[Kabar-indonesia] NYT Analysis: A Massive Failure of U.S. Diplomacy [+WP; IHT; AT]

[Joyo at aol.com]

4 reports: 

- IHT/NYT Analysis: A Massive Failure of U.S. Diplomacy  

- WP: U.S. Proposes Embargo, Sanctions on N. Korea

- IHT: Explosion raises pressure on Japan's pacifism  

- Asia Times: How North Korea bungled its nuclear timing

The New York Times
October 9, 2006

News Analysis

A Massive Failure of U.S. Diplomacy  

By David E. Sanger 
The New York Times

WASHINGTON It may be days, or weeks, before intelligence experts conclude 
whether North Korea's test in the mountains above the town of Kilju on Monday 
was, in fact, a nuclear explosion.
 
But it is already clear that the success of a tiny, broke, starving nation of 
23 million in putting together all the elements of history's most terrifying 
weapon - the fuel, the bomb design and the aura that goes with entry into the 
nuclear club - represents a massive failure of diplomacy for Washington and 
its allies.
 
North Korea is a different kind of nation, one that has ultimately sold every 
weapon it has developed. That portends the dawning of a very different 
nuclear era, as Bush suggested in brief, cryptic comments on Monday morning, in 
which he said the United States would regard as a "grave threat" the transfer by 
North Korea of nuclear technology to others.
 
It is an era in which the biggest concern is not where warheads are aimed, 
but in whose hands they may end up.
 
Back in 2003, Bush chose not to highlight North Korea's nuclear breakout, 
when in the months just before the Iraq invasion the North kicked out nuclear 
inspectors and very publicly began its drive to turn its stockpiles of spent 
nuclear fuel rods into weapons. Now the North Korean test on Monday raises anew 
the question of whether the president who has often said that his top priority 
is to assure that "the world's worst dictators don't get the world's most 
dangerous weapons" has been properly focused on the right threats.
 
Bush's critics say that he has been misdirected.
 
"What it tells you is that we started at the wrong end of the Axis of Evil," 
Sam Nunn, the former Democratic senator from Georgia who has spent his post- 
congressional career trying to halt a new age of proliferation, said in an 
interview Monday. "We started with the least dangerous of the countries, Iraq, and 
we knew it at the time. And now we have to deal with that."
 
Bush and his aides dispute that view, arguing that Iraq was the more urgent 
threat in 2003, given its role at the center of the volatile Middle East.
 
Until now, the closest Bush came to drawing what in the Cold War was called a 
"red line" for the North came in May 2003, when he appeared in the Rose 
Garden with South Korea's newly elected president, Roh Moo Hyun, and declared that 
the two countries "will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea."
 
The Central Intelligence Agency's estimates in the years since have been that 
the United States has been tolerating exactly that - a small arsenal of 
nuclear fuel sufficient to produce six or more weapons.
 
Monday morning, hours after the North's test, Bush did not repeat that 
threat. Instead, he drew a new "red line" that appeared to tacitly acknowledge the 
North's possession of weapons.
 
North Korea, he said, "remains one of the world's leading proliferator of 
missile technology, including transfers to Iran and Syria."
 
He went on to warn that "the transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North 
Korea to states or nonstate entities would be considered a grave threat to 
the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable of the 
consequences of such action."
 
To critics of Bush's counter-proliferation policy, this was a moving of the 
goalposts, a recognition that American policy - reaching back over at least 
four presidents - has failed to control the makings of the bomb.
 
"Think about the consequences of having declared something 'intolerable,' and 
last week 'unacceptable,' and then having North Korea defy the world's sole 
superpower and the Chinese and the Japanese," said Graham Allison, a Harvard 
professor who has studied nuclear showdowns from the Cuban Missile Crisis on. 
"What does that communicate to Iran, and then the rest of the world? Is it 
possible to communicate to Kim credibly that if he sells a bomb to Osama bin Laden, 
that's it?"
 
Allison was touching on the central dilemma facing Washington as it tries to 
extricate itself from the morass of Iraq. Whether accurately or not, other 
countries around the world perceive Washington as tied down, unable or unwilling 
to challenge them while 140,000 troops are tied up in a sectarian war.
 
