Other Stuff

So because I have some kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder and am posting less right now as I await the ramp-up to a dedicated site on FDL, here are some quick hits on stories I didn't get to on that site today:

• Congress will hold hearings on those forged letters from astroturf groups sent to swing-state Dems urging them to vote against the House climate bill. This needs to be more than investigated by Congress; the Justice Department should get involved.

• Another day, another GOP front group headed by neocons. This one's called "Keep America Safe." It's a Bill Kristol/Liz Cheney special. Nothing but good can come of that.

• NOAA steps up and warns against indefinite offshore drilling without limits. This is one of those small benefits of the Obama Administration, that relatively sane regulatory agencies are starting to assert themselves.

• A nice piece from Peter Orszag on the delivery system reforms in the bill.

• Jon Corzine has a couple new attack ads out, slamming Chris Christie for his ties to corporate interests and the Bush Administration. Corzine has been relentless.

• Publius calls it Rick Perry's Saturday Night Massacre, and I agree. He's now fired ANOTHER member of the commission looking into whether Texas killed an innocent man. This is a huge story going completely unnoticed by the national media.

• Charlie Rangel's getting a primary challenge. Charlie Rangel NEEDS a primary challenge. Corruption is not a partisan issue.

• North Korea may be launching missiles, but they're also agreeing to talks. Guess the missile launches aren't going well. Meanwhile, Russia is splitting from the US over the issue of sanctions for Iran, with the Foreign Minister calling them "counterproductive."

• Tim DeChristopher, the activist who bid up oil and gas leases without the ability to pay in an effort to deep-six the potential drilling, is charged with two felony counts for his activism. For bidding on something? Really?

Surprise Talks With Cuba

Tomorrow the US and other Western countries meet with Iran for diplomatic talks made more difficult by the disclosure of a nuclear facility in Qom. There are lots of reasons to be skeptical of the information out there about the facility, but nonetheless, it at least hasn't stopped the talks, although it's probably crippled them. On a couple other fronts, diplomatic actions are moving forward. North Korea has been offered direct bilateral talks on ending their nuclear program, as a preface to bringing them back into the six-party fold. That's further than we've gone with the DPRK in close to a decade, and perhaps could yield some substantive results. Meanwhile, a US diplomat held unscheduled talks with the Cuban government yesterday:

NEW YORK - A senior American diplomat has held unannounced, high-level talks in Havana with the Cuban government, three State Department officials told The Associated Press on Tuesday, raising hopes for a thaw in long-icy relations.

The talks were the first of their kind in years between representatives of the U.S. and Cuban governments, the bitter Cold War rivals among whom trust appears to be gradually building.

Bisa Williams, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, met with Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Dagoberto Rodriguez, visited an area affected by hurricanes in the Western province of Pinar del Rio and toured a government agricultural facility during a six-day trip to Cuba this month, the officials told AP [...]

One U.S. official described the talks as "respectful" and said they were more significant for having taken place, than for any substantive breakthroughs between the two sides, which have been at odds since shortly after former Cuban leader Fidel Castro marched into Havana on New Year's Day 1959.

"We were going over ground we haven't gone over for a long time," said the official. "Each side was taking advantage of the opportunity to size each other up."

I've said before that Cuba is the low-hanging fruit on the international diplomacy tree. The Obama Administration could pick up a quick and easy victory toward peace there if they just engaged. This unannounced set of talks is a sign that they might feel the same way.

Better News On Bagram

Barack Obama has been lit up for not being the be-all and end-all to liberals for months now, and a fair amount of those criticisms are warranted. The storm of criticism has also driven out of the conversation what has been a pretty decent week for those who want to see a bit more fairness and humility in our domestic and foreign policy. In addition to the resumption of talks with Iran, the Administration will pursue bilateral negotiations with North Korea. The raising of tariffs against Chinese tire imports, while met with petulance and idle threats by the PRC, represents a genuine concern for American manufacturing the likes of which we haven't seen in decades. And this announcement on detainee reviews at Bagram AFB, while not wholly sufficient, is nevertheless welcome.

