How not to disarm North Korea

[struggle4progress]

FOR THREE YEARS hardliners in the Bush administration huffed and puffed but did not blow Kim Jong Il's house down. Instead, they provoked North Korea to accelerate nuclear arming and impeded negotiations to halt it.The hardliners talk about disarming the North as if it were Iraq. Unlike Iraq, it really has nuclear weapons and it is making more, if reports from Pakistan are to be believed. It is actively reprocessing plutonium for bombs and has the potential to enrich uranium once it constructs gas centrifuges. Also unlike Iraq, North Korea has repeatedly said it will verifiably freeze and dismantle these programs, including any weapons it has. It will not give them away for nothing, however. It wants the United States to end enmity -- by normalizing political and economic relations and by making commitments not to attack it, not to interfere in its internal affairs, and not to impede its economic development by maintaining sanctions or discouraging aid and investment from South Korea and Japan. If the United States refuses to make these commitments and keep them, North Korea feeling threatened, will keep making nuclear weapons
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