Hot from Beijing this morning, Christopher Hill and all his counterparts at the Six Party Talks are announcing a “tentative agreement” in which North Korea will shut down its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon in return for 50,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil a year.  According to the agreement, North Korea must shut down the Yongbyon reactor within 60 days and readmit international nuclear inspectors.

Uh, huh….

Haven’t we heard this type of nonsense before?  Didn’t a certain Bill “Slick-Willie” Clinton sign on to a similar—virtually identical—agreement (the Agreed Framework) way back in the mid-nineties?  At the time I was bemusedly watching the United States government jump through its own asshole to appease Kim Chong Il from my vantagepoint at the National Security Agency.  I distinctly remember how “earnestly” the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea repaid the kindness of the international community back then—how “scrupulously” they adhered to provisions in the agreement dictating that heavy fuel oil shipments were to be used for energy purposes only.  And how Kim Chong Il and his gaggle of loony henchmen so diligently set about the task of dismantling their nuclear power production and nuclear weapons development programs.

But no.  Wait.  It didn’t actually go that way, did it?  And here we are in 2007, more than a decade after those events transpired, and what have we got?  We have a North Korea that’s still operating the reactor at Yongbyon, that’s building another light water reactor to boot, that maintains a healthy stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium, that is engaging full-speed ahead in the uranium enrichment game, and that has—gosh darn it!—NUKES!

Oh.  And did I mention that North Korean people are still starving all over the place?  They were already starving back in the mid-nineties.  I guess some things just don’t change.

The relevant question is: Has Christopher Hill lost his mind?  Or has George Bush?  Have both of them?  Certainly George W. hasn’t signed on to such an abrupt about-face in regard to North Korea?  I just can’t imagine….

I think that Christopher Hill has let all that polluted air in Beijing cloud his thinking.  Here are some interesting—and salient—observations from the Washington Post:

Some observers expressed caution, noting that North Korea has proved unpredictable in the past, and that any deal would have to be approved by the country’s Stalinist leader, Kim Jong Il.
[…]
The tentative agreement lays out the first concrete steps that would put into practice an accord reached in September 2005, in which the Pyongyang government pledged to dismantle its entire nuclear program. According to diplomats involved in five days of arduous talks here, the opening move would be for North Korea to close down its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and readmit international nuclear inspectors in exchange for energy aid.
[…]
In that regard, Tuesday’s accord is expected to resemble an earlier bargain with North Korea, the Agreed Framework reached in 1994 during the Clinton administration but renounced eight years later during the Bush administration. Under that deal, North Korea pledged to freeze and eventually dismantle its reactor in return for 500,000 tons a year of heavy fuel oil.
[…]
Despite a sense of achievement in Beijing, the deal was expected to face criticism in Washington, with Democrats charging the administration allowed North Korea to gain nuclear weapons through poor diplomacy in recent years and conservatives saying it shows weakness at a critical moment.
[…]
‘This is a very bad deal,’ former U.N. ambassador John R. Bolton told CNN. ‘It contradicts fundamental premises of the president’s policy he’s been following for the past six years. And second, it makes the administration look very weak at a time in Iraq . . . when it needs to look strong.’  (Emphasis added by Effluent.)

I’d like to reiterate that the agreement is only tentative and is “pending the formal approval” of the respective governments of the six parties…including that of North Korea.  (That last bit alone should be enough to raise skepticism among those of us who are still arguably sane.)

Truly this Mr. Hill fellow seems to have become delusional in his never-ending pursuit of that mythical beast called “North Korean denuclearization.”    Indeed, this latest “breakthrough” is merely another example of how our foreign policy mechanism has a penchant for tilting at windmills—particularly when dealing with North Korea.  Administration after administration valiantly sets out to denuclearize North Korea and “put it in its place,” as it were.  You’d think that after decades and decades of abject failure in the North Korea crusades, the wonks in Washington—particularly at Foggy Bottom—would get a freakin’ clue.