The Obama administration soon plans to issue new guidelines aimed at giving the hundreds of prisoners at an American detention center in Afghanistan significantly more ability to challenge their custody, Pentagon officials and detainee advocates say.

The new Pentagon guidelines would assign a United States military official to each of the roughly 600 detainees at the American-run prison at the Bagram Air Base north of Kabul. These officials would not be lawyers but could for the first time gather witnesses and evidence, including classified material, on behalf of the detainees to challenge their detention in proceedings before a military-appointed review board.

Some of the detainees have already been held at Bagram for as long as six years. And unlike the prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba, these detainees have had no access to lawyers, no right to hear the allegations against them and only rudimentary reviews of their status as “enemy combatants,” military officials said.

The changes, which are expected to be announced as early as this week after an obligatory Congressional review, come as the Obama administration is picking through the detention policies and practices of the Bush administration, to determine what it will keep and what it will abandon in an effort to distance itself from some of the harsher approaches used under President George W. Bush. Human rights groups and prisoner advocates cautiously hailed the policy changes but said the government’s track record in this area had been so poor that they wanted to see concrete results before making hard judgments.

These are not habeas trials under the American system of justice, which should follow for those detainees brought to Bagram from other countries and not as part of the Afghan war. But this is in response to a federal judge's ruling that would have allowed those very prisoners to challenge their confinement, so hopefully it can be put together in such a way that satisfies the principle. And this Defense Department official's quote is encouraging:

“We don’t want to hold anyone we don’t have to hold,” said one Defense Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the guidelines have not been formally announced. “It’s just about doing the right thing."

Karen DeYoung and Peter Finn have more.

The Great North Korean Thaw?

What's up with Lil' Kim and the gang over in North Korea? First, they release two American journalists who they accused of "hostile acts." Then they send their condolences to South Korea on the death of Kim Dae-jung, and plan to send a delegation to the funeral, an unusual show of diplomacy between the two countries who are technically still at war. And then, they set up a meeting with Bill Richardson, out of the clear blue sky:

Senior North Korean diplomats are heading to meet with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on Wednesday, opening a new front in informal discussions the country has sought in recent days.

The two diplomats, who are with the North Korean mission to the United Nations, sought out Richardson for the latest encounter, an official said. Richardson is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He last visited North Korea two years ago, on a mission to retrieve the remains of Korean War veterans.

The DPRK has not committed to returning to six-party talks. But there are a lot more constructive actions going on now than when they were firing off rockets every two weeks. Perhaps the nuclear tests actually failed? Maybe Bill Clinton let them know that the US knew about that? Or maybe they just wanted the respect of an ex-President coming to their doorstep?

Who knows, but aside from Afghanistan, which is a horror show, Obama's foreign policy is really starting to pay off.

Why Is Current Taking No Heat Over Euna Lee And Laura Ling?

I suspected this to be the case.

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 4 -- One woman approached China's border with North Korea as a seasoned foreign correspondent, the other as a sharp editor who was on her first trip abroad in her new role as a producer.

I knew Euna Lee as an editor. Her first producing assignment was to go to... North Korea? And the only possible reason for that is that she spoke Korean and grew up in Seoul.

This is not to say that she's not a smart person, or that she is overly aggressive. And yes, someone fluent in Korean would be helpful in chronicling the story. But in the field, the producer makes the decisions. The "seasoned foreign correspondent" does not. And so Current TV sent a first-time producer to perhaps the most dangerous place on Earth. They played on her ambition and figured just anyone who spoke Korean and who they could pay cheaply would do. And when things went catastrophically wrong, they shut their traps about it and censored material on their website. Now that they've been released, it's a Laura Ling film festival on Current.

(That whole "seasoned foreign correspondent" thing about Laura Ling, by the way? I've seen a couple segments. One has her walking through a 7-11 shop in China picking out different snacks. The story they were sent to do in the border region was about human trafficking. That's several orders of magnitude different.)

