Center’s Gaffney Joins Krauthammer In Urging Clinton to Apply The Stick — Not More Carrots — To North Korea

In a brilliant column in today’s Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer excoriated the Clinton Administration for its general inattention to the immense strategic problem posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons program — and for the fecklessness of such attention as it has paid the issue. This column (a copy of which is attached) should serve as a clarion call for the security-minded in Congress and the public at large about the dangers that attend the present policy of appeasing Pyongyang — which Krauthammer correctly ridicules as "all carrot and no stick."

Unfortunately, this morning’s Wall Street Journal reports that more appeasement is in store: "…The United States continues to hope for a diplomatic solution; [Secretary of Defense Les] Aspin says the U.S. is ‘not prepared to set any deadlines’ now." The paper goes on to say that:

"[U.S.] allies and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) complain that the U.S. stance creates a precedent for other rogue nations. Disgruntled IAEA officials say that the U.S. has even tried to create a special, truncated inspection process to help Pyongyang save face."

 

Mr. Krauthammer’s analysis and conclusions are entirely shared by the Center for Security Policy. In fact, at a symposium on foreign policy sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute last Wednesday, Center director Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. argued for the United States to "hold the carrots; apply the stick." Excerpts of Mr. Gaffney’s remarks are also attached.

Among Mr. Krauthammer’s many important observations is one with which the Center has particular sympathy:

"The single most dangerous problem in the world, the impending nuclearization of North Korea, is not yet on the national radar screen. Peter Rodman calls it the ‘crisis that ought to be happening but isn’t.’ It will be. By next summer, every political talk show in the country will have special editions devoted to the sudden emergence of the Korean emergency." (Emphasis added.)

 

In keeping with its practice of focussing on issues that will be making "tomorrow’s headlines," the weekly public television show hosted by Mr. Gaffney — "The World This Week" — produced a program on 3 April 1993 entitled, "North Korea and the Bomb" The discussion featured the South Korean Ambassador to the United States, Hyun Hong-Choo; former Assistant Secretary of Defense and U.S. Ambassador to China and South Korea James Lilley and former Rep. Stephen Solarz (D-NY), past chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Pacific and Asian Affairs.