Is there a reliable timetable out there?
Those aren’t rhetorical questions btw. I really would like more information about how difficult it is to take out underground nuclear reactors.
Tejota,
Do you have a link for the time-table for when N. Korea started its covert uranium-based bomb development?
I read it somewhere a few weeks ago (before Lott started to dominiate the news cycle). I’m pretty sure it was a link off of Josh Marshall’s site. Basically it said that NK atmitted to having restarted it’s weapons program back in 2000.
Here’s a timeline that suggests, but doesn’t explicitly say when NK started it’s program. I’ll keep looking for the article I read originally.
Uh, Tejota Bush took office in 2001, which means that NK started up it’s weapons program before you said they did.
“Basically it said that NK atmitted to having restarted it’s weapons program back in 2000.”
That would be when Clinton was in office, though.
Oops. sorry, I meant in 2001. The article I’m looking for didn’t give a date, but rather referenced it’s time to the election. Which is why I’m sure about the relative timing. (I should know better than to paraphrase) But since I can’t seem to find the article, it’s just my word on it anyway. <sigh>
I’ll keep looking, but I’m afraid that it’s in archiveland at this point, and I’m having trouble finding corrobration, which is not a good sign… 
My understanding is that the North Koreans restarted their nuclear weapons development program at sites other than the one that was frozen under the previous treaty. As I mentioned earlier, a series of enrichment reactors, which is what I believe they have going (and which Sam Stone referred to earlier) is not set up in a week or two.
In other words, they violated the treaty long before Bush took office.
Of course, the US didn’t stop supplying fuel oil and food until after the North Koreans confirmed that they no longer felt themselves to be bound by the treaty, so the point is more or less moot. Bribes didn’t work. We were doing our part; they weren’t doing theirs.
My belief is that the North Koreans wanted the food aid and fuel oil, and also the nukes. They continued to accept the food and oil while simultaneously developing nukes. The idea was to continue to press the US for diplomatic recognition and foreign aid to rebuild their economy, while the NK government continued to concentrate on military development. They play this out as long as possible, and then announce to the world that they have the Bomb, and begin issuing demands on what South Korea and the rest of Asia had better start doing, or suffer the consequences.
In other words, I don’t think they ever intended to abide by the treaty.
I would welcome a cite showing when exactly the first violations of the treaty began to occur, however.
Regards,
Shodan
The date at which the PRNK started their uranium enrichment program is swathed in both mystery and spin. I doubt that the Koreans actually gave their American accusers an exact date, which means that what we know must rely on things like shipments of aluminum tubes, photos of odd construction projects, and the like. The administration would only tell us what the evidence was, and when it was gathered, if it was to their political advantage to do so. They haven’t
Possibly, Squink, but I would equally expect the North Koreans to claim that they were only reacting to violations of the treaty by the US if it were plausible. They haven’t either.
Regards,
Shodan
Agreed. It’s not a matter of there being evidence, but of what it is, and when it was obtained.
North Korean violations of their nuclear non-proliferation agreement pre-dates the Bush administration significantly.
In 1999, Congress warned that there was a ‘high risk’ of North Korea violating the agreement. Here is a timeline of suspected infractions since 1998. According to this timeline, North Korea had already admitted to having nuclear weapons in 1998, and an underground enrichment facility was already suspected of being in operation, which means that they never even stopped working on their nukes as they were signing the agreement.
You guys might try to spin this as good citizen North Korea maintaining its end of the bargain in good faith until Bush the cowboy came along and scared the daylights out of them, but that would be a gross mis-reading of the facts. A better description would be that North Korea has been playing the U.S. like a chump all along and had no intention of keeping its agreements, and the Bush administration was simply the first to call them on it. That pushed their bad faith out in the open, and forced a confrontation.
There’s a reasonable argument to be made over whether this was a good strategy on the Bush administration’s part, but it would be wrong to say that Clinton’s policy was working and Bush upset the apple cart.
Here’s what the chairman of the House International Relations Committee said in May of 1999:
And we now know that those underground facilities do exist for the purposes of building weapons. Given that at least one facility was running in 1999, it would appear that the North Koreans either never met the agreement, or broke it soon after signing it.
