Troubling Blind Spot

The Bush administration's singleminded focus on Iraq blinded it to some pretty ugly things going on in other parts of the world.

North Korea has fired two more missiles, hours after the UN Security Council unanimously condemned its nuclear test, South Korean reports say.

The Communist state fired two short-range missiles off an east-coast base, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, citing an official.

The move came as UN diplomats began work on a resolution to punish North Korea for its underground nuclear test.

Translation: When John Bolton warns George Bush you're doing it wrong, U R Doin It Rong!

In 2002, our intelligence community definitively judged that the regime was working on an industrial-scale enrichment program. Since then we have little new information, reducing the confidence level, but not changing the substantive conclusion, that the North Koreans "have and continue to operate a uranium enrichment program" – as Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell testified in February.

For the Bush administration, however, the lack of new data is an excuse to ignore the entire issue of uranium.

On plutonium, the administration seems content to seek vague statements from the North that "account" for the amount of this fissile material we think it has extracted from its Yongbyon reactor's spent fuel rods over the years. Administration briefings reveal little or no interest in how many plutonium weapons exist; whether there are other plutonium-related facilities hidden in North Korea's vast complex of underground facilities; and what the North's weapons-manufacturing capabilities are.

Proliferation? Perhaps the Bush administration's most wondrous act of magic is to make that problem disappear. The State Department argues that North Korea may have proliferated in the past, but that's all behind us. How do we know? The North Koreans have told us.

Remember this gem of a meme?

Under the final terms of the Agreed Framework approved in October of 1994, Clinton agreed to provide the "Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea" (DPRK) with two light water nuclear reactors and a massive allotment of oil. The U.S. agreed to ship 500,000 metric tons of oil annually in response to the North's pretense that the energy-starved backwater had developed the nuclear facility to generate power. These shipments have cost taxpayers more than $800 million to date - a bargain compared with the $6 billion spent on constructing the nuclear reactors, which now empower North Korea to produce 100 nuclear bombs each year.

All these measures failed to quell the North's atom-lust.

Odds are you won't hear a peep from the right about Bush's complicity in the further development of nuclear arms by the North (absent Bolton's now-year-old OpEd), rather than correctly point out that, of the "Axis of Evil", only Korea had any hopes of developing a nuclear armament program AND legitimate targets to lob them at.

Means, motive, opportunity, the classic tripod on which to hang a conviction in a criminal case apparently holds no weight in the realm of the right wing. We striked out at the country with the least means, the lesser motive, and practically zero opportunity and rattled sabres at the country with slightly more means, slightly more motive, but even less opportunity.

And did nothing about the guy in the ski mask holding a gun at the bank teller window with an open sack.

Smart. Very smart.

What could have been handled six years ago is now looming as a pandemic of pandemonia. The same logic used to invade Iraq could just as easily have been applied to Korea, all the way to the feeble excuse of bringing an international criminal to justice and freeing his citizenry.

Indeed, that charge more applied to Kim Jong Il than to Saddam Hussein. Hussein, at least, never starved his own people, despite gassing large numbers of them.

But now we have what we have, as Strindberg so aptly put it.

A Meeting Of The....Um, Minds?

OK, this ought to be interesting...

SEOUL (Reuters) - The removal of all nuclear weapons from North Korea next year could pave the way for a summit meeting between U.S. President George W. Bush and the reclusive state's leader, Kim Jong-il, a U.S. envoy said on Wednesday.

But U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow said it would be a mistake for the impoverished state to still expect international aid and an improvement in its diplomatic standing if it only takes half measures to end its nuclear program.

"I think that it (a summit) might be possible before the end of President Bush's term if North Korea makes the right decisions and is ready to go all the way, not just disablement but full denuclearization," Vershbow told a security forum.

That "Axis Of Evil" that Bush pinned his presidency on sure is getting kinda wobbly...we've failed in Iraq, we're kissing up to Kim and North Korea, and Iran is not-too-quietly rattling sabres about making nukes.

The summit talk grows out of a planned summit between Kim and South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun to be held next month in Pyongyang.

Given two things: a) that we've been in the region at the request of South Korea to bulwark them against North Korea (and it's ally, China), and b) South Korea never signed the armistice in 1953 with North Korea (you could look it up), that South Korea is holding a summit with the North is a significant step in the region.

See what "jaw jaw jaw" instead of "war war war" gets you, Mr Bush?

Roh's talks with Kim will not include nuclear disarmament (although I'm sure Bush has pressured Roh to bring it up), but focus on a peace treaty between the two nations, which have been "on again, off again" in their overtures towards reunification.

Now, we must keep in mind that, with two megalomaniacal tyrants involved, we're talking about a likelihood of a meeting somewhere north of a frozen hell. Still, both men stand to gain some measure of vindication in the world's eyes should this meeting go off, something sure to tempt a megalomaniac: Bush gets a gold star on his homework, for once (and likely the only time in eight years), while Kim would have gained some small measure of admiration and respect by facing down his enemy across a table and making some kind of deal with him, as trivial as that deal may appear to us.

Both sides will, of course, blow any deal well out of proportion for their home town "fans," and crow about how much they shook the other guy down for.

People like me, however, will be commentating from the sidelines, and will keep you informed about the real deal.

Say What You Will About George Bush...

