This opinion piece by former Vice Presidential National Security Advisor Leon Fuerth is a bang-on indictment of your bluster, bluff and neurotic distaste for negotiations.
As I wrote here and others have written here your bluff is being called with nasty consequences. As Fuerth notes, "[your] administration now faces an immediate loss of credibility" if it does not follow through with its threats.
Your administration's reckless and cavalier cowboy rhetoric has created two options: pursuing a much more dovish policy than Clinton ever did or following through with a pre-emptive military strike, as dictated by your own National Security Strategy. As I said before, "the irony here would be laughable if this weren't such a serious crisis." I would be rolling around on the floor laughing at the ineptitude of your foreign policy "Dream Team" if the consequences weren't so grim.
But they are grim. And I cannot laugh. Not when there are 37,000 American troops in South Korea and millions of citizens (some of them my friends and former colleagues) within reach of the DPRK's artillery.
Of course Donald Rumsfeld said recently that we could handle both. I don't doubt that we could. But it would be far from easy. And what would we be fighting for?
As I have said repeatedly, there must be a political solution at the end of any war. What should our goals be in North Korea? If you go back and read this post you'll immediately recognize the complexity of the situation. (I might post on what a post DPRK settlement might look like, later.)
There are so many variables in international affairs. Variables and multiple contingencies, as we all know, do not fit into your Manichean world view. Sir, you seem to lack any sense of nuance and that problem is coming back to haunt us now.
To compound the problem, your administration has referred the North Korean problem to the United Nations. An organization that you shun and scorn almost as much as Jesse Helms used to.
I have been a constant critic of the your unilateral obsession. Had you referred North Korea to the U.N. at the beginning of your administration I would have been pleased. But with so much damage already done, so much good-will used up, the U.N. is not the place to take this problem--they'll probably only make it worse for us. It is a problem that must be resolved with the DPRK, South Korea, China (perhaps Russia) and the U.S. These are the only countries with a stake in the peaceful outcome of this crisis.
This crisis must not be put on the backburner either. Iraq can wait. As Fuerth notes: "the outcome of the administration's diplomacy is that we are preparing to fight a war with a country that might eventually acquire nuclear weapons, while another country is closing in on the ability to go into mass production."
Preventing the DPRK from going into mass production is an urgent, vital national security necessity.
Mr. President, this is your mistake, so swallow your pride and open your eyes. American soldiers should not die because of your careless error of judgment.
The world is watching.
Posted by Sean-Paul @ 01/01/2003 01:02 PM
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