The "citizen journalist" model is great and all, but air-dropping unseasoned people into war zones and giving them none of the resources to succeed produces outcomes like this. And it's completely unfair to the two women, who were brave in their ordeal. You have to blame the management decision to send them there. They treat their staff like spare parts, giving them no training or resources, and send them abroad to essentially poke a bear with a sharp stick.

This is not an uninformed armchair opinion, by the way. I know people at Current. OSHA should step in.

...All that said, John Bolton should have offered to serve a substitute sentence of 12 years hard labor in a prison camp if he wants to keep his country's manly neocon manliness intact. I'm sure nobody would miss him.

How obvious was it that Fred Hiatt would ring up Bolton to write an op-ed about this?

Fantastic News

My friend Euna Lee is coming home.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has issued a "special pardon" to two American journalists convicted of sneaking into the country illegally, and he ordered them released during a visit by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, North Korean media reported early Wednesday.

The release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee was a sign of North Korea's "humanitarian and peaceloving policy," the Korean Central News Agency reported.

Clinton, who arrived in North Korea Tuesday on an unannounced visit, met with the reclusive and ailing Kim — his first meeting with a prominent Western figure since his reported stroke nearly a year ago.

Euna and Laura Ling have been in North Korean custody since St. Patrick's Day. Activists have worked tirelessly for this release, and the high-profile visit by President Clinton worked.

Tremendous.

UPDATE: Media turning this into Bill Clinton "upstaging" the White House. Uh, what? Also the usual suspects, John Bolton et al talking about Clinton used as a "propaganda tool." You'd almost think they would rather have two American citizens rot in a North Korean labor camp....

God, they really can't get over their Clinton obsession.

...the Bolton video. Maybe he should visit Euna Lee's family and tell her how their daughter needs to stay in a prison cell because anything else would send a bad message.

Big Dog To Pyongyang

Great news.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton is on his way to North Korea to try to negotiate the release of two American journalists convicted by the communist state of "grave crimes," South Korea's Yonhap news agency said on Tuesday.

Clinton had already left for the North but had not yet arrived in Pyongyang, Yonhap said in a report from Washington quoting a source familiar with the issue.

"As soon as he arrives, he will be entering negotiations with the North for the release of the female journalists," the source was quoted as saying.

Clinton wouldn't embark for North Korea without knowing he would be let in and have something to negotiate. He met with Kim Jong-il today.

The residual benefit of a former President showing respect to the North Koreans could be that it restarts nuclear talks. All the DPRK really seems to want is respect.

But I'm more concerned about Euna Lee and Laura Ling, and the fact that diplomatic talks are underway is a great sign. Fingers crossed.

Slow Creep Back To The Bargaining Table

North Korea has consistently preferred bilateral talks with the United States over the six-party talks that have become the current framework. Now they have again asked for a one-on-one dialogue, this time as the only available diplomacy.

North Korea has again insisted it will not return to six-party talks aimed at ending its nuclear weapons programme.

But it hinted it was still open to "a specific and reserved form of dialogue", state media quoted a foreign ministry statement.

The statement did not elaborate on what form any new dialogue could take but Pyongyang has previously said it was open to direct talks with the US.

The US has said it will hold talks with the North within the six-party format.

Some analysts are seeing the statement as a sign that after a series of provocations to the international community, North Korea may now be ready to find a way to ease tension.

Hillary Clinton brushed this off on Meet The Press yesterday. But it does represent a step forward, of a kind, because earlier this year the DPRK would not agree to talks of any kind. So we're getting somewhere.

They want the respect of bilateral talks on an equal footing with the United States. If that means the release of political prisoners like Euna Lee and Laura Ling, and an equitable swap of ending the nuclear program for humanitarian aid and diplomatic relations, I don't really see the holdup.

Does North Korea Really Have Nuclear Weapons?

In her Asia trip, Hillary Clinton called for an end to North Korea's nuclear program and threatened increasing isolation and pressure. She said that the world basically agrees and that the rogue state has no friends left. North Korea responded by criticizing Hillary's appearance. Because Kim Jong-il is such a stunner.

