N Korea’s shrillness validates Bush policy – and emphasizes missile defense urgency

Some former US officials are almost as shrill as the North Korean regime in denouncing President Bush’s tough policy toward Pyongyang.

The Bush administration, as the Center for Security Policy notes in a new paper, is right to resist calls to negotiate with the Stalinist regime and to prop it up with aid. Here’s a summary:

First, Kim jong-Il’s regime is evil, indeed monstrously so.

Second, arms control and similar “processes” cannot genuinely contain a government like North Korea’s.

Third, the desire of dangerous nations’ neighbors to accommodate, rather than confront, them is understandable. But it should not be determinative of US policy. Such pleading today from South Korea and Japan is reminiscent of the Cold War advocacy for detente by Leftists in the West German government.

Fourth, the United States must be clearly able to project power in two distant theaters simultaneously in order to prevent a second adversary from taking advantage of our preoccupation with a first.

Fifth, the fact that the North Korean government has taken to brandishing its ballistic missiles to heighten the demands from Seoul, Tokyo and Washington for its further appeasement, powerfully underscores the wisdom of President Bush in deciding to end America’s abject vulnerability to attack by such missiles. It should, as well, add urgency to his effort to deploy anti-missile defenses without further delay.