[quote]The heart of the problem IMO lies with the US, acutally more with Bush. If he wasn't ranting on and on about his axis of evil and changing of the regimes, things would have been a lot easier to negotiate... [/quote]
How much easier? Especially with North Korea. Clinton pandered to N Korea's wishes all the while they were still building weapons and violating treaties.
[quote]Bush has stunningly mishandled this confrontation. He has allowed North Korea-the most rickety spoke on his "axis of evil," a dangerous regime by any measure-to reach the crest of becoming a nuclear power. He has dismissed numerous opportunities to nip this disaster in the bud. And now he comes up with an old formula that evades the recent shift in the balance. [/quote]
Bush allowed North Korea to reach nuclear status? This article is bunk, and im done with this. This is unbelievable.
Clinton had much more to do with this than Bush. In 2001 we found out that he was already finished with a few weapons.
I wish the author would explain what opportunities we had in the 6 way talks to 'nip this in the bud'.
A decade before being proclaimed part of the "axis of evil," North Korea raised alarms in Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo as the pace of its clandestine nuclear weapons program mounted. When confronted by evidence of its deception in 1993, Pyongyang abruptly announced its intention to become the first nation ever to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, defying its earlier commitments to submit its nuclear activities to full international inspections.
U.S. intelligence had revealed evidence of a robust plutonium production program. Unconstrained, North Korea?s nuclear factory would soon be capable of building about thirty Nagasaki-sized nuclear weapons annually. The resulting arsenal would directly threaten the security of the United States and its allies, while tempting cash-starved North Korea to export its deadly wares to America?s most bitter adversaries.
Three former U.S. officials who played key roles in the nuclear crisis trace the intense efforts that led North Korea to freeze?and pledge ultimately to dismantle?its dangerous plutonium production program under international inspection, while the storm clouds of a second Korean War gathered. Drawing on international government documents, memoranda, cables, and notes, the authors chronicle the complex web of diplomacy--from Seoul, Tokyo, and Beijing to Geneva, Moscow, and Vienna and back again?that led to the negotiation of the 1994 Agreed Framework intended to resolve this nuclear standoff. They also explore the challenge of weaving together the military, economic, and diplomatic instruments employed to persuade North Korea to accept significant constraints on its nuclear activities, while deterring rather than provoking a violent North Korean response.
Some ten years after these intense negotiations, the Agreed Framework lies abandoned. North Korea claims to possess some nuclear weapons, while threatening to produce even more. The 1994 confrontation provides important lessons for the United States as it grapples once again with a nuclear crisis on a peninsula that half a century ago claimed more than 50,000 American lives and today bristles with arms along the last frontier of the cold war: the De-Militarized Zone separating North and South Korea.