But I've said before that the proper way to react to a country as desperate for attention as North Korea is not seriousness. It's mockery. And the mockery is well-earned, especially because that vaunted nuclear program may not be so vaunted:

Let us suppose, for the moment, that the DPRK actually did explode 2,500 tons of TNT instead of a nuclear device. How could they load a tunnel with so much conventional explosive and not be detected by the West’s satellites? This was the real reason I was so sure it had been a nuclear explosion. I was convinced, unfortunately before doing a very simple calculation, that the trucks filled with high explosive (HE) would be detected.

However, it is not all that much HE. If TNT was used, as opposed to a higher density explosive like RDX, North Korea would only have to excavate a cavity 12 meters on a side and fill it with high explosives.

If four 10-ton trucks delivered their load each night (with a fifth truck coming every 10th day) they could drop off all the HE within two months. Using RDX, or some other higher density explosive, could significantly decrease this time. That seems quite doable and to be potentially undetectable by the West.

I don't really believe that North Korean scientists have developed what they claim to have developed. And if someone high-up in the United States government called their bluff, while keeping with the sanctions and demands for inspectors, the entire facade could crumble. We need more intelligence, but it's worth exploring whether the boasts match reality.

Lee And Ling Sentenced To 12 Years

North Korea sentenced Euna Lee and Laura Ling to 12 years hard labor for illegally crossing the border with China and committing unspecified "hostile acts." I think everyone expected this development as a prelude to negotiations to release the two Current TV journalists. Considering how largely responsible his network is for this situation, Al Gore should be on a plane right now.

Now Lee and Ling are bargaining chips in a larger game, tied up in the discussions over North Korea's nuclear tests. The US may add the DPRK back to the list of state sponsors of terrorism, which would add new sanctions, and may try to interdict North Korean ships suspected of carrying nuclear weapons materials (how exactly do they know?), which I think would consign Lee and Ling to that prison camp for a long time. Obviously the US would prefer to have the issues decoupled, but that's hardly possible now.

It's very frustrating to feel like there's nothing to do about this.

Not So Current

The vigil last night in Los Angeles for Euna Lee and Laura Ling, the two journalists detained in North Korea and put on trial today, brought over 500 people to a neighborhood restaurant in Santa Monica, featuring the Lee and Ling families, Tia Carrere, soon to be Congresswoman Judy Chu, and a number of spoken word and musical artists. CNN carried a live interview on Anderson Cooper 360 with Lisa Ling and the husbands of the two detainees, where the families asked for dialogue and diplomacy and not to conflate this situation with the nuclear standoff between the North Koreans and the West. Even Roxana Saberi, the US journalist detained and then released in Iran, sent a letter of support.

You know who hasn't said a peep? Their employer.

While the story gets widespread international attention, Current TV has been absolutely silent on it—going so far as to pull user-submitted stories on the case from its own site. A search of Current.com this morning turns up only one single user-submitted Yahoo news article on the case, which had been posted less than 30 minutes ago. This, even while the story was simultaneously on the front page of NYTimes.com, and while Ling's celebrity sister is desperately trying to get publicity for her case.

Why the hell is Current so quiet about the fate of its own reporters? We emailed and asked them earlier this week, but they haven't responded to us. But a tipster tells us that Current's top management made the conscious decision to "silence" the issue, and that Current employees have been instructed not to discuss it.

I'll tell you why they're so silent. They're RESPONSIBLE. They put these young journalists in dangerous situations without any concern, clearly, for their well-being, and when it blows up in their face they would rather ignore the issue that admit fault. It's been a consistent pattern of airlifting young journalists into war zones and basically giving them a sharp stick and telling them to poke a bear.

I'm sure the State Department has told them to keep quiet. But I'm sure they told the family to keep quiet too, and they didn't. It's a really disgusting display, or lack thereof, by Current, and Al Gore should be ashamed of himself.

