http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2828201.stm "Mr Bush is also being accused of standing by as Pyongyang prepares to crank up a reprocessing plant at Yongbyon which could churn out up to six nuclear bombs by midsummer, according to CIA estimates." "This is a regional issue. We've got a stake as to whether North Korea has a nuclear weapon. China clearly has a stake as to whether or not North Korea has a nuclear weapon," [Bush] said. US officials see China and Russia as key to pressuring Pyongyang. But Beijing and Moscow want direct US-North Korean talks and have balked at a regional strategy."
I'm not sure why China and Russia are balking at a regional strategy, considering they are next door to North Korea, you would think they would be interested in resolving this. Are they pointing at the US beucase they feel it has been the GW Administration that intiated the problem, with the "Axis of Evil" and other statements NK didnt take to kindly to?
I'm going to throw out something here that I've been thinking about for the last several days. Was it a mistake for the Bush administration to confront NK with the knowledge that NK was building a uranium nuclear weapons program when it did? A little background so we can hopefully have a somewhat informed debate. NK was violating the Agreed Framework (from 1994) by beginning a uranium based program. This program was several years from completion when the Bush administration confronted them with it. The 1994 crisis was based on plutonium weapons, which NK had the fissile material for and the capabilities to produce about 1 warhead a month. That program was put on ice by the agreed framework and NK had not restarted that program when the US confronted them. After being confronted, NK has begun to restart its plutonium program and is close to producing plutonium weapons. With that, did the Bush administration make a mistake in confronting NK when it did? NK was confronted shortly after the Congress had passed the resolution authorizing force against Iraq. US foreign policy structure was (and still is) focused on that issue. The administration still hasn't decided on a policy for dealing with the NK issue and has largely ignored NK as it focuses on Iraq. So I'm suggesting that the Bush administration should have held off on confronting NK. The uranium program was years from producing a nuclear weapon. However, once confronted, NK revoked (as did the US) the Agreed framework and begun to restart its plutonium program. Meaning this decision took NK from several years from having an active nuclear program to several months. At a time when the US has busy with another issue and didn't want to focus on NK. Thoughts? Regarding both the strategy and would it have been ok for the Bush administration to sit on this information and not reveal it to the public.
Am I mistaking that this whole confrontation edged up becuase of the "Axis of Evil" comments? Not that I believe that alone is the problem, but that it gave NK a reason to push ahead with Nuclear ambitions.
This is my take, others will disagree. The uranium program wasn't about the "axis of evil" remark because the program began before the clinton administration ended. However, i do think that some of the provocations of NK can be attributed to the comment. they want to be a big enough problem that the US will feel required to guarentee a "non-agression" stance in regards to NK.
The actions of South Korea, Russia, and China at this point seem to make even less sense. Russia and China are not taking any responsiblity in fixing this. So it seems that view this a problem Bush created (though created may be harsch here, but his comments seem to have made this problem bigger than it should be). NK supposedly may just be bitching to get concessions from the US, but that's just assumtion at this point. The Bush Administration seems to see all the recent comments from NK as a bluff, cuase they are blowing him off basically. Now, I've read around here that South Korea actually wants to get rid of American military in their country? What sane reason, would South Korea be using for this? Do they see the US as the problem here, or at least part of the problem, and think they can fix things with NK better on their own? If so, seems like quite a risk.
I think that Rumsfeld was talking about this earlier today as a way to calm the NK's down a bit. However, they were running it through with the SK's just to see if they could move the US troops further South on the peninsula.