...You can't really argue his comedic timing:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. strategists are exploring how to implement a peace accord to officially end the 1950-53 Korean War and hope to start discussions with North Korea as soon as year end, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Presumably, this is an attempt to salvage some kind of historical legacy that will deflect some of the criticism of the Iraq invasion, but in point of fact, history will probably look at this as an indication of the cynical acknowledgement by the Bush administration that Iraq was a debacle and that by ending the Korean War, Bush is setting the stage to make Iraq the longest-running conflict in American history.

In other words, by calling attention to the long-standing "failure" of past administrations to essentially put pen to paper and make de facto that which has been considered de jure for roughly twenty years, Bush throws into harsh relief the fact that, well, he'll never be considered seriously for a Nobel Peace Prize, to be charitable. Too, it highlights the officious and arrongant manner in which Bush has run his foreign policy, and takes essential brainpower (something already in short supply at the White House) off the more pressing and immediate problem of Iraq to formalize that which basically exists, but for our interference. Or should I say, Bush's interference.

This comes on the same day as Iraqi leaders warned that civil war is imminent if the US pulls its troops out anytime soon:

BAGHDAD, July 9 (Reuters) - Iraqi leaders warned on Monday that an early U.S. troop withdrawal could tip Iraq into all-out civil war after the New York Times said debate was growing in the White House over a gradual scaling-down of forces.

The stark comments followed a wave of bombings and shootings in Iraq at the weekend that killed 250 people.

"This could produce a civil war, partition of the country and a regional war. We might see the country collapse," Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, a Kurd, told a news conference when asked about the New York Times report.

Citing administration officials and consultants, the Times said these officials feared the last pillars of political support among Senate Republicans for U.S. President George W. Bush's Iraq strategy were "collapsing around them".

In other words, the Iraqi leaders are in danger of losing their cushy jobs, and will be forced back into the streets along with the people they so callowly abandoned for their vacation.

Right now, American troops are like crack cocaine in Iraq: cheap to get, and plentiful. And highly tempting. Shoot one up, and move on to the next fix. But they also imply a stronger drug is at work, and that drug is the civil war that is already raging in Iraq, all over Iraq, and with a few exceptions, throughout Iraqi provinces. And like crack addicts, the Iraqi leadership is in deep denial over the extent of this addiction as well as their role in facilitating it.

The Bullshit In The China Shop

It seems as though the United States has decided to latch onto China as its dance partner when it comes to any major issue. Take today's news, for example, regarding the Doha free trade talks:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Monday promised an aggressive push to reach a global trade pact through the Doha round and discussed some benefits for China if it were to move toward a more flexible exchange rate.

"A free and open international trade regime is vital for a stable and growing economy, both here at home and throughout the world," according to an annual report on the U.S. economy prepared by the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

"The United States will continue to work aggressively toward multilateral trade liberalization through the World Trade Organization's Doha Development Agenda negotiations," the report said.

Now, let's take a quick look at the backstory here: China's yuan is tied to the dollar (so much so that the dollar is referred to in China as the meiyuan at the fixed rate of roughly eight and a quarter yuan to the dollar. This rate was basically fixed (there is some daily fluctuation within a narrow 3 cent band) in the wake of the Asian financial crisis of 1997.

Practically, this means that Chinese exports to the United States will remain cheap as the dollar declines on the foreign exchange. They'll also remain cheap if the dollar rises. In fact, they're just cheap, which is why we import so much stuff from China. They can make it cheap and sell it cheap here.

For lots of reasons, this is a bad thing. First, it means we become more and more dependent on Chinese exports to satisfy our market demands, and we've seen what that means in our petroleum policies. Second, it means other countries have to find other ways to compete with China for our trade dollars, which means trade is not as powerful an instrument of diplomacy and policy-making as it could be. Finally, it supports a Chinese government that we may not always see eye to eye with, but who can afford to buy up huge amounts of our deficit financing. We give them the money to buy our debt. Sort of like our savings bank holding our mortgage, only the bankers don't particularly like you and don't particularly care if you keep your house or not, so long as they continue to make money off you and so long as you don't get really drunk at one of their parties and do something stupid like hitting on a wife, or picking a fight with that neighbor everyone avoids.

But trade is not the only place we are locked into a spiral with China:

The current President, George W. Bush, has indicated that he does not intend to submit the treaty for ratification, not because he does not support the Kyoto principles, but because of the exemption granted to China (the world's second largest emitter of carbon dioxide).

And of course, there's that whole issue of the neighbor that nobody likes:

North Korea will begin initial steps toward denuclearisation within 60 days of the announcement of the agreement. South Korea, China, the United States and Russia -- but not Japan -- will provide 50,000 tonnes of fuel oil or an equivalent value of economic or humanitarian aide in return.

North Korea will shut down its Yongbyon nuclear complex, including its 5 megawatt reactor and its plutonium reprocessing plant, within the 60 days and seal all facilities there.

China will, of course, oversee the denuclearization program of North Korea and will takes steps to monitor South Korea as well. North Korea is an interesting conundrum in and of itself and probably merits its own post here.

As China emerges in the early 21st century as a rival to the United States, one can see how this duality can play out either nicely for both sides (the US and China develop good communications, have strong economic ties and advance a similar agenda in Asia and beyond) or poorly (China flexes its muscles, the United States takes steps to mitigate their hegemony, or vice versa...basically the Cold War all over again)

One can hope that cooler heads will prevail, but then again, one would have hoped George W. Bush wouldn't have been elected President. Twice.

snarkasm, snarcasm, snarky

Bush
China
North Korea
Doha free trade