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Posts Tagged ‘Disarmament’
January 6th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
North Korea Provides Another Cautionary Tale to the Naive
Posted by Print

In 1994, North Korea placated the Clinton Administration by agreeing to discontinue its nuclear program.

Jimmy Carter trumpeted this supposed achievement of peaceful negotiation.  Bill Clinton sang its praises.

Since that date, of course, we have endured the “Groundhog Day” style cycle of North Korean troublemaking, hollow admonitions from the “community of nations,” more “peaceful negotiations,” and ultimately successful North Korean nuclear blasts.

In other words, as conservatives and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton have often pointed out to an unwelcoming mainstream media, the popular process of toothless negotiations with incorrigible rogues was again proven pointless.

But chilling news from the Korean peninsula suggests that it was even more dangerously naive than we realized.  According to South Korea’s foreign minister, North Korea resumed its nuclear program almost as soon as it agreed to the 1994 accord.  In other words, Kim Jong Il never intended to respect his obligations, and made dupes out of Carter, Clinton and liberal non-confrontationalists.  Instead, it was all merely another maneuver in his endless game of squeezing largess out of all-too-willing negotiators, a process that continues today with both North Korea and Iran.

It all puts Carter’s Nobel Peace Prize in a different light, doesn’t it?