Obama fiddles, a rogue schemes: 
The U.S. strategy toward North Korea leaves us in danger

By John Bolton 
May 12, 2010
New York Daily News
Original Source: 
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North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has now left Beijing and returned home after a typically secretive visit, his first trip abroad in four years. Kim's last trip was also to China, the North's dominant benefactor; his core mission was undoubtedly to ensure continued Chinese support for his ironfisted rule.

Also undoubtedly central was North Korea's nuclear weapons program. President Obama has been silent for many long months on Pyongyang's continuing nuclear threat, but silence does not equal good news. Although all quiet on the North Korean nuclear front might seem to indicate that the menace is receding, precisely the opposite is true.

North Korea is proceeding with its weapons programs, including cooperating with Iran, and its external posture has become increasingly belligerent. Pyongyang's likely role in the recent sinking of a South Korean naval vessel and press reports that the North has added 50,000 troops to its already substantial forces bordering on the South underline this renewed bellicosity. Seoul and Tokyo take these indications extremely seriously, as they should, given North Korea's demonstrated nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities.

Why, if North Korea's threat remains grave, have we heard so little about it from the Obama administration? Ironically, Obama's negotiating posture with the North is, so far at least, somewhat less objectionable than that of the Bush administration's last years. Bush's negotiators were, in effect, negotiating with themselves, making unforced concessions to create the illusion of diplomatic progress, while North Korea did little or nothing.

By contrast, the Obama team, at least optically, has seemed more prepared to have China make the grease payments necessary to persuade Kim's regime to resume the long-stalled six-party talks.
But beneath the optics is a disturbing reality. Obama's underlying strategy remains fixed in the belief that once everyone returns to the bargaining table, progress on denuclearizing North Korea is still possible. It is a major article of faith, closely linked to Obama's view that negotiations with Iran might actually divert the mullahs from their determined pursuit of nuclear weapons.

This makes the United States weaker. Both Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il fully understand the Obama administration's obsession with the process of negotiations over the substance of actually stopping nuclear weapons programs - and will continue exploiting this insistence on talk essentially for its own sake.

The month-long Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference, now underway in New York, exemplifies the consequences of the misguided world-view. The conference is a logical opportunity to draw lessons from violations of the treaty by Iran, North Korea and other proliferators.

Instead, even after Ahmadinejad's May 3 propaganda exercise at the conference, the event remains yet another church where the Obama administration worships the form of negotiations over their content. There are abstract discussions about strengthening the treaty (which is in danger of collapsing because of the likes of North Korea and Iran), but no concrete action.
So what was the outcome of Kim's meetings in Beijing? North Korea has, for the umpteenth time, consented to return to the six-party talks. The Obama administration will be delighted to get another chance to negotiate with a rogue regime.

It is not hard to see the real winners and losers here. No one should delude themselves that more negotiations with the North will actually represent progress toward denuclearizing this brutal regime. Yet that's the Obama administration's bet. It's as misguided as its policy on Iran, just as unlikely to thwart the rogue nation's nuclear weapons ambitions, and therefore just as dangerous to the United States and our allies.

Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.