Kim may have calculated, many experts said, that at this point there is 
little more that the Bush administration can do to him.
 
The United States has imposed sanctions on his country since the end of the 
Korean War. The new crackdown on the banks through which the North conducts 
many of its illicit activities - counterfeiting, missile sales, trade in small 
arms - are being choked off, a step the North Korean leaders presumably see as 
part of a strategy of bringing down the North Korean regime.
 
"He's probably betting that there is nothing we can do to bring the Chinese 
and the Russians together on cutting off his oil, and he may be right," a 
senior American official said after the North had threatened the nuclear test. "And 
he may think that his negotiating leverage will be a lot greater if he has 
proven that he's got the bomb."
 
If so, Kim may have calculated that this is his moment, when Bush, in the 
last two years of his presidency, cannot afford another military confrontation.
 
It may be years, or decades, before historians will know whether Iraq played 
into Kim Jong Il's calculations about when to conduct a nuclear test. But 
clearly, managing simultaneous crises around the world is straining the system in 
Washington, and posing the United States with more direct challenges than many 
believe it can handle at one moment.
 
The question for Bush now is the one he faced when he came to office: Can he 
best contain one of the world's most unpredictable regimes by trying to 
further isolate it, or by trying to draw it out of its paranoid shell.
 
---------------------------------------

The Washington Post
October 9, 2006

U.S. Proposes Embargo, Sanctions on N. Korea

By Colum Lynch and Howard Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writers

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 9 -- The Bush administration on Monday proposed an arms 
embargo and a series of legally binding U.N. financial and trade sanctions to 
punish North Korea for apparently detonating a nuclear device, and it called 
for international inspections of all trade coming into and out of the secretive 
country to enforce them.

The proposal followed promptly after Monday's unanimous condemnation of North 
Korea by the U.N. Security Council and statements by President Bush vowing to 
protect U.S. allies in the region and maintain a "nuclear-free Korean 
peninsula."

It was contained in a U.S. draft resolution to be presented to the 15-nation 
council this afternoon. It is unclear when the body will vote.

John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told diplomats at 
a closed-door emergency session that the U.S. initiative is designed to limit 
the country's ability to import or export nuclear and ballistic missile 
technology and hinder its capacity to raise illicit funds, citing North Korea's 
alleged manufacture of counterfeit U.S. dollars, according to senior Council 
diplomats.

Bolton advocated a U.S.-draft resolution that would also bar the import of 
all luxury goods and demand that North Korea cease its nuclear activities and 
restart multiparty talks aimed at resolving the crisis, according to U.S. and 
European officials.

Britain and France voiced support for sanctions on North Korea, but stopped 
short of endorsing the U.S.-backed proposal. China, meanwhile, cautioned that 
the 15-nation body pursue only diplomatic means to persuade North Korea to halt 
its nuclear activities.

China's U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, said Beijing is opposed to the North 
Korean test and that it is ready to discuss "how the Security Council could 
react firmly, constructively and prudently with regard to this challenge."

But he declined to say whether Beijing would support a sanctions resolution. 
"I think we have to react firmly, but also I believe that, on the other hand, 
that the door to solve this issue from diplomatic point of view is still open."

Russia's initial reaction was somewhat ambiguous. While Vitaly Churkin, the 
Russian ambassador to the United Nations, condemned North Korea for conducting 
the test, he stopped short of calling for sanctions, saying only that North 
Korea would "face a very serious attitude" within the council.

The draft resolution mirrors elements of an earlier resolution, 1695, which 
was passed this summer and called on states to voluntarily ban the trade of 
ballistic missiles and equipment necessary for other weapons of mass destruction. 
Bolton told reporters the current resolution goes further.

He said the speed with which the council agreed to condemn the apparent test 
in a 30-minute meeting demonstrated the depth of world concern over the issue.

"I did not see any protectors of North Korea in that room," Bolton said. "No 
one defended [the test]. No one even came close to defending it."

In earlier remarks, Bush called for swift action and condemned the isolated 
government of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

"Once again North Korea has defied the will of the international community 
and the international community will respond," Bush said in brief remarks.