Here it is again: “Effluent’s North Korean Diplomacy 101.”  North Korea is sneaky, underhanded, and not to be trusted.  (Not to mention redundant.)  There’s an old saying that goes “rules are for those who don’t know when to break them.”  This idea parallels North Korean thinking in regard to international agreements.  We will sign anything—promise anything—to get something that is beneficial to us.  An agreement is a piece of paper with ink on it and nothing more.  It means nothing and can force us to do nothing.  We will sign the agreement and suffer the indignity of having foreign inspectors on our soil only long enough to receive our shipments of oil.  Meanwhile we will not dismantle anything.  We already have the bomb, after all.  Mansei!  Juche!

Kim Chong Il and the North Korean government are not above lying (understatement!).  If the international community hasn’t figured that out yet, this world is in a heap of trouble.  But Joshua at One Free Korea cynically quotes the official U.S. government explanation as to why North Korea can be trusted “this time”:

If they renege on this, they are sticking their fingers into the eyes of the Chinese.

As if they actually worry about such things.  (Joshua attributes that dandy quote to a “senior administration official who would not speak on the record because the deal had not been signed.”  Yeah, or an official who would not speak on the record for fear of looking like an idiot.)

Observes Joshua:

Yeah. That would be the same Chinese who kept right on giving them aid and trading without restriction after Resolution 1718. What this deal means is that we’ll be talking about North Korea’s nukes for years.

In-line poll:

Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.

Notice how this “agreement” seems to defer the question of the dismantlement of the nuclear weapons and uranium enrichment programs, not to mention the actual nuclear weapons themselves.  You simply can’t “put off” such crucial issues when it comes to the North Korean regime.  You simply can’t.  Unless you’re Christopher Hill.

Joshua points to these paragraphs from the New York Times:

In essence, if the North agrees to the deal, a country that only four months ago conducted its first nuclear test will have traded away its ability to produce new nuclear fuel in return for immediate energy and other aid. It would still hold on to, for now, an arsenal that American intelligence officials believe contains more than a half-dozen nuclear weapons or the fuel that is their essential ingredient.
[…]
The accord also leaves unaddressed the fate of a second and still-unacknowledged nuclear weapons program that the United States accused North Korea of buying from the Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan in the late 1990s, in what appeared to be an effort to circumvent a nuclear freeze the North negotiated in 1994 with the Clinton administration.

In closing, another gem from One Free Korea.  Joshua quotes former Clinton administration official Gary Samore on the topic:

This is a freeze with a promise to negotiate subsequent disarmament.  And a North Korean promise to negotiate later is pretty worthless.  (Emphasis added by Effluent.)

He should know.  He must have had a sore rectum for years.

However, the Bush administration always knows best, doesn’t it?

So it’s off to tilt at more windmills!

More at:

DPRK Studies
The Marmot’s Hole

For more information on this topic:

Technorati Tags: Beijing, Christopher Hill, Six Party Talks, tentative agreement, North Korea, shut down, nuclear reactor, Yongbyon, 50, 000 metric tons, heavy fuel oil, Yongbyon reactor, readmit, international nuclear inspectors, Bill “Slick-Willie” Clinton, Agreed Framework, United States government, jump through its own asshole, Kim Chong Il, National Security Agency, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, international community, provisions, shipments, energy, nuclear power production, nuclear weapons development program, light water reactor, stockpile, weapons-grade plutonium, uranium enrichment, North Korean, George Bush, pending, formal approval, skepticism, delusional, mythical beast, North Korean denuclearization, breakthrough, foreign policy mechanism, tilting at windmills, denuclearize, abject failure, wonks, Washington, Foggy Bottom, Effluent’s North Korean Diplomacy 101, bomb, Mansei, Juche, U.S. government, senior administration official, idiot, defer, dismantlement, nuclear weapons, Clinton administration, Gary Samore, sore rectum, Bush administration