From Financial Times:
North Korea’s probable test of a nuclear weapon on Monday has triggered the second nuclear crisis in 13 years on the Korean peninsula. In 1993, North Korea announced it would pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, leaving it free to divert nuclear material from its energy reactors to make a nuclear weapon and setting off a round of crisis diplomacy led by the Clinton administration. The result was the so-called agreed framework, which – in return for supplies of fuel oil to North Korea – froze most aspects of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme for the rest of the decade. The agreed framework was in effect consigned to history when the Bush administration came to power in 2001. The new administration argued that although the road to a plutonium-based nuclear bomb had been frozen, the North Koreans were cheating by attempting to develop a uranium-based bomb that was not explicitly addressed by the agreement. That five years later, North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon will be widely interpreted as a sign of the failure of the tougher approach favoured by the Bush team.
Clinton success, Bush failure. Again. Maybe Bush can call Jim Baker and Henry the K in for some advice on what to do about N Korea? Set up a commission or something. Better, yet, do it like they do in business. Spend a gazillion dollars on a consultant who will tell you what yuo already know: talking to people (what we used to call diplomacy) has a role in preventing international crises. Meanwhile, we have N Korea and possibly Iran going nuclear on Bush's watch while we refuse to talk to them. George W Bush is building up quite a record of failure in just a few short years. That takes the kind of talent he showed in the Texas oil bidness. Who knew he had the gift in foreign policy as well?
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