| |
Kim Jong-il out-Saddams
Saddam
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON
- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein must be green with
envy.
Not only has North Korean President Kim
Jong-il eclipsed him in the US mass media, but his
fellow evil-doer in the infamous "axis of evil" is also
defying the world's dominant power on a daily basis, and
getting away with it.
After all, dozens of
United Nations weapons inspectors are crawling all over
Iraq without the slightest hindrance, scouring the
country for evidence of biological, chemical and nuclear
weapons. Despite such cooperation, US President George W
Bush threatens war to "liberate" Baghdad virtually every
day.
How does this square with his kid-gloves
treatment of Pyongyang, which Washington believes
already has chemical, biological and as many as two
nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them as far
away as Japan and even Hawaii?
Kim expels the
remaining two UN inspectors from its territory, starts
firing up the Yongbyon nuclear plant that already houses
enough plutonium to produce half a dozen more atomic
weapons in two months, warns it may soon withdraw from
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and Bush responds
by insisting that Pyongyang need not fear military
action by the United States.
Not only that. Bush
is facing growing pressure both from his closest Asian
allies to go back on his pledge not to "negotiate" with
Pyongyang, as the North is demanding, until it
dismantles all of its nuclear programs. And there are
already indications that his administration is figuring
out possible forums in which such a dialogue could take
place.
But with respect to Iraq, Bush
contemptuously rejects similar pleas by Washington's
Arab allies for patience and engagement, and appears
bent - not to say obsessed - instead on pursuing a
military solution, unilaterally if necessary.
Indeed, Washington's Asian allies, particularly
South Korea where it has stationed thousands of troops
for a half-century, are defying Washington directly, as
both that country's outgoing and incoming presidents did
this past week by publicly denouncing Washington's
efforts to isolate Pyongyang.
By contrast, Saudi
Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, and other Muslim states around
Iraq grumble publicly about the direction Washington is
taking the region while assuring Bush privately that,
when push comes to shove, they will cooperate with US
war plans.
And while the Bush administration has
done everything it can - unsuccessfully - to link Saddam
Hussein with al-Qaeda and thus bolster its case that
whatever weapons of mass destruction he still has could
be transferred to terrorists for use against US targets,
it does not even mention the possibility that North
Korea may be a much stronger candidate for supplying
weapons of mass destruction to al-Qaeda.
After
all, North Korea, whose possession of such weapons and
past resort to terrorist methods are beyond dispute, has
a long history of close cooperation with Pakistan's
military establishment, which reportedly provided some
of its nuclear secrets in exchange for North Korean
missiles.
Moreover, some of the scientists and
military sponsors in Pakistan's nuclear program are
known to have backed the Taliban in Afghanistan and to
have pro-Qaeda views. So why should Saddam be singled
out for suspicion, as opposed to the Pyongyang-Pakistan
axis?
It all seems so unfair.
But if
Saddam Hussein may be green with envy about Kim Jong-il,
Bush himself - and the hawks in the Pentagon and Vice
President Dick Cheney's office - must be seeing red.
In the first place, Kim's defiance is showing
the limitations of US military strength at precisely the
moment when Washington has laid out explicitly its aims
at achieving global military hegemony.
While
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tried to assure
everyone early last week that Washington retains the
capacity to take on North Korea militarily despite the
massive buildup in US forces around Iraq, that notion
was pooh-poohed by even hardened hawks.
Others noted
that, with thousands of North Korean missiles poised
along the Demilitarized Zone and within 40 kilometers of
Seoul, military action is simply unthinkable, especially
without the support of South Korea itself.
But
even more infuriating has been the criticism that has
been leveled at the administration from the left, right
and center, as the crisis in Korea has developed over
the past month.
"Where's the Big Stick?" read
one big Washington Post headline recently, a
particularly wicked reference to the foreign-policy
advice of his hero, the late president Theodore
Roosevelt, who once said: "Speak softly and carry a big
stick."
The administration is not only being
accused of double standards in dealing with Iraq and
Korea - and the fact that the strategic implications of
a nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia that could include
Japan are likely to be far more serious than even a US
invasion of Iraq.
It is also having to suffer
charges that its low-key response to the situation so
far is vastly more wimpish than actions - including the
deployment of US troops to the region - taken by the
administration of president Bill Clinton during the last
great nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula eight years
ago.
Former Clinton officials, who advised the
incoming Bush team to maintain an engagement policy with
North Korea that had already brought Clinton's secretary
of state, Madeleine Albright, to visit Pyongyang, are
saying that Bush's seemingly gratuitous hostility to
North Korea is now having serious political
consequences. This hostility was evident during the
March 2001 visit by South Korean President Kim Dae-jung
to the White House and Bush's subsequent inclusion of
Pyongyang in his axis of evil.
"The political
reminder from this episode is the danger that can come
from tough talk," noted Leon Fuerth, former vice
president Al Gore's top national-security aide. "When
using words as weapons, a leader must be prepared to
back up his rhetoric with force." Bush's words, he went
on, "now look like a bluff that is being called".
But most harmful, perhaps, is the lesson to be
drawn from these two crises by countries that do not
wish to be cowed by Washington: if you are militarily
strong, preferably armed with nuclear weapons and the
missiles to deliver them, like Kim Jong-il, you are
safe. If you are militarily weak, like Saddam Hussein,
you are in trouble.
Or, as New York Times
columnist Paul Krugman put it on Friday: "The best
self-preservation strategy for Mr Kim is to be
dangerous."
(Inter Press Service)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
