mockery of North Korean promises to forego nuclear weapons.

And the danger from North Korea is apparent in the Orwellian comprehensiveness of the regime’s repression, mind-control and starvation of its people. As Dr. Norbert Vollertsen — a German physician who, in the course of several years’ humanitarian service in North Korea, obtained an unprecedented insight into the appalling conditions in that prison-state — has noted, any government that treats its own citizens with such brutality cannot be expected permanently to refrain from trying to harm others.
Second, arms control and similar “processes” cannot genuinely contain a government like North Korea’s. This is not simply because it is difficult to devise and implement effective verification arrangements when dealing with the quintessential closed society. It is inherent in the fact that regimes like that of Kim Jong-Il have nothing but contempt for the rule of law — and for those who put stock in such concepts. Accordingly, deals struck with such regimes are, by their nature, exercises in Western self-deception.
Third, the desire of dangerous nations’ neighbors to accommodate, rather than confront, them is understandable. But it should not be determinative of U.S. policy. Such pleading today from South Korea and Japan is reminiscent of the Cold War advocacy for detente by Leftists in the West German government. The Free Democrats’ policies did nothing to mitigate the actual threat posed by the Soviet Union. They did, however, provide indispensable economic life-support for the Kremlin, deferring by decades the USSR’s collapse — at a cost, by the way, of many tens of billions in German taxpayer-subsidized loans that had to be written off after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Fourth, the United States must be clearly able to project power in two distant theaters simultaneously in order to prevent a second adversary from taking advantage of our preoccupation with a first. The foolishness of eliminating over the previous decade the necessary U.S. military force structure, compounded by the failure to make during that period appropriate investments in modernizing the armed forces, are illustrating yet again the costly false economies associated with cashing in “peace dividends” when international threats appear to have receded.
Fifth, the fact that the North Korean government has taken to brandishing its ballistic missiles to heighten the demands from Seoul, Tokyo and Washington for its further appeasement, powerfully underscores the wisdom of President Bush in deciding to end America’s abject vulnerability to attack by such missiles. It should, as well, add urgency to his effort to deploy anti-missile defenses without further delay.

This can be done most swiftly, and with greatest benefit to our forces and friends in East Asia, by upgrading existing Navy vessels equipped with the Aegis fleet air defense system. President Bush recently announced that such sea-based missile defenses would begin to be put into place, but not until late 2004. The threat from North Korea underscores what has long been obvious: We need such defenses now. A Rickover-like figure — perhaps the Navy’s long-time and most visionary leader on anti-missile systems, Rear Admiral Rod Rempt — needs to be given a presidential mandate to cobble together at once the best and fastest interim capability available.

The Bottom Line

These lessons underscore the soundness of President Bush’s basic approach to date towards North Korea. The United States should do nothing to prop-up the North Korean regime or to legitimate it. Most especially, Washington should refrain from making any commitments at odds with the U.S. interest in truly ending the threat Kim Jong-Il and Company represent and in liberating the North’s enslaved people.

This is, of course, far easier said than done. And, since Mr. Bush is properly focused on effecting the liberation of the people of Iraq at the moment, his Administration must for the time being pursue temporizing measures towards North Korea. It is imperative, however, that these be guided by the President’s appreciation of the loathsome evil of the North Korean regime and by the need to arrange for it to join Saddam Hussein’s on the ash-heap of history at the earliest possible moment.

Will the Bush Team Staff up to Stop a Nuclear Melt-down?

January 6, 2003Frank Gaffney, Jr.

(Washington, D.C.): Ever since North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-Il, broke bad — acknowledging cheating on his promises to forego nuclear weapons and then doing so openly and in earnest — government officials and others have been speculating about how fast the “Dear Leader” will be able to build up his stockpile. If he has two weapons now, will he have five or ten by this time next year? Some think Kim might be able to build as many as fifty over the next few years.

What About Us?

Lost in the discussion to date is a dirty little secret: Whatever the number Pyongyang’s weaponeers can churn out in the months ahead, it will almost certainly be larger than the number of nuclear weapons the United States could build during a similar period. The truth is that the U.S. cannot produce any new weapons at the moment, having shut down some years ago its only facility for manufacturing the heart of such weapons: plutonium “pits.”

Now, the argument will be made that the United States has thousands of nuclear weapons and does not need to produce additional ones just because North Korea does. Still, it is an extraordinary thing that the world’s sole superpower lacks the capability to augment its arsenal — a capability that not only North Korea but every one of the other declared nuclear powers (Britain, France, Russia, China, India and Pakistan) has maintained.