Bush said the United States is still working to confirm whether the "seismic 
event" that occurred in a remote part of North Korea was caused by a nuclear 
device, as Pyongyang has asserted. Along with the source of the blast, its 
magnitude remained under investigation. Estimates ranged from the equivalent of 
less than one thousand tons of dynamite to a Russian estimate of up to15,000 
tons, more than the explosive power of the bomb dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima 
during World War II.

But the very claim of a nuclear test, Bush said, was "provocative" and 
"constitutes a threat to peace and security."

He reaffirmed the U.S. intent to protect its close allies in the region, 
Japan and South Korea.

The United States "will meet the full range of our deterrent and security 
commitments," the president said.

That included, he said, holding North Korea "fully accountable" for the 
potential proliferation of nuclear technology to governments or organizations 
hostile to the United States.

He mentioned Iran and Syria by name but also included "non-state entities," 
and said their acquisition of a nuclear device "would be considered a grave 
threat to the United States."

Bush said he has already spoken with the leaders of South Korea, Japan, 
Russia and China -- the other parties to the six-way talks that the United States 
has advocated as a basis for discussions with the North Korean regime.

North Korea wants direct talks with the United States.

Democratic and Republican leaders were quick to denounce the North Korean 
test, the Associated Press reported.

"Reports of North Korea's test of a nuclear weapon is an extremely dangerous 
and destabilizing event," said Sen. John Kerry, (D-Mass.) a member of the 
Senate Foreign Relations Committee and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee.

Kerry also used the occasion to criticize Bush, the news agency said. 
"Weapons of mass destruction pointed at our allies and strategic partners represents 
a shocking failure of President Bush's security policy, and a threat to the 
interests of peace and stability in the world.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) issued a statement denouncing North 
Korea's action as "the desperate act of a criminal regime" and said the House 
would support Bush and the international community in condemning that 
country's "reckless decision."

---------------------------------------

International Herald Tribune
October 9, 2006

Explosion raises pressure on Japan's pacifism  

By Martin Fackler 
 
TOKYO The last time North Korea tested a powerful new weapon - in 1998, when 
it fired a ballistic missile over the largest Japanese island - Japan reacted 
by beefing up its military and swinging politically to the right.
 
Now, the North's test Monday of an atomic weapon could push Japan even 
further down the same conservative path. Many political analysts say the test could 
weaken public support for the nation's post-World War II pacifism and prompt 
Japan to seek a growing role in regional security.
 
But could the crisis be big enough to force Japan to break what might be its 
ultimate postwar taboo and go nuclear itself?
 
This is what some in the region had speculated Tokyo would do if the isolated 
and erratic Communist regime to its north suddenly conducted a test 
detonation of an atomic bomb - as it did Monday. But for now, analysts say, domestic 
opposition to the idea runs too deep for Japan to change its renunciation of 
nuclear weapons.
 
Japan is known to have stockpiles of weapons-grade atomic material, which are 
used in its civilian nuclear power and research programs, and some studies 
have said that Tokyo could construct a bomb in a matter of months if it chose.
 
But analysts say that while the North's test was likely to increase calls 
within Japan to acquire atomic weapons, these proponents will remain limited to 
the nation's far-right fringe. The idea of going nuclear, the analysts say, 
would still face broad and emotional opposition in Japan, which remains the only 
nation to have suffered atomic attacks, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The 
prospect of a nuclear Japan might also send shudders through the rest of 
Asia, where memories are still raw from Japan's wartime aggression.
 
Instead, the most likely result of the test, say analysts, will be to rally 
public opinion around the new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and his calls for 
taking Japan in a more self-assertive and hawkish direction. In particular, a 
crisis in North Korea would increase Abe's chances of winning support for his 
goal of revising the country's antiwar Constitution to allow Japan to possess 
full- fledged armed forces.
 
"The nuclear test may prove to be an even bigger shock to public opinion" 
than the missile, said Yasunori Sone, a professor of political and policy 
analysis at Keio University in Tokyo. "It won't make Japan build nuclear weapons. But 
it could turn into a 'wind from the North' that gives Mr. Abe and his 
policies a big lift."
 
