Nuclear powers revert to playground taunts
By Donald Kirk
WASHINGTON - First, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a
television interview in New Delhi that the North Koreans were like "small
children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention".
Then the North Koreans returned the compliment during an Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum at Phuket in southern Thailand,
saying Clinton "looks like a primary-school girl" or "a pensioner going
shopping".
Talk about a hissy fit.
The exchange illustrated the depths of tensions on the Korean peninsula but did
added nothing to the debate over the North's nuclear program. The "hostile
policy" of the United States was to blame for "the aggravated situation", the
North Koreans said, and
six-party talks on their nuclear program, which include the US, Japan, Russia,
South Korea and China, were definitely over.
There was no disputing that assessment if Clinton's tough talk was any
indication. The US-North Korean confrontation has worsened dramatically since
North Korea test-fired a long-range Taepodong-2 missile on April 5, conducted a
second underground nuclear test on May 25, then fired a volley of
mid-and-short-range missiles after the United Nations Security Council imposed
new sanctions.
Clinton if anything seems considerably tougher, at least to judge by her public
utterances, than the hardliners of the George W Bush administration, even
during his first term when, in January 2002, he included North Korea in an
"axis of evil" along with Iran and Iraq.
No way, she indicated, was the US going to shower North Korea with aid just for
"returning to the table" - or for making good on promises they made "and then
reneged on".
In other words, North Korea would have to do a lot more than shut down the
five-megawatt nuclear reactor at at the Yongbyon complex and stop producing
plutonium for more nuclear devices, as North Korea has said it is doing. North
Korea would also have to do more than renew its commitment to the armistice
that ended the Korean War in 1953 - a truce the North has said is now void.
Remember CVID - "complete, verifiable, irreversible disablement" - of the
North's entire nuclear program?
That was the acronym bandied about during the first term of the Bush
administration, but it fell into disuse in Bush's second term after Christopher
Hill, then the top US nuclear envoy, persuaded North Korea to sign off on in
September 2005 on a vaguely worded commitment to do away with its nukes in
return for an enormous outlay of aid.
After the North conducted its first nuclear test, on October 9, 2006, Hill
frantically got the US Treasury Department to take off the US's blacklist an
obscure bank in Macao, through which the North had been channeling counterfeit
US$100 "supernotes".
Then, in February and October 2007, North Korea appeared to come to terms on a
program for disabling and then dismantling everything to do with producing
nuclear devices.
Clinton, in Phuket, revived CVID, without quite calling it that. She warned
that "complete and irreversible denuclearization is the only path for North
Korea", but didn't quite get around to calling North Korea a member of the
"axis of evil" - although she might have been thinking just that, considering
US concerns about the nuclear program in Iran, to which North Korea has sold
expertise and missiles.
Clinton, moreover, may have been tempted to add another country to the "axis",
namely Myanmar, which is strongly suspected of harboring nuclear ambitions that
it hopes to fulfill with North Korean aid. It is also seen as a transshipment
point for North Korean missiles and other military items bound for sale
elsewhere.
The commander of the US Pacific command, Admiral Timothy Keating, said the US
would be concerned about Myanmar only if it is proved to be "receiving goods
and assistance from North Korea".
Myanmar was assumed to be the destination of a North Korean freighter, the Kang
Nam I, that finally turned back after the American destroyer the USS
John McCain, equipped with Aegis-equipped ballistic missile defense
systems, tailed it for a few days. It's widely believed that the Kang
Nam I, regardless of what it had on board, did not want inspection at a
refueling port on the way, probably Singapore. Its also possible Myanmar's
authorities did not want to risk international condemnation by accepting its
cargo.
Clinton, with that episode obviously in mind, sought to portray North Korea as
isolated, alone in a hostile world in which even its closest friend, China,
refuses to cooperate in proving critical supplies.
She seemed to believe, moreover, that she had everyone on her side, especially
after the ASEAN confab came together in urging "all member countries of the
United Nations" to carry out the terms of the UN resolution that bans dealing
with North Korea on critical supplies.
Both China and Russia signed the recent UN Security Council resolution and
appear so far to be cooperating. In a gesture laden with symbolic significance,
Italy blocked the export to North Korea of a pair of luxury vessels reportedly
made especially for the North's Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il.
Beneath such talk and gestures, though, there was no telling where the
confrontation is leading. North Korea routinely denounced as "nonsense" all
that Clinton said, but there was no overt sign the North was going to go beyond
testing and risk a second Korean War - or even minor clashes.
Nobody at Phuket talked openly about North Korea's concerns about the present
health of Kim Jong-il and the struggle for leadership. The conventional view,
however, is that those worries lie behind much of the recent muscle-flexing.
Nor is the United States, for very different reasons, interested in going
beyond Clinton's strong words.
President Barack Obama is far more worried about the US commitment to
Afghanistan and Iraq, from which he still says the US will be able to withdraw
its troops by the end of 2011. Interestingly, a major figure in carrying out US
policy in Iraq is the same peace-minded diplomat who played such a pivotal role
in the six-party talks - Christopher Hill, now the US ambassador to Iraq.
A clue to what might happen in a showdown is South Korea's purchase of record
quantities of arms from the US. South Korean military imports from the US last
year totaled $790 million, almost as much as the $808 million imported by Saudi
Arabia, the second-largest buyer of US arms after front-ranked Israel, whose
military imports from the US last year cost $1.35 billion.
Those numbers, of course, are far lower than the amount of energy aid the US is
promising North Korea if it gives up its nukes. A North Korean official
responded at Phuket calling the US proposal "nonsense" and talking about
"sovereignty, security, namely life".
The official employed a particularly colorful metaphor, saying the US in effect
"is telling us to take off all our clothes". That turn of phrase seemed to
match his description of Clinton as "a funny lady" for her rhetorical displays.
It was always possible to interpret the verbal byplay as a sign of warming. At
least North Korea did not call Clinton "human scum" - a phrase reserved for
John Bolton, former undersecretary of state for arms control and later
ambassador to the UN, and the hardest of hardliners in the bygone Bush
administration.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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