This situation may prove to be far more than a bizarre anomaly, however. What if it turns out that the weapons currently in the U.S. inventory (most of which were designed twenty or thirty years ago with a very different strategic environment in mind) are not only obsolescent, but are of very limited or no utility — and, therefore, incredible as deterrents — in the present environment? For example, is it acceptable that no weapon in the stockpile today can reliably hold at risk the sorts of deeply buried and assiduously hardened command centers and weapons bunkers in which Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-Il have invested heavily?

The Nuclear Melt-down

Worse yet, America’s present inability to manufacture new nuclear weapons in any quantity is but a symptom of a far larger problem: the dismal state of the industrial and technological infrastructure that the Department of Energy is charged with maintaining to support the U.S. deterrent.

This state of affairs is the predictable, and intended, product of a decade of neglect — or worse — of this nuclear weapons complex. The House Armed Services Committee once described the combination of policies and spending aimed during this period at hobbling, undermining and ultimately dismantling the complex as “erosion by design.”

Thanks largely to this legacy, we not only lack the ability to replace or modernize the nuclear weapons currently in the U.S. stockpile. There is also growing uncertainty about their safety and reliability. Today, we cannot address those uncertainties in the only proven and most cost-effective manner, since we are unable at the moment to conduct underground nuclear tests. None of the other, as- yet-unvalidated and much-more-expensive technologies that have been held out as substitutes for testing will be available for years to come; some may never pan out technically or be funded to fruition.

A Crisis on the People Side, Too

If anything, the problems may be even more acute on the personnel side of the complex. Last week’s resignations by the top two officials of the Los Alamos National Laboratory is but the latest evidence of the difficulties confronting the national labs. Their people, who are absolutely critical to the technical excellence and operation of the Nation’s nuclear weapons infrastructure, have for much of the past ten years been poorly led, demoralized and, in many cases, profoundly alienated by their treatment from higher-ups in Washington.

As a result, there has been an acute brain-drain from the labs. This is particularly true among the small cadre of physicists who have actually had first-hand experience with the extremely esoteric business of designing, testing and maintaining the nuclear weapons in our stockpile today — arguably, the most complex pieces of equipment ever produced by man.

The good news is that President Bush and his national security team have brought the sort of fresh and more responsible perspective to these matters that has been so sorely needed. Their 2002 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) for the first time gave equal importance to the nuclear stockpile and the infrastructure necessary to sustain it.

The NPR explicitly recognized that our aging arsenal may be inadequate to today’s and tomorrow’s deterrent requirements. It underscored the need to have in place the technological and industrial capacity by which fixes could be implemented. And the NPR signaled, at least implicitly, that underground testing will have to be resumed in order both to assure the safety and reliability of the present inventory and to upgrade and modernize that arsenal.

The Bottom Line

It is not enough, of course, simply to recognize the problem. Real leadership must be brought to bear to take corrective action. An opportunity to provide such leadership now looms, thanks to the reassignment of Gen. John Gordon, who previously ran the Nuclear National Security Administration, the openings at Los Alamos and the possibility of competing the contract to run that laboratory — a job that has, from the lab’s founding, been the exclusive responsibility of the University of California.

In particular, a key test will be the Administration’s replacement for Gen. Gordon. Clearly needed is a leader with: a demonstrated ability to manage large, technically sophisticated government organizations and industrial facilities; first-hand familiarity with the weapons complex yet, ideally, independence from it; and an established commitment to the President’s ambitious agenda of ensuring the long-term viability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. With the help of such an individual, Mr. Bush and Energy Secretary Spence Abraham have a chance to halt and reverse the meltdown of America’s nuclear weapons infrastructure, and the self-inflicted “erosion by design” that is all-the-more ill-advised in light of proliferation in North Korea and elsewhere.

Bizarro: Spain intercepts N. Korean Scuds at US urging, but US sends the Scuds to Yemen

December 12, 2002Center for Security Policy

It began as perfect teamwork: The US informed Spanish warships in the Arabian Sea about an unflagged North Korean freighter laden with Scud missiles.

In its most important naval operation in decades, Spain acted with precision. A frigate raked machine gun fire across the freighter’s bow. When the freighter ignored orders to stop, snipers shot out the vessel’s mast cables, making room for a Sea Hawk to lower marines onto the deck. The Spaniards seized the ship, finding between 12 and 15 Scud missiles and warheads hidden under sacks of cement.

The State Department turned that brilliantly executed operation into what a British newspaper described as "a full-blown diplomatic farce."

According to press reports, Secretary of State Colin Powell decided to release the North Korean ship and allow it to deliver its Scuds to Yemen. Powell OK’d the release after the Yemeni president promised he would buy no more missiles – even though the White House said Yemen had broken two earlier promises. Other US officials said the shipment violated no international laws.