Also, the North Koreans were in violation of the treaty almost immediately, because they refused to allow the inspections that they had agreed to. A number of analysts called the agreement “deeply flawed”, but the Clinton administration elected to just allow the violations rather than escalate the conflict, which they thought had a chance of becoming a war. Who knows, they may even have been right, at least temporarily.
But still, the point remains - Bush did not cause the North Koreans to give up on their agreement. That agreement had been violated years before Bush came into office. Bush is simply the one who has to deal with it.
Although some of the evidence could be valid, without being able to be made public.
Maybe the US found out about NK treaty violations from some highly-placed mole. If Bush says specifically how we found out, Mr. Mole is DOA. So this could not be made public.
The question remaining, what is best to do about the situation?
Regards,
Shodan
Everyone accepted as far back as 91 that the North Koreans probably had a nuke or two. Your 1998 revelation is therefore of no consequence. Likewise, your evidence that the peoples republic violated the agreement in 1998 appears to be purely conjectural. You’ve dumped a big pile of supposition out here to support your point of view, unfortunately, what’s needed are facts. Are there any relevant ones buried in your links ?
Sure. Do you need me to repeat the quote above, or did you just overlook the part about the underground facility at Kumchang-ni? We now know that there are a bunch of these hidden enrichment facilities, and they are in direct violation of the agreement, and were in operation since at least 1998.
“The underground facility at Kumchang-ni may indicate that North Korea”
Did you overlook the word may ? It usually means that something is possible, not that it is certain.
“We now know that there are a bunch of these…”
Evidence please, not speculation. If I were foolish enough to believe evidence such as has been presented, I’d have fallen for that story about kilograms of enriched uranium being smuggled into Iraq. We both know how that turned out.
In 1998 we knew the facility existed, and that it MAY have been used for nuclear material creation.
Since then, North Korea has admitted that in fact they DO have a hidden nuclear weapons program.
Here’s another cite for that: North Korea admits nuclear programme.
From the cite:
They’ve admitted having it. It’s a serious violation of the treaty. They clearly had it before Bush came into office, because we discovered one of the facilities in 1998, but weren’t positive what it was being used for (actually, I’ll bet the government knew exactly what it was used for, but chose to downplay it for diplomatic reasons. Certainly the NK admission came as no surprise).
Is an admission by the North Koreans evidence enough for you?
Evidence of what? The vile perfidy of the NK’s? The NK’s claim to have thier own case, to the effect that the Bushista’s had been dragging thier feet on our end of the bargain. Given the Bushista’s well known distaste for bargains struck by the wimp-ass Clinton era, this is not entirely implausible. Our current leaders have, to my mind, a very unfortunate tilt towards the hard-assed stance, as witnessed by the belligerance of thier tone with NK.
Have they a case? That could be argued, but it offers an opportunity as much as an impediment. If we treated that assertion with a minimum of dignity, we might be able to take a lot of the potential danger out of this situation.
What could we lose by suggesting third party intervention, or nuetral arbitration? I suggest that starting out with a heel-digging “we don’t negotiate with the likes of you” is just plain dumb. Of course we negotiate, even the absence of talk is, in a certain light, the opening negotiating stance. Never mind the diplomatic numbskullery of the “axis of evil” tirade.
Do the NK’s feel threatened? Well, of course they do, they have ample reason to feel so. Do they feel less threatened with a couple of handy nukes. They shouldn’t, but it is entirely human to feel that way. We certainly can’t be surprised.
A gesture like troop withdrawal might be just the ticket, assuming our SK allies are amenable. We remove our hostages, make a soothing gesture, and get things moving toward “talks”. Not negotiations, of course, but “talks”.
Send GeeDubya down to Crawford to poll some heifers, or whatever, and let Colin Powell do his thing. Thank Heaven for Colin Powell, I swear, sometimes I think he’s the only one of the bunch who has his head screwed on right.
“Is an admission by the North Koreans evidence enough for you?”
If it has a date attached to it. Our suspicions in 98, and the North Koreans later admission that they have a program now is not sufficient to prove that they had a program in 98.
So, let me get this straight: We suspect them of a weapons program years ago. We uncover at least one hidden uranium processing facility in 1998. In 2002 they announce that they in fact have had a nuclear program in operation, long enough that they can claim to actually have a few bombs. Then we find evidence of a bunch more facilities.