For the time being, said Sone and other analysts, Abe appears to be trying to 
take a leading role in responding to the crisis. On Monday, Abe and other 
Japanese leaders were quick to condemn the test, saying their country was working 
closely with the United States and Asian neighbors like South Korea and China 
to find a response.
 
Speaking in Seoul, where he was holding a previously scheduled summit meeting 
with the South Korean president, Roh Moo Hyun, Abe blasted the test as a 
"serious threat to the security of Japan and South Korea, and of neighboring 
countries."
 
"We cannot accept the development and production of nuclear weapons by North 
Korea, and we have agreed that we must respond resolutely," Abe said at a 
press conference after meeting with Roh. "We have entered a new and more dangerous 
era."
 
Abe also said Japan was considering economic sanctions, though he did not 
offer details. He said Japan might also respond by increasing its participation 
in a missile-defense shield that it is developing jointly with the United 
States.
 
In Tokyo, Yasuhisa Shiozaki, the chief cabinet secretary and top government 
spokesman, said Japan would try to work with the United States to seek action 
against the North by the United Nations, which could also include economic 
sanctions.
 
"We will lodge a stern protest and condemn" the test, Shiozaki told reporters.
 
Japan's national broadcaster, NHK, said that commanders of the Self-Defense 
Forces, as Japan calls its military, had gathered in Tokyo for an emergency 
meeting. Taro Aso, the foreign minister, said that he was in close contact with 
Washington, exchanging information and formulating a response.
 
One early issue was confirming whether the North even conducted the test as 
claimed. Japan's weather agency said seismographs across Japan had detected 
unusual midmorning tremors in Tokyo. It said they had a magnitude of 4.9, the 
size of a moderate earthquake.
 
Analysts said the effects of the test on public opinion may take time to 
appear.
 
That is what happened after the North's test firing of a multi-stage 
Taepodong-2 missile over Japan. While Japan's initial reaction was muted, public 
opinion ended up moving dramatically in favor of building a stronger defense.
 
-------------------------------------

Asia Times
Tuesday, October 10, 2006

How North Korea bungled its nuclear timing

By Donald Kirk 

SEOUL - North Korea's nuclear test has altered the landscape of alliances and 
enmities in East Asia, suddenly putting Japan in common cause with two 
terrible foes, China and South Korea. 

If Kim Jong-il deliberately timed the test to coincide with Japanese Prime 
Minister Shinzo Abe's visit first to Beijing and then to Seoul, he may have 
dreadfully miscalculated. The leaders of all three countries could hardly agree 
more - the test 
is a "provocation" and they have to act together to do something about it. 

The verbiage from South Korea was startling. There, after his summit on 
Monday 
with Abe, was President Roh Moo-hyun declaring that South Korea would find it 
"increasingly difficult to stick by its engagement policy" with North Korea. 
Is Roh really prepared, however, to do away with nearly 10 years of efforts at 
reconciliation with North Korea? 

The answer, in the view of increasingly restive conservatives in South Korea, 
is that Roh's presidency has been a failure and that the "sunshine policy" 
initiated his predecessor, Kim Dae-jung, has failed to deliver on any of its 
promises. 

For all the strong words, though, the future of engagement now rests on 
whether Roh is willing to suspend a bundle of economic and social programs that 
have proliferated in recent years. 

And are South Korea and China ready to advocate economic sanctions against 
North Korea after having strenuously opposed them even after North Korea 
test-fired seven missiles in early July? 

Shinzo Abe, at a final press conference here before returning to Tokyo, 
called on the "international community" to adopt "harsher measures" - an implicit 
rebuke of the soft line that China and South Korea have been following. 

By his manner and words, Abe conveyed the sense that the North Korean test, 
announced by Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency shortly after he arrived in 
Seoul, had helped immensely in resolving deep differences between Japan and 
South Korea as well as China. "We saw eye to eye," he said flatly after his 
meeting with Roh. 

No doubt about it, the news of the North Korean test came as a devastating 
blow to nearly a decade of efforts at North-South Korean reconciliation - and 
also as a huge loss of face for China, widely viewed as having pivotal influence 
in Pyongyang in view of North Korea's reliance on China for aid and trade. 