Help Euna Lee and Laura Ling Leave North Korea

While the case of Roxana Saberi stirred enough attention in the media to extract her release from Iran, the similar case of two journalists detained in North Korea since March has not been given the same level of notoreity. The Current TV journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, will stand trial for "hostile acts" against the DPRK on Thursday, and their families are speaking out after months of silence, calling for the United States to work for the girls' release.

"Our families have been quiet because the situation is very sensitive and we've been really trying to allow diplomacy to take its course," Lisa Ling, Laura's sister, said on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Monday night. "But you know, you'd have to be hiding under a rock not to see what's going on in the Korean Peninsula.

"I mean tensions are so heated," she continued, "and the girls are essentially in the midst of this nuclear standoff."

Late last month, North Korea conducted nuclear and missile tests, drawing the condemnation of the U.N. Security Council.

"We just felt like it was time for us to talk publicly and try and encourage our two governments to try to communicate, to try and bring our situation to a resolution on humanitarian grounds -- to separate the issues," said Ling, who is a special correspondent with CNN.

As I may have mentioned before, I actually know Euna Lee. I worked with her briefly when I lived in San Francisco. And I encourage everyone to speak out and intensify the international spotlight on this issue. The two journalists have basically become bargaining chips, as the North Koreans continue their nuclear and missile tests and generally behave belligerently toward the West. We need to extricate themselves from this so they are not caught in the crossfire.

Some friends in San Francisco have put together some action items to help raise the profile of the case. There's a petition to release Lee and Ling on humanitarian grounds. And today, there will be nationwide vigils in the US and Canada. Find the vigil in your area at the Facebook site.

San Francisco
steps of City Hall, 6pm

Los Angeles
Wokcano, 1413 5th Street, Santa Monica, 6:30pm

Sacramento
L Wine Lounge & Urban Kitchen, 1801 L Street, 6:30pm

Please participate if you can.

Back To The Well

Bill Kristol responded to Susan Boyle's loss on Britain's Got Talent by calling for strategic bombing in London. No, wait, this time it was North Korea, actually.

Kristol explained, "I don't rule out the possibility of us deciding -- and I think it might be wise for us to decide -- to knock out a few. They're apparently rolling a long-term missile to a base to test another one, long-range missile to test another one. You know, it might be worth doing some targeted air strikes to show the North Koreans, instead of always talking about, 'Gee, there could be consequences,' to show that they can't simply keep going down this path."

Brit Hume, on the same program, endorsed Kristol's proposal, but said he "can't imagine" the Obama administration actually launching a military strike on North Korea.

Matt Yglesias noted, "Kristol doesn't even attempt to say what he thinks this will accomplish. He just kind of tosses it out there for no reason because arguing that the United States should start wars is what he does."

Kristol and his merry band of he-men think that the United States can drop bombs on any nation it chooses without consequences. This is despite the fact that never in human history has such a consequence-free imperialism ever come to pass. If we "targeted" air strikes on North Korea (10, 20 million dead, depending on the breaks), they would bomb Seoul. And kill a lot of people. Indiscriminate projection of military force has brought us through failed wars over the past several decades and the death of hundreds of thousands. Bill Kristol views this as an inconvenience.

Besides, Robert Farley makes the point I've made for years. North Korea doesn't have a lot of money, and apparently their fissile material is finite. Every bomb they test equals one less bomb they have. So go ahead and test! You know how much kimchee they have to sell to scrounge up the cash for another weapon?

More Screaming From The Korean Peninsula

North Korea draws out the sabers over their neighbors to the south joining the Proliferation Security Initiative.

North Korea threatened Wednesday to launch military strikes against South Korea if any of its ships were stopped or searched as part of an American-led operation to intercept vessels suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction.

South Korea agreed to join the global interdiction program after North Korea tested a nuclear device on Monday — its second nuclear test in three years. The North had earlier warned the South not to participate in the effort, known as the Proliferation Security Initiative.