And this isn’t evidence enough for you that they had a nuclear program running before Bush was elected?
Sorry, but I think we’re moving into the ‘silly’ category now. You guys won’t believe the evidence, you won’t believe Bush, and you won’t believe North Korea. In addition, you won’t look at the inescapable fact that if North Korea has nuclear weapons today like they say they do, they must have started building them before January 2001.
But, for those who need more, we have more! Here is a Congressional Report on the North Korean Nuclear Program
From the report:
[ul]
[li]U.S. intelligence agencies reportedly became aware of the Kumchangri underground facility in the second half of 1996.[/li][li]The DIA began to brief staff members of key congressional committees concerning the Kumchangri site in the spring of 1998. According to staffers privy to the briefing, the DIA over several months provided detailed information indicating that North Korea was constructing a nuclear installation.[/li][li] (1998) Press reports also indicated that U.S. intelligence agencies are monitoring at least ten more North Korean installations of a suspicious nature.[/li][li]The 1998 North Korean long range missile launch and the disclosure of the Kumchangri suspected nuclear underground site prompted the Clinton Administration to reassess its policy toward North Korea.[/li][li]William Perry, former Secretary of Defense and Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on North Korea, outlined a revised U.S. strategy in a report of October 1999. The Perry report asserted that the Agreed Framework should continue in order to prevent North Korea from producing a “significant number of nuclear weapons.” It recommended two sets of new U.S.-North Korea negotiations with the objectives of securing (1) “verifiable assurances” that North Korea does not have a secret nuclear weapons program, and (2) “verifiable cessation” of North Korea’s missile program. (North Korean intransigance and stonewalling caused the Clinton administration to abandon (1), which in hindsight looks pretty foolish).[/li][li]An agreement was reached on March 16, 1999, providing for multiple inspections of the site in return for at least 500,000 tons of new U.S. food aid for North Korea. The first visit took place in May 1999, a second in May 2000. Administration officials declared that no evidence of nuclear activity was found. However, previous reports indicated that North Korea had removed equipment from the facility.[/li][li]Reports in early 2000 cited U.S. intelligence findings that, without further flight tests, North Korea could deploy an intercontinental ballistic missile that would be capable of striking Alaska, Hawaii, and the U.S. west coast.[/li][li]In March 2000, President Clinton notified Congress that he could not certify that North Korea was not acquiring enriched uranium for the production of nuclear weapons. (Because, of course, he abandoned the recommendation of Perry that the U.S. demand verification)[/li][li]The Japanese newspaper, Sankei Shimbun, reported on June 9, 2000, the contents of a “detailed report” from Chinese government sources on a secret North Korean uranium enrichment facility inside North Korea’s Mount Chonma.[/li][li]In August 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated in Moscow that “North Korea possessed enough plutonium to produce two to three, maybe even four to five nuclear warheads.”[/li][/ul]
But it’s all Bush’s fault, right? Clinton had North Korea under control, and Bush screwed it up, right?
The conclusion I draw from all this is:
- The North Korean showdown has been brewing for a long time, and probably should have been dealt with years ago.
- Clinton blinked, and let North Korea’s nuke program continue.
- Bush refused to allow them to continue secretly building nukes, and therefore the whole mess dropped in his lap.
- Clinton’s strategy and the 1994 framework agreement were a dismal failure. North Korea continued both its missile program AND its nuke program. The framework just bought them 10 more years to perfect their technology and stockpile fissile material, while receiving even more aid from the west. Clinton was played like a chump by North Korea.
The claim that all this is Bush’s fault is simply not reasonable. Bush may be accused of bringing the situation to a crisis now. That much is true. But it’s also true that the crisis was going to happen sooner or later anyway, given what we now know about their nuclear program. Unless you think it’s acceptable to have a country like North Korea pumping out nuclear bombs in secret…
No, now you are just distorting things to fit your worldview. The Plutonium bombs were likely created prior to the 94 agreement, unless of course you have proof to the contrary.
If you want to claim that the North Koreans had a uranium enrichment program in 98, you have to prove that they had a program in 98, not merely show that suspicious senators with a deep distrust for North Korea suspected that something they wouldn’t like was going on.
From your own post: “Administration officials declared that no evidence of nuclear activity was found.” What more evidence of the absence of proof do you require ?