North Korea Disarming?

The AP is reporting that Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill says we have reached a tentative agreement with North Korea to begin its disarmament.

I figured that the North Koreans would be much more agreeable to this after their nuclear test was a failure. It's a situation where luck was on our side. If the bomb would have worked, Kim Jong-Il would have likely displayed more animosity to the parties attempting to disarm it. When the test failed though, they were left standing there with their pants around their ankles.

Hey, it looks like the Bush administration might just get one right.

We Truly Are Governed By Children

This morning on NPR, I heard a republican author describe the Bush administration's foreign policy as infantile. There can be no greater example of this than their latest diplomatic maneuvering with North Korea. From the BBC:

The US has banned the export of luxury goods to North Korea, as part of US sanctions for the North's nuclear test.

The sanctions target the lifestyle of North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il and the families of his supporters.

The list includes iPods, plasma televisions, cognac, Rolex watches and artwork.

North Korea's leader is well known for his lavish lifestyle and for giving expensive cars, liquor and Japanese appliances to his close associates.

Well, that should bring the regime to its knees. God knows if Kim Jong-Il can't get his drink on, he surely will become docile to the rest of the world. The worst part of this waste of our government's time, and therefore our tax dollars is that it isn't even enforceable. It isn't like Kim was bolstering our 4th quarter GDP by ordering through Amazon.com or something. He gets his stuff through third parties.

No, this just it so damn typical of this administration's lack of foreign policy, or actually domestic policy as well. It's all show and no go, and as mentioned on NPR this morning, it's infantile.

Blaming The Dog

This is going to be a rather vulgar rant, so if you have virgin eyes don't fucking read it.

The notion that Condi Rice is being sent out to the media to blame Clinton for Bush's failing on North Korea is the most absurd fucking thing I have ever seen. It reminds me of a story my parents have told me about when I was a child. I'm told I was like two-and-a-half years old, and I left the faucet running.

When confronted about it, I blamed Sparky the dog. It was the first time I had ever got into trouble and I didn't yet know how to react, but you know the bottom line is that I was fucking two. My argument then is the same one the Bush administration is using today, the argument of a fucking two-year old. These people refuse to take any responsibility for any of the fuck-up they create, and by failing to do so, fail to remedy any of them. Iraq certainly comes to mind.

At this point, I have to wonder how often Laura has to take it in the ass because George can't figure out sometimes which hole is the pussy. These people are that incompetent.

Let take a look at the facts. Josh Marshall puts it this way:

"Failure" =1994-2002 -- Era of Clinton 'Agreed Framework': No plutonium production. All existing plutonium under international inspection. No bomb.

"Success" = 2002-2006 -- Bush Policy Era: Active plutonium production. No international inspections of plutonium stocks. Nuclear warhead detonated.

Face it. They ditched an imperfect but working policy. They replaced it with nothing. Now North Korea is a nuclear state.

Facts hurt. So do nukes.

That's true. What is also true is that in April of 2002, after 9/11, after Bush declared North Korea a member of the "Axis of Evil," Bush agreed to send North Korea $95 million dollars to build two light water reactors which was part of the Agreed Framework that Condi is saying was a failure. What wasn't part of the Agreed Framework is that Bush nixed the part of the deal that mandated IAEA inspectors be given access to all North Korean sites to search for plutonium. From the BBC:

In releasing the funding, President George W Bush waived the Framework's requirement that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors.

President Bush argued that the decision was "vital to the national security interests of the United States".

As with nearly all of the Bush administration's foreign policy actions, this eventually failed, rather quickly actually. By August of that year, the light water reactors were off the table. Following that failure the North Koreans busted the IAEA locks off of existing stores of nuclear materials and went back to work on producing bomb grade plutonium.

What this shows is that it is clearly solely the failures of the Bush administration that culminated (hopefully) with the North Koreans testing a nuclear device last Sunday. The plutonium used in the device detonated early this week may have existed under the Agreed Framework, or it may not have.

But if they had existing plutonium the inspectors that Bush nixed would have found it. Through the incompetence of the administration, they never ever got to look. If they produced it after the April Bush agreement, that as well lies at Bush's feet. It is pretty hard to blame Clinton for it.

The bottom line is that six years of this administration's fuck-ups have led us to this point. Will they get it right finally? They don't seem to be poised to. Fuck it, just blame the dog.

North Korea

Well, it does appear that North Korea did in fact detonate a nuclear device as now the seismic signatures of such a device have been proven. I'm not going to get too much into the political failures that led to this development. Josh Marshall has all the pertinent facts laid out here, (Josh is doing some updating of his site and as of this writing his archives are down so try this link and scroll down) and anything I could write at this point would simply be derivative of what Josh lays out.

As important as knowing how we got here is what we do next. Arms Control Wonk is reporting that the test was likely a dud. I had come to a similar conclusion after looking at some of the numbers overnight, but just figured I most likely just didn't know what the hell I was talking about. From Arms Control Wonk:

I love the US Geological Survey.

They’ve published lat/long (41.294°N, 129.134°E) and Mb estimates (4.2) for the North Korean test.

There is lots of data floating around: The CTBTO called it 4.0; The South Koreans report 3.58-3.7.

You’re thinking, 3.6, 4.2, in that neighborhood. Seismic scales, like the Richter, are logarithmic, so that neighborhood can be pretty big.

But even at 4.2, the test was probably a dud.

Estimating the yield is tricky business, because it depends on the geology of the test site. The South Koreans called the yield half a kiloton (550 tons), which is more or less—a factor of two—consistent with the relationship for tests in that yield range at the Soviet Shagan test site:

Mb = 4.262 + .973LogW

Where Mb is the magnitude of the body wave, and W is the yield.

3.58-3.7 gives you a couple hundred tons (not kilotons), which is pretty close in this business unless you’re really math positive. The same equation, given the US estimate of 4.2, yields (pun intended) around a kiloton.

A plutonium device should produce a yield in the range of the 20 kilotons, like the one we dropped on Nagasaki. No one has ever dudded their first test of a simple fission device. North Korean nuclear scientists are now officially the worst ever.

That leaves us in a very powerful negotiating position. Kim Jong Il called our bluff, only he didn't make his hand. Now, he is out on a limb, and out of time with his own bluff and this time the whole world is calling. Hopefully he knows this and his scientists didn't just tell him it worked anyway.

Kim Jong Il, much like our own leader, suffers from an endless abundance of pride to a dangerous degree, and we can use that to our advantage again assuming that he knows he is up the creek without a paddle.

We should offer to enter with North Korea into bilateral talks, but within the six party talks framework. Once we confer with the other five we should then make Kim Jong Il an offer he can't refuse. The sticks? Go along with this, or you die, or you will be exposed as a fraud, and then you die. The carrots? Food, oil and a shot for North Korea to enter into the rest of the world.

Kim Jong Il would have to agree to abandoning his nuclear program, and relinquishing all plutonium and bomb grade uranium to the IAEA plus closing and sealing all research facilities. Furthermore, the IAEA would be granted admission to any site in the country they wished to ensure future compliance.

In return, we would agree to sign a non-aggression treaty. It's not like it is worth the paper it's written on anyway.

North Korea Tests Nuclear Device

South Korean seismologists have now confirmed the North Korea has performed an underground nuclear test. A tremor with a magnitude of 3.6 was detected coming from the North earlier tonight. It is unclear at this time what size bomb would create that level of tremor. I'll be watching the overnights to find out.

I wonder if George Bush is even awake.