Hell No, Clinton Shouldn't Go - to North Korea

(Washington, D.C.): The Wall Street Journal yesterday reported what may be George W. Bush’s first serious foreign policy mistake: According to the Journal, “[On Monday], Bush transition spokesman Ari Fleischer said Mr. Bush would leave any decision on a visit to [North Korea] to Mr. Clinton. We won’t weigh in on decisions the administration has to make between now and January 20.'”

This statement follows — and presumably reflects — the substance of meetings between senior Clinton foreign policy personnel and Mr. Bush’s newly announced Secretary of State- designate Colin Powell and his National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice. It could greatly compound the damaging legacy President Clinton will bequeath to his successor.¹

A Dismal Record on North Korea

A particularly egregious example of this legacy is the Clinton policy of appeasement towards Stalinist North Korea. It began with a misbegotten 1994 deal whereby Pyongyang was supposed to give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for Western financial life-support, oil and two reactors (capable, by the way, of producing vastly more weapons-useable plutonium than the two aging ones they were to replace). There is reason to believe, that the North may nonetheless have acquired several atomic weapons and is still covertly working to obtain more.

The appeasement of North Korea intensified earlier this year with a Nobel Peace Prize- winning visit to Pyongyang by South Korean President Kim Dae Jong, and a host of concessions by the South unreciprocated by any appreciable diminution of the North’s threatening “good-to-go- to-war” military posture.

Not to be outdone, the Clinton Administration dispatched Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to pay court to Kim Jong Il — complete with the appalling spectacle of her applauding tens of thousands of schoolchildren parading Pyongyang’s commitment to its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs — in the hope of clearing the way for Mr. Clinton to do his own kow- towing pilgrimage to the “Hermit Kingdom.” Its purpose? To secure yet another set of phony North Korean promises, this time involving missile production and proliferation.

It is not in the United States’ interests or those of its allies in East Asia to perpetuate the notion that unverifiable, unworkable and unbalanced agreements with dictators like Kim Jong Il, who have no respect for the rule of law — either at home or internationally — and a track record of ignoring such agreements whenever it suits them. The apparent insouciance about such a prospect on the part of the incoming Bush foreign policy team is especially worrisome since it is utterly at odds with, and manifestly repudiates, the strong opposition to this initiative expressed by congressional leaders in a letter to Mr. Clinton sent last week.

An Ill-Advised Carte Blanche

Of even greater concern than the particulars of the deal Mr. Clinton will try to strike if he does go to North Korea — and the commitment that accord will inevitably inflict upon his successor and the Nation effectively to prop-up Kim Jong Il’s odious regime — is the idea implicit in Mr. Fleischer’s pronouncement: The incoming Bush-Cheney Administration seems to be signaling that it is comfortable with the idea of carrying forward not only what have been, at best, the hapless policies, diplomatic initiatives and international obligations of the Clinton-Gore Administration to date, but those the latter might fashion between now and Inauguration Day, as well.

Just how ill-advised this sort of “carte blanche” may prove to be is evident from even a cursory look at what the Clinton team has been doing since the election and would like to do before it leaves office:

An agreement signed last week by Secretary Albright and Russian Foreign Minister Ivanov committing the United States to pre- and post-launch notifications that will prove a grievous, if not fatal, impediment to America’s pursuit and exercise of space power — an activity the new Rumsfeld Commission will shortly affirm is critical to U.S. security and commercial interests during and beyond the Bush-Cheney years.²

An agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians that will provide no just and durable peace with security for Israel but that will, instead, likely accelerate the slide towards another Mideast war on Mr. Bush’s watch.³

Enrolling in the International Criminal Court despite the fact that the magnitude of the assault it has come to represent on American sovereignty and constitutional processes has obliged even the Clinton White House and Defense Department to oppose making the United States a signatory.

Binding the United States still further to another sovereignty- and economy-sapping international order — the Global Climate Control regime — in talks with European and other negotiators. While this effort has reportedly foundered for the moment, primarily over French insistence that the Kyoto Protocol be implemented in a way that will do maximum damage to the U.S. economy, it may yet be resuscitated and finalized before Messrs. Clinton and Gore leave office.

A strategic arms control deal with the Russians binding the United States to unacceptably radical cuts in offensive nuclear arms and possibly adding to the already significant impediments to the deployment of defensive anti-missile systems.

Normalization of relations with Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

The Bottom Line

Neither the national security, American interests more generally or the next President’s stewardship of the foreign policy portfolio will be advanced by these and similar steps taken in other areas by a lame duck Clinton Administration. Mr. Bush ran on a platform that explicitly assailed the Clinton-Gore record on security policy. The President-elect cannot safely stand by and allow the latter to expand and exacerbate that record under the deadline of the incumbent’s imminent return to private life.

¹It is not clear whether the presence of a strong Secretary of Defense-designate in the mix would have produced different results. But this episode certainly underscores the need for the Bush-Cheney national security team to be balanced by the presence of an effective and forceful advocate for the Defense Department’s views and responsibilities.

²See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled Senior Military Leaders Urge Rejection of Ill-Considered U.S.-Russian Launch Notification Accord (No. 00-P 98, 11 December 2000); Clinton Legacy Watch #51 : What a President Bush Must Undo (No. 00-D 91, 20 November 2000).

³See Daniel Pipes: The Winds of War Are Blowing in the Mideast (No. 00-F 60, 20 December 2000) and What Undid the Middle East Peace Process’ (No. 00-F 52, 31 October 2000).