‘See No Evil…’: Leading Newspapers, N.S.C. Blind To Unfolding Crisis In Asia

(Washington, D.C.): In recent days, developments in East Asia have dominated headlines and preoccupied U.S. policy-makers. Judging by lead editorials in the New York Times and the Washington Post and recommendations reportedly made to President Clinton by his National Security Council staff, however, there is precious little appreciation in any of these quarters concerning the extent to which such developments portend serious problems for the United States and its interests.

So Much for the North Korean Nuclear Problem

On 12 June 1993, in the wake of North Korea’s eleventh-hour decision to "suspend" its withdrawal from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the New York Times enthused in an editorial that "deft diplomacy by the Clinton Administration has coaxed North Korea back from the brink."

"[North Korea’s] agreement is a tribute to sensible officials in Pyongyang who chose the path to prosperity over the road to ruin. It’s also a tribute to cool heads in Washington who refused to overreact to North Korea’s bizarre bargaining behavior….Those neighbors, who had good reason to fear regional instability that would surely result from a nuclear-armed North Korea, all played a part in persuading Pyongyang to reconsider."

 

The Times even strained to find a way to cast the United States as the provocateur in the Korean nuclear crisis, claiming that "Washington…joined in needlessly provocative ‘Team Spirit’ military exercises with South Korea while letting diplomacy lapse during the Bush-Clinton transition…."

So Much for Cambodia

Scarcely less fatuous — and wrong-headed — was a Washington Post editorial published less than a week later. Today’s Post declares that "Cambodia is on its way to becoming a U.N. success."

"There was nasty violence in the campaign, but not much of it….The post-electoral sorting out in Phnom Penh has been disorderly and tense. But the essence of it is that the two major parties, having submitted themselves to electoral test, accepted the result….

 

"For all of its disappointments, [the U.N. operation] has accomplished the large tasks of ending the proxy civil war (Khmer Rouge fighting for China, Hun Sen fighting for Vietnam) taking Cambodia into temporary U.N. receivership and creating a striking new democratic political process."

 

So Much for Vietnam

What is more, Reuter reported today that "the National Security Council staff has recommended that President Clinton end U.S. opposition to multilateral lending to Vietnam."

"Endorsed by the State Department and other Cabinet departments, the recommendation would clear the way for a ‘bridge loan’ that would let Vietnam pay off $140 million in arrears to the IMF and thus qualify for much larger multilateral lending.

 

"Some senior staff aides were said to favor making an end to the ban [on IMF lending] contingent on lifting a decades-old trade embargo when it comes up for annual renewal in September….[They] reasoned, it would be better for Clinton to ‘take the hit’ by simultaneously indicating a willingness to end the embargo rather than have to bite the bullet twice in short order…."

 

Sanity Check

The Center for Security Policy believes that these quotes demonstrate that the gravity of the North Korean nuclear crisis, the explosive volatility of the Cambodian political environment and the irresponsibility of normalizing U.S. relations with Vietnam at this juncture are being dreadfully misconstrued by people who should know better.

North Korea has not come to its senses and "chosen the path of prosperity" by abandoning its roughly fifteen-year, $7 billion investment in its covert nuclear weapons program.⁽¹⁾

Vietnam’s proxies in Cambodia have not "accepted the result" of the election.⁽²⁾

Normalization of relations with Vietnam at this juncture is as unwarranted as it is unwise. Hanoi is still diddling the United States over the status of unaccounted for POW/MIAs; it has not given up its efforts to maintain control of Cambodia in violation of its commitment to a faithful implementation of the U.N.-sponsored peace plan — a precondition for the U.S. normalization "road map"; and it is systematically denying its own people fundamental human rights and democracy.

Were President Clinton to take such a step now by acquiescing in the $140 million IMF bridge loan — with or without formal normalization — he would be rewarding such behavior. In the process, he would also vaporize whatever leverage the United States still has to bring freedom to the peoples of Cambodia and Vietnam, to say nothing of obtaining the complete truth about America’s POW/MIAs.

The Bottom Line

If the reaction to these dramatic regional crises is any guide, one might be forgiven for expecting that senior U.S. officials and the nation’s leading newspapers might also fail to recognize the strategic implications of the Japan’s political meltdown. The fracturing of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party after 38 years in power combined with the emergence of a new and untested "correlation of forces" — both within Japan itself and in the region — has rocked the world’s strongest currency and set the stage for upheavals in Europe, Russia as well as Asia.

For example, the leaders of the industrialized world who will meet at the G-7 summit in Tokyo next month have never been politically weaker or more embattled — witness the true circumstances of François Mitterand, Helmut Kohl, Kim Campbell, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, John Major and Bill Clinton to say nothing of Kiichi Miyazawa. At the same time, these leaders have rarely faced higher global stakes including: the destiny of democratic reform in Russia; the prospects for nuclearization throughout Asia; the rampant proliferation of weapons of mass destruction elsewhere in the world; emboldened despots on the march; and incipient trade wars, to name a few.

An ineffectual "form-over-substance" economic summit and the propensity of leading U.S. newspapers and government agencies to drink their own bath water will leave the West ill-equipped to understand much less meet head-on these dramatic challenges to world security and prosperity.

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1. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled "’New Democrat’ Watch #4: Wishful Thinking About the IAEA Won’t Make North Korea’s Bomb Go Away," (16 June 1993, No. 93-D 48).

2. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled, "’New Democrat’ Watch: #3: Will Clinton Reward Hanoi for its Latest Cambodian Power-Play?," (11 June 1993, No. 93-D 47).