by CKR
Kevin Drum ponders the lack of commentary on the North Korean “deal” in the blogosphere. I’m not sure there’s really a vacuum there, but if there is, I suspect that it’s because we’re all suffering from news overdose. I know I am, and I also know that there’s a depressive reaction to disasters.
ZenPundit offers some provocative comment, and nadezhda replies in the comment section.
Arms Control Wonk provides the text of the statement and confirms my suspicion that it’s a lot like the much-Bush-administration-reviled 1994 Agreed Framework.
The MSM hailed the statement yesterday as though it were a done deal, but there’s a lot more negotiation before that happens. Still, it’s good to have some preliminary agreement.
There’s concern already (expressed by ZenPundit, for one) that North Korea is reneging on the statement. On the other side, last night’s News Hour brought forth some amazing statements from Chuck Jones, former director for Asian affairs on the Bush National Security Council. His line, of course, was that the Bush administration has been doing everything right all along. But then he added
There's never a 100 percent certainty in these cases, particularly in a society like North Korea where it's so opaque to the outside viewer. But I think it is fair to say that we have a fairly good concept of what we think the North Koreans have. It differs from what they actually show us by a great deal, and there will be a lot of questions asked. If they come up and say we have the uranium enrichment program, for example, I think that will be unsatisfactory. If they don't produce any nuclear weapons, again, unsatisfactory.So there may be some discrepancies but as long as that difference between what they say they have and what we think they have isn't too great, there'll be a certain level of certainty. But there's never going to be 100 percent certainty, no.
It’s not clear to what extent Jones is speaking the administration’s views, but what he seems to be saying is that if what the North Koreans show us doesn't line up exactly with the administration’s intelligence, the deal is off. Recall that these are the same people who didn’t believe the UN inspections in Iraq, which the invasion later showed to be much closer to the truth than the administration’s intelligence estimates.
There has been a fair bit of discussion as to whether a North Korean enrichment program exists at all; far more skepticism than was expressed on Iraq’s WMDs. And, as the small amount of evidence piles up, I have become more skeptical that North Korea has any working nuclear weapons at all. Note that modifier. They may have some plutonium spheres cobbled together with explosives, but would they work? And I’m not sure they even have that much. They seem to have enough plutonium for a dozen or so weapons, but what they have done with it is a deeper question.
I seem to be alone in this assessment, however.
Mark and nadezhda bring an interesting consideration into the discussion at ZenPundit: the US nuclear posture. She’s done a much longer analysis too. I don’t seriously disagree with what she says. I’d just like to add a pat on the back for the blogosphere and the WaPo.
Walter Pincus, an admitted reader of Arms Control Wonk, noted that the doctrine of preventive (yes, that’s the word) nuclear war being advanced is now being rethought. A number of us, Jeffrey leading the charge, have been discussing this doctrine and some of its implications over the past several months. Is it possible that this open discussion has had an impact on the policymakers? We’re unlikely ever to know, of course, particularly from this administration, but I suspect that it has.
And yeah, I’m not addressing Kevin’s questions, but I’m not sure they’re the most important ones.