The Spaniards, among our staunchest allies in Europe, were livid, their diplomatic understatements notwithstanding. "The Spanish military forces risked their lives, and so far we don’t know why," said a defense ministry official in Madrid. Surely other allies are taking note of the incident.

Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney comments on the bizarre US-sends-North-Korean-Scuds-to-Yemen incident on Fox News. To read his column, Click here.

Wall Street’s ‘Poisoned Apples’

July 22, 2002Frank Gaffney, Jr.

(Washington, D.C.): In recent weeks, government officials, business leaders and market analysts have assured shell-shocked American investors that plummeting indexes are the fault of just a few corporate “bad apples.” Unfortunately, the loss of confidence so far induced by the lack of transparency and accountability in a handful of board rooms is likely to pale beside the problems associated with what might be called Wall Street’s “poisoned apples” — some 300 U.S. and international companies with ties to terrorist-sponsoring states and/or their commercial enterprises.

Enter the Global Security Risk Monitor’

The companies in question have recently been identified by a new product called the “Global Security Risk Monitor.” The Monitor describes the operations of companies that have links to one or more of six countries (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan and North Korea) designated by the State Department as state-sponsors of terrorism. In addition, it profiles companies that have been publicly linked to proliferation-related concerns. Subscribers can discern within a few clicks of a computer mouse the kind of people and enterprises who would benefit from their investments.

This could, and should, have two salutary effects: First, the Global Security Risk Monitor will enable those Americans who have no interest in helping to underwrite terrorists or their sponsors — surely a majority of the roughly 60% of our countrymen who now own a piece of Wall Street — to do the financial equivalent of “voting with their feet.” They can divest their personal portfolios of stocks and bonds of companies and foreign state-owned and government entities associated with such threats as terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Even more consequential would be if they were to demand that the trillions of dollars wielded by institutional investors managing their funds (for example, through pension plans, life insurance companies, mutual funds, etc.) also desist from holding such financial instruments.

Second, the transparency imposed by the Monitor should impress upon corporate executives and boards of directors, as well as investors, that there is a real risk to share value if their companies persist in doing business with countries that wish to do us harm – – or who collaborate, underwrite or otherwise support terrorists who do. President Bush has made clear the U.S. government’s determination to cut off the financing that enables al Qaeda and other terrorists to operate. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has metaphorically described the challenge we face as one in which we must not only swat at the terrorist “mosquitoes” but “drain the swamps” in which they breed.

The ineluctable logic is that companies “with us” in the war on terrorism will not be doing business with terrorist-sponsors. Those discovered to be doing otherwise should reasonably expect to suffer in the marketplace as their activities come to light.

Who is Very Evil’?

Investors concerned that they may unwittingly be financing threats to this country have a new front to worry about — one that is, regrettably, not currently addressed by the start-up Global Security Risk Monitor: Communist China. As noted by the Center last week,<¹ a report just issued by the U.S.-China Security Review Commission expressed concern about the PRC’s “use of the U.S. capital markets as a source of funding for the Chinese military and intelligence services and for Chinese companies assisting in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or ballistic missile delivery systems.”

It is not clear whether American investors — who have thus far shown commendable willingness to hold onto much of their stock portfolios in the expectation that the market will come back — will be similarly disposed towards companies that have allowed their resources to be used by China and its friends to threaten this country and its interests around the world. The prospect that they might not so alarmed the Chinese Foreign Ministry that it took the unusual step last week of formally denouncing the Commission’s work on capital markets as “very evil.”

China is currently in the midst of what appears to be an increasingly messy leadership struggle. If past experience is any guide, the principal beneficiary of the competing factions’ bids for power will be the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The Chinese military will give its support to whomever offers it the greatest amount of resources, advanced weapons technology and latitude in bringing Taiwan to heel, dominating Asia, driving the U.S. out of the region (by force if necessary), etc. Even as things stand now, according to the Security Review Commission, the PLA’s build-up may put it in a position as early as 2005-2007 to move against democratic Taiwan.

The Commission served stark notice: “[China’s penetration of the U.S. capital markets] not only poses direct security concerns, but raises issues regarding investor transparency and material risk as well.” The report went on to say that “Given this dynamic, the Commission is troubled that neither the U.S. government nor the U.S. investment community is adequately evaluating security-related risks related to China’s fund-raising in the U.S. capital markets.”

The Bottom Line

Clearly, if the federal government and Wall Street truly want to reestablish investors’ confidence in the U.S. financial market, they are going to have to find ways to address the need for transparency not only with respect to corporate governance of a few “bad apples” but also with respect to the “poisoned apples” that could pose mortal threats to us all.

¹See the Center for Security Policy’s Decision Brief entitled: “Back On the China Front” (No. 02-D 36, 15 July 2002).