A textbook lesson in the folly of nuclear party-cake

In the course of a New York Post column on how the North Korean test ties into last year's "deal" with Iran, John Podhoretz runs through the basic timeline by which NorKor got its arsenal:

 North Korea spent nearly two decades conning other countries into providing free stuff and strengthening its strategic hand in exchange for restraining its nuclear ambitions. To show just how audacious its efforts were, the first country it conned was the Soviet Union, its fellow Stalinist anti-paradise.

This was in 1985. The Soviets, worried about the North Korean leader’s nutjob grandfather getting his hands on nukes, agreed to build two graphite reactors if North Korea signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty. Grandpa did — and screwed the Soviets by preventing nuclear inspectors from entering the country.

In 1991, Grandpa gets another of his wishes granted when the first Bush administration pulls America’s short-range nuclear weapons off the Korean peninsula in exchange for agreeing to “denuclearization” efforts.

That worked well: Three years later, North Korea pulls out of the non-proliferation treaty and the world learns it had built a working reactor at Yongbyon for the purpose of enriching uranium to make it bomb-grade.

The Clinton administration goes into negotiation mode and comes up with the “Agreed Framework.” It was a payoff, plain and simple. Two light nuclear reactors to replace the Soviet-era graphite reactors. And food and fuel in a package deal worth something like $4 billion (almost $7 billion in today’s money).

Problem solved! Except in 1998 North Korea fires and detonates a giant missile over Japan. Outraged, the United States swings into action. Let nuclear inspectors into the country, the Clinton administration raged. Then it sent more food aid, about $500 million worth.

“I feel very good about what we’ve done,” said Clinton as he left office. Then, in 2002, the North Koreans officially went nuclear. In 2003, they were harvesting weapons-grade plutonium. 

Then — in the wake of the Iraq war, when nuclear nations briefly were frightened by the prospect of getting attacked by the United States — they said they had stopped. Then they said they would start again in 2008, so the Bush administration actually took North Korea off the list of terrorist nations to appease them and get them to the negotiating table. Talks collapsed immediately, and the following year North Korea did a second nuclear test.

In 2012, Kim Jong-un’s father dies, and he takes office. The first thing he does is agree to suspend the nuclear program in exchange for — you guessed it — food aid from the United States. The person who announced the deal was Hillary Clinton. “It is our hope that the new leadership will choose to guide their nation onto the path of peace by living up to its obligations,” she said.

Bzzzt! Sorry, Hillary! In the years since, our intelligence agencies say North Korea now has a small nuclear device that can be loaded onto a missile. And it now claims to have achieved fusion — an order of danger higher than its previous bomb strength. And it has tested various missiles, including ones that could reach the United States.

Last night, I was watching some footage of the succession of presidents - Billy Jeff the Zipper, W, and the Most Equal Comrade - pronouncing what it was that would be required for North Korea to join the "community of nations." Any one of those guys should have been able to see that the Kim dynasty has never given a flying diddly about joining the "community of nations."

So stop hanging it out there like some shiny object that any nation-state is obviously going to desire. Some don't, and using it as an enticement is no way to prevent the world from falling into mortal danger.