"Tentative" NK Nuke Deal Reached

I’m willing to bet this deal will last longer than 2005 deal that lasted only one day, but bottom line is we have been down this road before and this deal will ultimately fail:

North Korea has tentatively agreed to close down its nuclear weapons program in exchange for energy aid, U.S. and Chinese officials said Tuesday.

But the proposed deal was being reviewed by officials in the negotiators’ capitals before becoming final.

Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the lead American official at the talks, said the United States will give an unspecified amount of energy assistance to North Korea in exchange for North Korea freezing its production of plutonium.

Hill said negotiators are running the agreement by their capitals and would reconvene later Tuesday.

"We feel it’s an excellent, excellent draft," Hill said. "I don’t think we are the problem."

Well the problem is that the North Koreans want massive energy assistance for just freezing their program that nobody wants to pay.  The Japanese do not want to give North Korea anything until the North Koreans fully account for all the Japanese citizens that were kidnapped over the decades by North Korea.  The Russians want anything they give to the North Koreans to be limited to forgiving foreign debt which they know North Korea will never pay anyway.  That leaves China, the US, and South Korea to pay it:

The newspaper said the U.S., South Korea, and China would provide aid under the deal. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the North would receive 500,000 tons of heavy oil and other energy and humanitarian assistance equivalent to that amount. 

At least it appears that the US will not be paying much of the energy assistance, South Korea will, but the US is giving North Korea back their frozen money in a Macau bank that is from counterfeiting US currency.  What kind of message is that sending, that you can counterfeit US currency and get away with it?

So for massive energy assistance and giving millions of dollars of ill gotten money back to the North Koreans, what is the US getting out of this you may ask?:

Left for later discussion would be what to do with the atomic weapons the North now is believed to possess — a half-dozen or more by expert estimates. The deal also reportedly fails to address the uranium enrichment program that Washington accuses North Korea of having.

Yes, the US is giving North Korea pretty much what they received in the 1994 deal that President Bush and other conservatives loved to bash the Clinton Administration over.  The big difference now is that North Korea will be allowed to keep their current nuclear weapons and not even have to dismantle their uranium enrichment program for all the free goodies given to them.  These are all considered issues that will be discussed later. 

North Korea has no intent to give up their weapons.  They are just trying to get what they can from the international community without giving up the half dozen nukes they now possess.  These nuclear weapons ensure regime security from an outside attack; that is something more valuable to a dictator like Kim Jong-il than any incentive the international community could give to him.   I recommend everyone read the Strategic Disengagement Theory that best explain this.

Former US diplomat John Bolton was holding no punches about the possible approval of this deal:

"I am very disturbed by this deal," he told CNN. "It sends exactly the wrong signal to would-be proliferators around the world: ‘If we hold out long enough, wear down the State Department negotiators, eventually you get rewarded,’ in this case with massive shipments of heavy fuel oil for doing only partially what needs to be done" to dismantle the nuclear program.

"I think this deal with North Korea undercuts the sanctions resolution with respect to them, and I think the Iranians have only to follow the same example."

I am in total agreement with Bolton on this.  President Bush hasn’t given this deal an okay yet, but it appears that the Bush Administration so eager for the appearance of a foreign policy success they are willing to go the way of President Clinton and trust the North Koreans to uphold to this deal and work towards future disarmament.  I have said before I credit Clinton with trying diplomacy even though it failed, but if President Bush agrees to this deal he has no excuses for when it ultimately fails. 

The thing is President Bush will probably be out of office when this thing fails just like Clinton was.  The North Koreans will uphold the deal and shut down their reactor, but they will continue to use their discussion and delay tactics to hold up the talks to dismantle their half dozen nukes they have now.  While all the discussion is going on, North Korea will use the influx of cash they will be receiving from the international community for their "freeze" to advance their ballistic missile program to be able to handle a nuclear warhead that can reach the US mainland. 

Mark my words if the US agrees to this "freeze", in 2010 under the next US president we will be discussing this same thing again when North Korea kicks out the inspectors and demands more blackmail, but by this time they will be able to threaten the US and neighboring countries with nuclear weapons that can be launched on one of their ballistic missiles.  The blackmail will be much steeper than it is now and it won’t be the future president’s fault, it will be this one. 

Read a whole lot more on the latest NK developments at these sites below:

The Marmot

One Free Korea

DPRK Studies (particularly good)

Lost Nomad