It Makes a Difference to the Sheep

NORTH KOREA: FIBS VERSUS FACTS according to Leon Sigal. Worth reading. I particularly agree with these paragraphs:

A second inexactitude advanced by the administration is that the United States kept its word but North Korea cheated. As President Bush said March 6, "My predecessor, in a good-faith effort, entered into a framework agreement. The United States honored its side of the agreement; North Korea didn't. While we felt the agreement was in force, North Korea was enriching uranium."

His advisers misinformed him. The fact is, Washington got what it most wanted up front, but it did not live up to its end of the bargain. When Republicans captured control of Congress in elections just days after the Agreed Framework was signed, they denounced the deal as appeasement. Afraid of taking them on, the Clinton administration backpedaled on implementation. It did little easing of sanctions until 2000. Reactor construction was slow to get under way. Although we pledged to provide the two reactors "by a target date of 2003," we did not pour the concrete for the first foundation until August 2002. We did not always deliver heavy fuel oil on schedule. Above all, we did not live up to our promise, in Article II of the Agreed Framework, to "move toward full normalization of political and economic relations" - to end enmity and economic sanctions.

It should always be remembered that North Korea, whatever its ulterior motives, has a fairly good case to make that non-compliance with the Agreed Framework was mutual not unilateral.

I wonder, however, about this statement:

A strategy of strangulation cannot be effective unless all of the North's neighbors are willing to join in. None is willing to.

It seems to me that Japan has been fairly open about its willingness to support an interdiction regime if not outright sanctions (or even a "preventative" military strike on the North). Of course China, and especially South Korea have proven much more reluctant.