Not Exactly

In a long post about the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, Ross Douthat makes this minor point regarding comparisons of Iran to the Soviet Union:

I think a better analogue still would be Mao's China, where the evidence of fanaticism and recklessness throughout the 1950s and '60s - in Mao's public statements, in his brinksmanship around Korea and Taiwan, and in his domestic conduct - was arguably much more pronounced that anything from the post-Stalin Soviet Union. And of course China's recklessness arguably diminished after it joined the nuclear club in 1964, and by the 1970s Nixon and Kissinger were toasting Mao's health in Beijing. So there you go ...

Actually, it was not China that was playing brinksmanship in Korea. It was North Korea, the Soviet Union and more specifically, us. Stalin was more than happy to let Kim Il-Sung invade the South, so long as his fingerprints weren't all over an invasion. For his part, Kim Il-Sung was frothing at the mouth to invade and reunite Korea. Mao's concern, more than anything, was not to get into a shooting war with the United States over Korea, though he was happy to support North Korea in its war (to a point anyway.) And China would have succeeded in avoiding war had not Douglas Macarthur driven American troops almost all the way to the Yalu, dismissing increasing signs of Chinese intervention and concerns that China would never permit American troops so near their border.

A minor quibble with a minor point. But still, we should be accurate in our assessment's of history if our purposes in quoting it is to provide illumination of the present.

Kim Jong-il

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il is reportedly ailing, and might possibly have suffered a stroke in the last several weeks. There is no official word yet, though as you might imagine speculation is running rampant, especially given that there does not appear to be any obvious mechanism for a transfer of power in North Korea.

Liberation

If freedom is our agenda, why the hell haven't we already invaded to free these long suffering people?

Peace in Korea?

Good news on the Korean peninsula. Both countries have announced their intentions to formally bring an end to the Korean war in a summit in which the leaders of both countries are meeting directly:

Leaders of the two Koreas ended their summit Thursday with a joint pledge to seek talks with China and the United States aimed at formally ending the 1950-53 Korean War.

They also announced that they would set up a "peace zone" around a much-disputed border in the Yellow Sea that is rich with fish and where skirmishes between the countries have broken out over the past several decades.

The summit also produced a promise that a rail line would open up between North and South. There is now no open road or rail connection between the two countries.

"This is a big triumph for South Korea," said Koh Yu Hwan, professor of political science at Dongguk University in Seoul. The South's president, Roh Moo Hyun, "discussed most of the issues he wanted to discuss, and this declaration will transform the Koreas into a postwar peace footing."

This occurs at the same time that six-party talks appear to finally be producing a substantive approach to denuclearizing North Korea. Things are looking up and there may finally be a chance for real peace for the first time since 1950.

Foreign Policy Notes

Here's a few interesting stories in the NY Times today. First, this article on the divide among Shiites in Southern Iraq:

The Shiite heartland of southern Iraq has generally been an oasis of calm in contrast to Baghdad and the central part of the country, but now violence is convulsing this city. Shiites are killing and kidnapping other Shiites, the police force is made up of competing militias and the inner city is a web of impoverished streets where idealized portraits of young men, killed in recent gun battles with Iraqi and American troops, hang from signposts above empty lots.

Underlying Diwaniya’s troubles is a fight between factions allied with rival Shiite clerics, Mr. Sadr and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who leads the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. Mr. Hakim, who has close ties to the Americans, is allied with an older generation of middle-class, more educated Shiites, many of whom spent some of the Hussein era in Iran or Syria. By contrast, Mr. Sadr blames the Americans for the havoc in Iraq and refuses to meet with any representatives of the Bush administration. Mr. Sadr is linked more closely with the young, impoverished Shiites who stayed in Iraq during the years of Mr. Hussein’s rule. Mr. Sadr’s movement has only 5 members on the 40-member provincial council but enjoys wide local popularity. Both clerics have ties to armed militias, which local residents say have infiltrated the local police and security forces.

