Another Member of the Axis Checks In
The Emperor has a habit of uttering well-crafted sound bites during his State of the Union speech that come back to haunt him and the country. There was, for example, the matter of the "sixteen words" included in one speech implying that Saddam Hussein was negotiating with Niger for yellow cake uranium, a claim that was known to be based on a forgery. Just as memorable was the President's famous description of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as comprising the new Axis of Evil.
We attacked Iraq. We're currently threatening Iran, both with UN sanctions and a flotilla of US ships streaming toward the Straits of Hormuz. North Korea, the third member of the Axis is next on the docket (or so it would seem), has just exploded its first nuclear device in a test. Geopolitically, the three nations really had very little in common at the time the comment was made, yet they were linked by the president rhetorically, and now they are linked in a more palpable and frightening way.
From an article by David E. Sanger in today's NY Times:
North Korea may be a starving, friendless, authoritarian nation of 23 million people, but its apparently successful explosion of a small nuclear device in the mountains above the town of Kilju on Monday represents a defiant bid for survival and respect. For Washington and its allies, it illuminates a failure of nearly two decades of atomic diplomacy.
North Korea is more than just another nation joining the nuclear club. It has never developed a weapons system it did not ultimately sell on the world market, and it has periodically threatened to sell its nuclear technology. So the end of ambiguity about its nuclear capacity foreshadows a very different era, in which the concern may not be where a nation’s warheads are aimed, but in whose hands its weapons and skill end up.
That returns Mr. Bush to the problem he faced when he came to office, and that his aides have never stopped arguing about: whether the best way to contain North Korea is to further isolate it, or to draw it out of its paranoid shell. The nuclear test may force Washington to pick a strategy. [Emphasis added]
One of the most tragic links among these three countries is that they demonstrate a very clear pattern in the current US regime's diplomacy. We don't talk to those we disagree with: we threaten them. No one has suggested that any of these countries were or are the paragons of virtue, quite the contrary. Yet prior administrations found ways to engage those with whom we had disputes, such as the Soviet Union, in ways other than dropping bombs on them or sanctioning them so deeply that only a deepened bitterness resulted.
It is clear that Mr. Bush has failed in Iraq, and is failing dramatically in Iran and North Korea. Even twenty-somethings recognize this, as noted in an AP article on the response of Korean-Americans in Los Angeles' Korea Town:
Others were sharply critical of President Bush, arguing his administration could have kept North Korea from going nuclear by engaging the country instead of implementing economic sanctions.
"If the U.S. had better diplomacy, instead of always just threatening, we could have been looking at a much better situation," said Jiwon Hong, 27, a community activist whose family immigrated when she was 9. "Maybe North Korea felt it was the last button they had left to push."
It's hard to dispute that analysis, isn't it.
We attacked Iraq. We're currently threatening Iran, both with UN sanctions and a flotilla of US ships streaming toward the Straits of Hormuz. North Korea, the third member of the Axis is next on the docket (or so it would seem), has just exploded its first nuclear device in a test. Geopolitically, the three nations really had very little in common at the time the comment was made, yet they were linked by the president rhetorically, and now they are linked in a more palpable and frightening way.
From an article by David E. Sanger in today's NY Times:
North Korea may be a starving, friendless, authoritarian nation of 23 million people, but its apparently successful explosion of a small nuclear device in the mountains above the town of Kilju on Monday represents a defiant bid for survival and respect. For Washington and its allies, it illuminates a failure of nearly two decades of atomic diplomacy.
North Korea is more than just another nation joining the nuclear club. It has never developed a weapons system it did not ultimately sell on the world market, and it has periodically threatened to sell its nuclear technology. So the end of ambiguity about its nuclear capacity foreshadows a very different era, in which the concern may not be where a nation’s warheads are aimed, but in whose hands its weapons and skill end up.
That returns Mr. Bush to the problem he faced when he came to office, and that his aides have never stopped arguing about: whether the best way to contain North Korea is to further isolate it, or to draw it out of its paranoid shell. The nuclear test may force Washington to pick a strategy. [Emphasis added]
One of the most tragic links among these three countries is that they demonstrate a very clear pattern in the current US regime's diplomacy. We don't talk to those we disagree with: we threaten them. No one has suggested that any of these countries were or are the paragons of virtue, quite the contrary. Yet prior administrations found ways to engage those with whom we had disputes, such as the Soviet Union, in ways other than dropping bombs on them or sanctioning them so deeply that only a deepened bitterness resulted.
It is clear that Mr. Bush has failed in Iraq, and is failing dramatically in Iran and North Korea. Even twenty-somethings recognize this, as noted in an AP article on the response of Korean-Americans in Los Angeles' Korea Town:
Others were sharply critical of President Bush, arguing his administration could have kept North Korea from going nuclear by engaging the country instead of implementing economic sanctions.
"If the U.S. had better diplomacy, instead of always just threatening, we could have been looking at a much better situation," said Jiwon Hong, 27, a community activist whose family immigrated when she was 9. "Maybe North Korea felt it was the last button they had left to push."
It's hard to dispute that analysis, isn't it.
posted by Diane at 3:54 AM
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