“We consider this a declaration of war against us,” an unidentified North Korean military spokesman said Wednesday in a statement carried by the North’s official news agency, KCNA. “Any hostile act against our peaceful vessels, including search and seizure, will be considered an unpardonable infringement on our sovereignty and we will immediately respond with a powerful military strike.”

The North Koreans also said in the statement that they “no longer feel bound by the armistice” that ended the fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War. Technically, the two Koreas have remained at war for more than 50 years, because the 1953 armistice never gave way to a final peace treaty. North Korea has previously called the armistice a “useless piece of paper.”

I guess this newfound bluster is a combination of testing a young President and jockeying for power inside North Korea in the event of the death of Dear Leader. Regardless, their threat is ridiculous. The Proliferation Security Initiative, maybe the only half-decent thing John Bolton ever came up with, allows South Korea, in this case, to search ships in their own territorial waters suspected of carrying WMD. North Korea may try to provoke a skirmish at the DMZ, but their true threat is from selling weapons technology to other nations. I believe in a strong nonproliferation effort, no matter how much North Korea screams.

More interesting than North Korea's idle threats is the evolution of China on the matter. Not only have they signed on to the strong statement condemning the nuclear test, but Kevin Drum finds this:

North Korea's latest nuclear test raises the question of just how long the bonds forged between old communist allies will endure....Increasingly, China itself is questioning whether the relationship is worth the effort.

Within the Chinese intelligentsia there is a deep divide over how to handle North Korea. The Global Times, a newspaper with close party ties, Tuesday published a survey of 20 of the country's top foreign policy experts. It found them split down the middle — 10 arguing for tough sanctions against North Korea, 10 opposed.

If China throws down the hammer, North Korea will truly be isolated, far more than they are today. International solidarity is more important than the belligerence of empty threats.

North Korea Continues Its Screaming Baby Act

North Korea reports a lot of things, so I'm waiting for independent confirmation of the success of their underground nuclear test. Clearly the President is taking it seriously, given his comments today.

Appearing on the White House steps, Obama said that its latest nuclear underground test and subsequent test firings of short-range ground to air missiles "pose a grave threat to the peace and security of the world and I strongly condemn their reckless action."

It was his second statement within hours of the tests, the latest in a number of nuclear actions that Obama said "endanger the people of Northeast Asia." He called it "a blatant violation of international law" and said that it contradicted North Korea's "own prior commitments." Obama had released a written statement chastising the North Koreans in the early morning hours of Monday.

In his statement in the White House Rose Garden, he noted that the latest tests had drawn scorn around the world. Pyongyang's actions "have flown in the face of U.N. resolutions" and had deepened its isolation, he said, "inviting stronger international pressure."

"North Korea will not find security and respect through threats and illegal weapons," the president said. "We will work with our friends and allies to stand up to this behavior. The United States will never waver from our determination to protect our people and the peace and security of the world."

I just don't see the North Koreans paying much attention to these threats. With troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States is hardly in the position to invade, and making an airstrike seems unlikely as well. The sanctions are about as deep as you can get already, and the Kim Jong-il regime has dealt with it. He seems to have no compunction against mass starvation of his own people. The nuclear explosion triggered an earthquake in the country, suggesting that the North Koreans don't exactly care about the safety and security of their own people. I don't see a lot of options here. The North Koreans historically have sought headlines rather than peace or stability. They are the screaming baby in the corner demanding attention. It's unclear what they want after that attention is paid.

What this does show is the need for a robust nonproliferation program. The President's seriousness about this is a hopeful sign, but that does little for the situation at hand.

The Other Imprisoned Journalists

I'm pleased that Roxana Saberi has been released by the Iranian government. Clearly they found the public relations hit too much to take, and this augurs well for their sensitivity to global public opinion and their desire to put negotiations with the US over their nuclear program on a firm footing.

There's more than one journalist held as a political prisoner around the world, however, some by this country's military in the Middle East. Those are important, but I want to hone in on the journalist I actually know now being held in North Korea. Things are not improving on that front:

Under international criminal law, defendants have the right to access diplomatic officers of their own state. But American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, detained for nearly two months, haven't been allowed contact with Western officials since March 30. A South Korean man known only by his surname, Yu, also has been kept from any contact with officials from his country, according to the South's Unification Ministry.