China's response was that of betrayal by a trusted follower. Denunciation of 
the test as a "brazen" act suggested the vengeance that China might 
contemplate. How, Chinese leaders seemed to be asking, could Kim Jong-il treat us with 
such disrespect after all the aid we've been pouring into his dilapidated 
economy, including fuel, food and cash? 

More than face was at stake. North Korea's nuclear test rekindled fears of a 
regional nuclear arms race, one in which Japan could threaten everyone else in 
the region, reviving memories of the days of Japanese empire beginning in the 
late 19th century. 

There was no trace, however, in statements from Beijing or Seoul after the 
announcement of the test of the kind of anti-Japanese sentiment that has been 
reverberating through the headlines in the past few years. 

North Korea's display of nuclear prowess "will bring about some new 
perspectives on regional security", said Park Young-ho, senior research fellow at the 
Korea Institute of National Unification. "Maybe Japan and even South Korea may 
have some temptation to develop nuclear weapons." 

The contentious question of whether Abe would follow the lead of his 
predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, in visiting Japan's Yasukuni shrine honoring Japan's 
war dead, including the war criminals who led the Japanese empire to conquest 
over China and Korea, was barely mentioned. And neither Roh nor Abe seemed to 
want to quarrel over those rocky islets in the East Sea/Sea of Japan that are 
known as Dokdo to the Koreans whose police occupy them, and as Takeshima to the 
Japanese who claim them. 

The impression was that Abe, while hardly giving up his right to visit the 
shrine, much less yielding on Japanese claims to Dokdo/Takeshima, might put off 
a display of such overt nationalism in the interests of new-found friendship 
with China and South Korea. 

Roh, who inherited the "sunshine policy" formulated by Kim Dae-jung, said his 
government would find it "increasingly difficult to stick to its engagement 
policy". While South Korea would not abandon its desire for peaceful dialogue, 
he said, "we may not continue to be patient and to yield to North Korea's 
demands". Roh's remarks reflected rising conservative pressure for his government 
to give up what are seen as leftist policies, and to consider closing down 
business and tourist programs. 

While warning of possible "stern measures", however, Roh did not specify 
exactly what he might do. Options included suspension of permission for South 
Korean companies to operate in a special economic zone at Kaesong, across the line 
between the two Koreas about 40 miles north of Seoul, and to bar South 
Koreans from going on tours to the Mount Kumkang resort region in which South 
Korea's Hyundai group has invested about US$1 billion. 

The North Korean test also seemed likely to bring South Korea closer to the 
United States after increasingly strained relations in which South Korea has 
opposed what was seen here as the "hard line" of the Bush administration ever 
since President George W Bush included North Korea in an "axis of evil" in 2001. 

"Korea and the US will get closer to convergence in putting pressure on North 
Korea," said Kim Sung-han, professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and 
National Security, an adjunct of the foreign ministry. South Korea, he said, 
"might join the Proliferation Security Initiative" - a US-sponsored effort to 
get nations to band together in an effort to stop the proliferation of weapons 
of mass destruction. South Korea has so far refused to join PSI, preferring 
observer status at exercises. 

Another option, said Kim, would be for the Seoul to "consider joint missile 
defense" with the US and possibly even Japan - a level of interdependence that 
the Roh government had previously opposed. 

Yet another question is that of the basic US-Korean alliance. A South Korean 
spokesman reminded North Korea of the strength of that alliance in a critical 
period in US-Korean relations. 

Roh seemed almost hurt as he spoke of the "common and broad approach" that he 
had forged with Bush during their meeting at the White House last month. Out 
of that meeting came a new "comprehensive" proposal for North Korea - on which 
the North never commented. Now, said Roh, that approach would have to change. 

It's not clear if that approach offered anything new, but there's no doubt 
Roh's policy toward Washington will undergo revision if not transformation. One 
place to begin may be on the controversial plan for changing the agreement 
under which South Korean troops would remain under South Korean leadership in 
case of war rather than under a single US command. South Korean conservatives, 
including former defense ministers and army commanders, have zealously opposed 
the whole idea, seen as proof of Roh's leftist anti-Americanism. 

In the aftermath of the nuclear test, anti-Americanism may be falling out of 
fashion in South Korea. 

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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