Damocles
10-11-2006, 08:40 PM
David Frum was a speechwriter for Bush...
Anyway, he has come up with a pretty darned well-thought out and implementable plan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/opinion/10frum.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
THE North Korean nuclear test — if that indeed is what it was (he's referring here to the fact that it appears more and more as if the nuke was in fact a dud and that seismic activity was actually natural) — signals the catastrophic collapse of a dozen years of American policy. Over that period, two of the world’s most dangerous regimes, Pakistan and North Korea, have developed nuclear weapons and the missiles to launch them. Iran, arguably the most dangerous of them all, will surely follow, unless some dramatic action is soon taken.
It is, alas, an iron law of modern diplomacy that the failure of any diplomatic process only proves the need for more of the process that has just failed. Thus those who have long supported negotiating with North Korea are now calling for the Bush administration to begin direct talks with the Kim Jong-il regime. Sorry, but all this would accomplish would be to reward an actual proliferator in order to preserve the illusion that the world still has a meaningful nonproliferation regime.
Some even suggest, in worried tones, that the North Korean test might provoke Japan to go nuclear, as if the worst possible consequence of nuclear weapons in the hands of one of America’s direst enemies would be the acquisition of nuclear weapons by one of America’s best friends.
more at link...
Anyway, he has come up with a pretty darned well-thought out and implementable plan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/opinion/10frum.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
THE North Korean nuclear test — if that indeed is what it was (he's referring here to the fact that it appears more and more as if the nuke was in fact a dud and that seismic activity was actually natural) — signals the catastrophic collapse of a dozen years of American policy. Over that period, two of the world’s most dangerous regimes, Pakistan and North Korea, have developed nuclear weapons and the missiles to launch them. Iran, arguably the most dangerous of them all, will surely follow, unless some dramatic action is soon taken.
It is, alas, an iron law of modern diplomacy that the failure of any diplomatic process only proves the need for more of the process that has just failed. Thus those who have long supported negotiating with North Korea are now calling for the Bush administration to begin direct talks with the Kim Jong-il regime. Sorry, but all this would accomplish would be to reward an actual proliferator in order to preserve the illusion that the world still has a meaningful nonproliferation regime.
Some even suggest, in worried tones, that the North Korean test might provoke Japan to go nuclear, as if the worst possible consequence of nuclear weapons in the hands of one of America’s direst enemies would be the acquisition of nuclear weapons by one of America’s best friends.
more at link...