The North said on April 24 that it would put the two women on trial for "hostile acts," in what would be its first trial of Americans, but it didn't say when. It has given no details to the U.S. or to Sweden, which has diplomatic relations with North Korea and provides services to U.S. citizens in the country.

Mats Foyer, the Swedish ambassador in Pyongyang, met with Ms. Lee and Ms. Ling separately on March 30. He declined to comment on the situation late last week, and referred questions to the State Department. An official there said Mr. Foyer has "repeatedly requested additional visits," but none have been allowed.

U.S. officials have said less about Ms. Lee and Ms. Ling than they have about an American reporter, Roxana Saberi, who was recently convicted of espionage in Iran. The strategy is partly a gamble that not provoking the North Koreans may lead to a speedy resolution, analysts say, but it's also a sign of the increased uncertainty in dealing with Pyongyang.

We've actually made connections with the Iranian government under Obama, but less so with North Korea. Euna Lee and Laura Ling are paying for the lack of outreach.

That's A Lot Of Kimchee

Back when I was funny, I used to do a joke about North Korean nuclear testing that basically went "Let them test, because every bomb they test is one less they have. Do you know how much kimchee you have to sell to afford another one?" The Washington Post basically backs up my joke in the context of Pyongyang restarting their nuclear program.

TOKYO, April 15 -- Despite its defiant vow to restart a plant that makes plutonium, North Korea's capacity to add to its small nuclear arsenal is limited by aging technology and by machinery that was disabled as part of a disarmament deal.

Using fuel rods now in storage, the North could process enough plutonium for one nuclear weapon within six months, according to expert assessments.

But it would take 6 to 12 months to restart all facilities at the Yongbyon nuclear plant, and its capacity to produce plutonium is limited to about one bomb's worth of material a year, according to a published assessment by Siegfried S. Hecker, a periodic visitor to the plant and a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Other experts with on-the-ground knowledge said it would probably take much longer for Yongbyon, a Soviet-era facility where maintenance has been neglected, to resume production [...]

Still, before it can reactivate its plant, the cooling tower at Yongbyon will have to be rebuilt, according to Cha Du-hyeogn, an expert at the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis, a semi-government think tank in Seoul. North Korea blew up the cooling tower last year in an attention-grabbing display of its commitment to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for food, fuel and diplomatic concessions.

North Korea is a poor country, and while they consider nuclear technology a means to their survival, it doesn't exactly mean they have the means to mass produce it. What's more, even the nuclear test in 2006 wasn't exactly successful. As much as they desire to be seen as a powerful nation, North Korea is a lesser-order problem.

With Iran warming to negotiations over its nuclear program, I would focus my energies there. North Korea's Tinkertoys are a cause for a little concern, but there's some lead time to figure that one out.

North Korea Tries To Escalate

It took the UN over a week to pen their strongly worded letter condemning North Korea's missile launch, and Pyongyang immediately responded:

North Korea announced it would quit six-nation nuclear disarmament talks and restart its atomic weapons programme in protest at the UN's condemnation of its rocket launch.

The communist nation said Security Council discussion of the launch, which the North insists sent a satellite into orbit, was "an unbearable insult" to its people.

Analysts described the Pyongyang statement as unusually strong, and China, the North's closest ally, called for all sides involved in the talks to show restraint.

"There is no need for the six-party talks any more," said a statement from Pyongyang's foreign ministry carried by the Korean Central News Agency.

"We will never again take part in such talks and will not be bound by any agreement reached at the talks."

Now, let's not lost our heads over this. This is definitely a strong statement, perhaps their strongest yet. But the North Koreans have simply shown no aptitude for nuclear weapons. All the tests have failed and all the missile launches have failed, at least in their stated goals. Also, Pyongyang has threatened to quit these talks on multiple occasions, only to return to the bargaining table. Finally, they have gone very far down the road of disabling their nuclear program - remember the destruction of the reactor? Putting everything back together will take time and money, and the latter is scarce in North Korea.

