The president’s critics are gloating over North Korea’s apparent nuclear test. Predictably, Sen. John Kerry was among the first to pounce, melodramatically labeling President George W. Bush’s inability to control a madman—Sen. Kerry’s word, not mine—a “shocking failure.” According to Kerry, “While we’ve been bogged down in Iraq where there were no weapons of mass destruction, a madman has apparently tested the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.”
Joseph Cirincione of the Center for American Progress adds, “It is difficult to know what is worse, the failure of the Bush administration to stop this threat or the pompous pronouncements coming from the White House and our United Nations ambassador.” According to Cirincione, “US officials do not have a clue as to what to do now.” Of course, they didn’t in the 1990s either. Indeed, it’s difficult to listen to a lecture about proliferation failures from someone who points to the Clinton administration’s proliferation record as an example of success. Recall that North Korea crashed into the nuclear club in the mid-1990s, just before India and Pakistan shook the subcontinent with a spasm of nuclear tests.
Criticisms of Bush’s hard-line/cold-shoulder stance on North Korea come on the heels of former Defense Secretary William Perry’s critique that Bush has been too soft in dealing with Kim Jong Il. Recall that in July, when Kim threw his last temper tantrum, Perry argued in The Washington Post that Bush should bomb North Korea. “If North Korea persists in its launch preparations,” Perry advised, “the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched.”
In truth, there are no good options in North Korea. And no one deserves all the blame for this mess—no one, that is, except Kim Jong Il, who has proceeded down this reckless path for his own irrational reasons. Some say it’s because Washington is preoccupied with Iran’s nuclear program and Kim wants attention, others because he wants to advertise his cash crop of missiles and nukes, still others because a South Korean will soon head the UN.
But the rationale for this irrationality is irrelevant. John Kerry is correct on at least one thing: Kim Jong Il is a madman, and it’s impossible to reason or negotiate with a madman. The Clinton administration tried for the better part of decade—and failed. The Bush administration, on the other hand, tried to isolate Kim diplomatically and politically and economically—and it too appears to have failed.
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