Giving Bush credit where it's due

What we have now is a concrete plan, on the principle "we take step 1, you take step 2, we take step 3 …" and so on. Each "step" is a real measure, not a mere promise - for example, delivery of desperately needed fuel oil to the DPRK; provision of full access to all DPRK nuclear facilities.

Already we have reached the stage where the North Koreans have shut down their Yongbyon nuclear reactor in the presence of foreign observers. Never before has such progress been achieved. Steps now in train involve decommissioning the reactor, disarming the DPRK’s remaining nuclear weapons and accounting for weapons-grade material. Frozen DPRK assets are being progressively unfrozen, normal diplomatic and trade relations will be established and continuing economic aid provided to help feed the population and modernise the economy.

We now hear that North and South Korea are to hold talks aimed at reaching a final peace agreement for the peninsula: it may surprise some to learn that legally the Korean War is still going on, held in abeyance only by an armistice or ceasefire agreement reached when the fighting stopped. Clearing up this ancient Cold War legacy is an essential requirement for normalising conditions on the peninsula; we now have at least a reasonable prospect that this can be achieved.

It’s noteworthy that Kim clearly accepts the need for economic modernisation. Without it the DPRK still has no long-term future; sustained economic failure is a certain route to failed-state status. So we now have the prospect of a de-nuclearised DPRK, with normalised international relations and engaged in modernising its economy. This will be a huge challenge for a regime like Kim’s, but nevertheless if you had told me as recently as a year ago that this outcome was obtainable via neocon methods, I would have disagreed.

There remain just two other points to make. First, note that while the neocons appear to have got the DPRK problem right, the example of Iraq shows that a strategy that works in one case can be disastrously unsuitable in another; unfortunately, the neocons know only one way to solve problems. (How very embarrassing it would have been, though, had Saddam done a Kim Jong-il and thrown Iraq wide open to inspectors who, as we now know, would have found no weapons of mass destruction?  If ever a man sealed his own doom, it was Saddam.)

The final point is this: I alluded to suspicions that the DPRK is covertly seeking to transfer nuclear technology to Syria, perhaps to maintain a program in that country and share the results. These are only suspicions and not to be taken as fact. But should Pyongyang "cheat" on this agreement, or suddenly revert to its previous pattern of behaviour without any obvious provocation - such as a failure of the US to take a programmed "step" - then the backlash would be catastrophic for the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea and for Kim Jong-il himself. Really the only way now is forward; going back means nothing but disaster. Let us hope all parties - including Bush’s administration while it lasts - keep this in mind.