Pyongyang wants to become a first-order problem for the West, but they have not risen to that level.

Derision Diplomacy

This is the kind of rhetoric I wanted to see from the Pentagon about North Korea's failed missile launch:

But the U.S. decision to withhold unilateral action may be a solution in itself. Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea continues to make its own stability more precarious by launching these rockets.

"If they spark an arms race on the part of their neighbors because they feel threatened, then I would submit that their security has not been improved but has diminished. And I think that is an aspect of this that they ought to think very carefully about," he said, adding that buyers of North Korean products may want to think twice.

"On the idea of proliferation, would you buy from somebody that had failed three times in a row and never been successful?" Cartwright asked, receiving laughs in response.

North Korea wants to be noticed and respected. Selling their weapons technology is an additional concern and hope of theirs. Denigrating their capability, which is totally valid, makes sense in this context. The security threat from the DPRK really doesn't merit much of a response beyond this, and it will signal to the North Koreans that their strategy failed. Overall, I'm far more worried what they'll do to the two female American journalists they have in custody than whether their bumbling scientists will be able to carry a nuclear payload. Obviously we can afford some engagement in the long term, but in the short term you need to disconnect this cycle of North Korea shooting something into the air and everybody paying attention to them for a few days.

North Korea, Missile Defense And Proliferation

North Korea's rocket launch has led to a round of denunciations from global leaders and apocalyptic visions of nuclear proliferation. Can we at least acknowledge that the launch, as consistent with other efforts by the North Koreans in this area, failed?

"The satellite is transmitting the melodies of the immortal revolutionary paeans 'Song of Gen. Kim Il Sung' and 'Song of Gen. Kim Jong Il' as well as measurement data back to Earth," it said, referring to the country's late founder and his son, its current leader.

But South Korea's defense minister and the U.S. military disputed that account. North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command officials said in a statement that the first stage of the rocket fell into the waters between Korea and Japan, while the two other stages, and its payload, landed in the Pacific Ocean.

I heard an entire hour of the Sunday shows about the rise of proliferation and the failure of sanctions without remarking on this. The North Koreans claimed this was a satellite launch, and yet nothing went into orbit. Given that North Korean society is built on juche, or self-reliance, it seems that more sanctions making them MORE self-reliant, none of which have worked to this point (they are already internationally isolated), are less crucial than loudly noting in the international media that they failed. The US response has been that the launch itself is a violation of international law, but doesn't their consistent failure to pull off a launch merit at least some notice?

Obama's speech, by the way, while including a condemnation at North Korea, concerned his vision of a nuclear-free world, which is absolutely commendable, and a first among US Presidents, to my knowledge.

Shifting on an eight-day European trip from the economic crisis to the war in Afghanistan and now nuclear capabilities, Obama said his goal of "a world without nuclear weapons" won't be reached soon, "perhaps not in my lifetime."

But he said the United States, with one of the world's largest arsenals and the only nation to have used an atomic bomb, has a "moral responsibility" to start taking steps now.

It is not only a lofty goal. Gary Samore, Obama's arms control coordinator, said the plan has a strategic aim: to give the U.S. extra leverage in opposing the pursuit of nuclear arms in adversarial countries such as North Korea and Iran. "We are trying to seek the moral high ground," Samore said.

Devoting an entire speech to the longtime "no nukes" cause of the political left is more popular in Europe than in the United States. Obama signaled he would not allow America to become more vulnerable, saying that surrendering nuclear weapons must be a global all-for-one, or not-at-all, endeavor.

In this respect, he conditioned the deployment of missile defense in the Czech Republic to the threat from Iran. Calling the system "cost-effective and proven" is a real stretch - there is no conclusive evidence that hitting a bullet with a bullet works, and it's sad to see Obama going down that road, even in service to the noble goal of a nuclear-free world.

Overall, I give Obama a mixed review on all this, so far.