I know for a lot of people it's probably hard enough to keep track of the differences between the Sunnis and the Shiites, Al Qaeda, the Kurds, and so on. The division among the Shiites is really no mystery to anyone who follows the situation in Iraq carefully, but it bears reminding that Iraq is a vastly divided country; even as the Shiites battle Sunni insurgents and Al Qaeda, so do they openly fight amongst each other for leadership of the country. Sorting this mess out is the task we gave ourselves when we uncorked Iraq by force, and it's the primary reason why there will be no peace in Iraq until these groups are done fighting with each other for power.

And elsewhere in the Middle East, we have another "victory" for political Islam in Gaza, the repurcussions of which are spelled out nicely in this analysis:

Once again, as in Lebanon last summer, the fight pitted a Western-backed government against a newly empowered, radical Islamist group aligned with Syria and Iran. And, once again, the Western-backed group lost and the Iranian-Syrian group won.

The outcome demonstrated the rising threat to the status quo in places like Cairo; Amman, Jordan; and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, posed by political Islam. And it gave Iran yet another foothold on Arab borders.

“There are two constants in the Arab street: hatred toward Israel and hatred toward the U.S.,” said Hassan Abu Hanieh, a Jordanian researcher who has specialized in Islamist groups. “These are two firm facts. They don’t change, and anybody who cooperates with Israel and the U.S. is automatically hated.”

These are facts Arab leaders know all too well. In Egypt, for example, the government has traditionally played a double game, offering itself to Washington as a strategic partner while publicly castigating American interference in the region. But the Palestinian conflict threatens to lay bare the common alliance with the United States, and Hamas supporters are quick to point that out.

Now with the exception of Egypt, which borders Gaza and has been humiliated by Hamas’s refusal to accept Egypt’s mediation efforts, Arab leaders are supporting Abbas — while being cautious not to openly rupture relations with Hamas. A bit of hedging is going on, part of the race, as one side hopes that a prosperous West Bank will lead to peace and the other hopes that a stable Gaza will continue to erode the footing beneath those allied with the West.

As well they should. Another fact that bears reminding is that all too often we have sided with these repressive regimes against political Islam, which has a considerable amount of support on the "Arab street." Rudy Guiliani would rebuke me for saying so, but it's a simple fact that we are as widely distrusted and despised as we are because we've shown a perfect willingness to tolerate and support brutal authoritarian governments who repress democratic initiative, imprison and torture activists, fail to provide for the basic needs of their people, and cynically use Israel as a target for their people's rage. And we've done so at the exact same time that we've crowed about "democracy" this and "freedom" that, which makes us not only hypocrites, but stupid ones at that (then there's that whole invasion thing.) The only way we could possibly worsen this situation would be to try to isolate Hamas politically and economically, and punish Palestinians in Gaza for having the misfortune of being ruled by Hamas. I'm desperately hoping our President and his advisors are befuddled enough by the issue to simply leave it alone until we can get a responsible Democrat in office, but that may be asking too much.

And finally, in some moderately good news, we're once again holding direct talks with North Korea:

In the first visit to Pyongyang by a senior American official in nearly five years, the envoy, Christopher R. Hill, was scheduled to meet senior North Korean officials, including his counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, for one-on-one talks.

Mr. Hill’s trip came just hours after the United States found a way to return to the North roughly $25 million in funds that were frozen for several years. The United States had frozen the money, saying it came from counterfeiting and trade in missiles and nuclear equipment.

It took months for Washington to clear obstacles preventing the money’s return, a move that hawks in the administration had argued was deeply mistaken.

My not-so-new rule of thumb for American foreign policy is that if the hawks want something, we should do the opposite. The Bush administration screwed up badly by pulling out of the agreement with North Korea, but there's still a chance to make it right. Or at least, not make it worse and hold out for that Democratic President.

UPDATE: North Korea, so far so good?

In Somalia, war keeps going, and going, and going...

Perhaps the correct way to handle the former Islamic government of Somalia was not to invade. The results have been nothing short of tragic, and peace seems ever less likely as the violence rages on:

Shells pounded Mogadishu on Saturday, killing at least 73 people to swell a death-toll already in the hundreds from this week's battles pitting militias and Islamists against Somali and Ethiopian troops.

