Kerry/Edwards Foreign Policy = Disaster

Kerry Calls for Détente with Iran and North Korea
Wall Street Journal
9.14.04

Who says we aren\'t getting a foreign-policy debate this election season? In addition to Iraq, the Kerry-Edwards campaign has decided to make an issue of how to handle two other members of the original "axis of evil," Iran and North Korea. In a phrase, they are proposing to take us back to the future of arms control.

Some of us were hoping that that doctrine had died along with the Cold War, but Mr. Kerry is bidding to revive it as the centerpiece of his anti-nuclear proliferation policy. The idea--much loved during the "detente" with the Soviet Union during the 1970s--is that the way to make the U.S. secure is to persuade adversaries to sign treaties promising not to build more weapons, or in the present era not to become nuclear powers in the first place. We will then dispatch U.N. inspectors to verify compliance, and everyone can sleep better at night.

This past weekend, Mr. Kerry suggested that President Bush is to blame because North Korea unilaterally withdrew from its nuclear nonproliferation agreement with the U.S. in 2002, and is now believed to possess at least a couple of nuclear warheads. There\'s one slight problem with this argument: North Korea is the party that broke its promise.
Under the arms control agreement negotiated by the Clinton Administration--the so-called Agreed Framework of 1994--the U.S. attempted to buy off Pyongyang with fuel oil and two light water reactors in exchange for North Korea giving up its nuclear program. But as soon as the North deemed it convenient, it repudiated that pact, booted U.N. inspectors out of the country, and turned off the TV cameras monitoring its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon. It then began demanding even a larger payoff in return for giving up the nuclear program it had earlier vowed it didn\'t have.

Having been burned once, the Bush Administration has since been trying (in concert with our Asian allies) to negotiate a new nonproliferation regime that is more credible than one more North Korean promise. But Mr. Kerry seems to be worried that the White House has been driving too hard a bargain: He wants the U.S. to agree to sit down, one-on-one with the North (so much for multilateralism), and hash out another Agreed Framework. No wonder Pyongyang is avoiding any serious negotiations until after it sees who wins in November.

The same arms-control mentality also marks the Kerry strategy toward Iran. Mr. Edwards recently said that a Kerry Administration would allow Tehran to fire up its Russian-built nuclear reactors, and even provide them with fuel, so long as the mullahs agreed to let the international community repossess the weapons-usable byproducts.

This too is the triumph of hope over experience. Just yesterday the member countries of the International Atomic Energy Agency were meeting in Geneva to discuss the next steps in response to nearly 20 years of Iranian deception. Two years ago an Iranian resistance group alerted the world to Iran\'s previously undeclared nuclear sites, and subsequent inspections have provoked a familiar pattern of bluster and lies that practically screams "bomb program."

Yeah lets revive the cold war, but instead of the Russians - let the fundamentalist theocracy in Iran have nukes!  This has to be Jimmy Carter in disguise...