The escalating war has also sent more than 321,000 residents fleeing in the biggest refugee movement in Somalia since the 1991 fall of a dictator ushered in 16 years of anarchy.

Lest anyone start bringing out the tired old line of "It's Africa", let me remind us all that this war need not have happened. It is more than likely that Ethiopia not only started this war with the US's blessing, but with our backing. If you don't believe that our government would do such a thing, you haven't read the latest story about the US allowing Ethiopia to buy military equipment from N. Korea.

Three months after the United States successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea because of the country’s nuclear test, Bush administration officials allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from the North, in what appears to be a violation of the restrictions, according to senior American officials.

Why would they do this? Because of the Bush ideology that all Islam is bad.

But the arms deal is an example of the compromises that result from the clash of two foreign policy absolutes: the Bush administration’s commitment to fighting Islamic radicalism and its effort to starve the North Korean government of money it could use to build up its nuclear weapons program.

Not that fighting Islamic radicalism is a bad thing, although we needn't focus so much on Islam when there are plenty of Christians hell-bent on destroying our government (watch Jesus Camp). But no matter who we're fighting or for what reason, we shouldn't be compromising ourselves for the sake of convenience. It's not a good precedent, and it's not good politics. I'm not going to quote the whole article here, but it's clear that this exception was made solely because the Ethiopians are fighting the Somali insurgents. In other cases we've been quite strict with the sanctions against N. Korea.

Back to the original point:

With the world startlingly quiet on the Somali crisis, beyond general appeals for calm, the Arab League followed the United Nations on Saturday to appeal for an end to violence.

"Startlingly quiet"? I don't find it so startling. The US will look the other way as long as Ethiopia is keeping the Somali Islamists busy. We don't care how many die or who they are. As long as no Americans die, it just doesn't matter. Long gone are the days when we'd send a humanitarian force to a place like Somalia. And with the US being the world leader in humanitarian causes, if we're not there, nobody else will be. Lazy asses we may be, but our European counterparts are chickenshits about cleaning up the messes they caused (and have no doubt, they're the reason people say, "It's Africa".)

Yes, we started yet another war for no interests other than our own. Hundreds or even thousands of people have already died (there's no way to keep count), and hundreds and thousands more will die. There's virtually no way to stop it, short of attacking Ethiopia and letting the Islamists win in Somalia. We won't take responsibility for the civilian casualties either. I wonder; when we get the Bush Presidential Library at SMU, how large will the section on Somalia be?

Bush Admin Not So Sure About N. Korea Uranium

Looks like I'm going to have to take back that credit I wanted to give the Bush administration for taking steps to halt North Korea's nuclear program. As it turns out...well, I'll let Josh Marshall tell you:

Okay, maybe the North Koreans don't have a uranium enrichment program after all.

You have to be relatively deep into the minutiae of North Korea policy for this story. But it's a big one. The Bush administration is now saying they're really not even sure the North Koreans have a uranium enrichment program for the production of nuclear weapons.

A 'senior administration official' tells the Times, "The question now is whether we would be in the position of having to get the North Koreans to give up a sizable arsenal if this had been handled differently."

...The big issue with North Korea has always been their plutonium production. Back in 1994, they were on the brink of being able to produce bombs with the plutonium they were making. The US came close to war with the North Koreans over it. But the two countries settled on something called the 'Agreed Framework' in which the North Koreans' plutonium production operation was shuttered and placed under international inspection in exchange for fuel oil shipments and assistance building 'light water' nuclear reactors.

...The strong consensus judgment was that they had not yet made any nuclear weapons. And during that period they could not access the plutonium they had already produced. It was on the basis of this alleged uranium enrichment program -- which may well not even have existed -- that the US pulled out of that agreement. This allowed the North Koreans to get back into the plutonium business with a gusto. And they have since produced -- by most estimates -- at least a hand full of nuclear weapons, one of which, albeit a rather feeble one, they detonated last October.

Because of a weapons program that may not even have existed (and no one ever thought was far advanced) the White House the White House got the North Koreans to restart their plutonium program and then sat by while they produced a half dozen or a dozen real nuclear weapons -- not the Doug Feith/John Bolton kind, but the real thing.

It's a screw-up that staggers the mind.

That's one way of putting it. Here's Kevin Drum in the same vein:

Even when you think you understand just how incompetent they are, the Bush administration surprises you. It turns out they're even more incompetent than you could have imagined.

So in case it's not clear, the Bush administration pulled out of a deal with North Korea (which just to be fair was falling apart in slow motion anyway) based on a suspicion that they now say they can't confirm, allowing North Korea to go ahead and develop multiple nuclear weapons without fear of reprisal on our part for having done so. And now our "deal" with them doesn't even roll us back to the status quo of 2002, but just keeps us where we are, with the promise that the North Koreans will ditch the nukes at some as yet undetermined future point.

Sigh. It just gets so...tiring.

UPDATE: Fred Kaplan, one of my favorite national security writers, is also none too pleased:

It's too bad that the U.S. political system offers no way to take a vote of "no confidence," because that describes the state we're living in now. We have come to the point where nothing that the Bush administration says can—or should—be trusted. That is, the government deserves no confidence.

The revelation is stunning on two levels.

First, it suggests that the Bush administration could have struck a deal to halt the North Koreans' nuclear-weapons program five years ago—before they reprocessed 8,000 nuclear fuel rods into plutonium, before they tested a nuclear bomb for the first time, before they officially became a "nuclear-weapons state."

Second (and this is the reason for the "no-confidence" stamp), it shows that Bush and his people will say anything, no matter whether it's true, in order to shore up a political point. It means that U.S. intelligence has become completely corrupted.

As Kaplan goes on to say, we don't even know how dangerous the world we're living in truly is. The Bush administration won't be straight with us, or worse yet, they may not even know. Or care.

Deal on North Korea Nukes

Well, I have to give some credit to the Bush administration on this one:

In a landmark international accord, North Korea promised Tuesday to close down and seal its lone nuclear reactor within 60 days in return for 50,000 tons of fuel oil as a first step in abandoning all nuclear weapons and research programs.

North Korea also reaffirmed a commitment to disable the reactor in an undefined next phase of denuclearization and to discuss with the United States and other nations its plutonium fuel reserves and other nuclear programs that "would be abandoned" as part of the process. In return for taking those further steps, the accord said, North Korea would receive additional "economic, energy and humanitarian assistance up to the equivalent of 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil."

Of course, it is only a first step, and does not deal with the most crucial elements of North Korea's nuclear program:

The accord, described as "initial actions," left for further negotiations the question of what to do with North Korea's declared nuclear weapons, estimated at a half-dozen bombs, and a stockpile of perhaps 50 kilograms of plutonium. In addition, it postponed discussions on a separate highly enriched uranium program that the Bush administration contends -- but North Korea denies -- was undertaken in secret as a second source of nuclear weapons fuel.

The agreement is characterized as a "first step" by the participants. There are significant steps to be taken. Still, it is a start. And a success, if a qualified one as Kevin Drum states in discussing a Wall Street Journal article on the deal:

Basically, the North Koreans agreed to shut down their reactor at Yongbyon and freeze their bomb development in return for shipments of fuel oil:

Christopher Hill, the U.S. envoy to the talks, told reporters that the final text was "an excellent, excellent draft"....<A deal to rein in North Korea's nuclear program would give President Bush a rare foreign-policy victory at a time when he is embroiled in a bitter debate over the war in Iraq and tensions with Iran. But the proposed deal also exposes the administration to accusations from both conservatives and Democrats that President Bush has essentially returned to a Clinton-era arrangement with North Korea -- known as the 1994 Agreed Framework -- that he disparaged and cast aside soon after he took office in 2001.

Nah, life's too short for that. If Bush's foreign policy in 2007 is now almost as good as Clinton's was in 1994 -- give or take a dozen actual bombs -- I'll take that as a big win. Next up: Bush brings peace to
Bosnia!

Sarcasm aside, this is progress. Qualified, and a long way from the destruction of the nuclear weapons the administration should have never allowed North Korea to have in the first place, but it's progress.