Under Bush, Situation With North Korea Has Gotten Worse
During his press conference today, President Bush again defended his failed foreign policies. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean issued the following statement on the need for a new direction and a foreign policy that is both tough and smart:
"The stakes are too high to have a permanent commitment to a failed strategy in Iraq. That's why we need a new direction in our foreign policy that will keep America safe here at home and around the world. President Bush continues to stubbornly ignore the fact that his foreign polices have been a failure and the Iraq War has actually hindered our efforts in fighting the war on terror.
"North Korea has increased its nuclear capabilities by 400 percent and tested a nuclear weapon because the Bush Administration took its eye off the ball. Iran has also become an even greater threat. And still, the President refuses to listen to the advice of his own Party's leaders like Senator John Warner and Secretary Baker, who have spoken out on the need for a new direction in Iraq and acknowledged that we sometimes must talk with our adversaries. Stubbornness is not a foreign policy. Democrats believe we need a new direction that acknowledges the facts on the ground and makes fighting and winning the war on terror the top priority."
See below for a new document from DNC Research:
North Korea's Weapons Capabilities Have Grown Under Bush
Timeline: Under Bush, Situation With North Korea Worsened
2001: Bush Contradicted Powell on North Korea, Said No Plans for Negotiation With North Korea. During a meeting with the president of South Korea, Bush expressed a hard line approach to North Korea that contradicted Secretary of State Colin Powell's earlier statements. One day before Bush met with the President of South Korean, Powell said that the Bush administration planned "to pick up where President Clinton left off." [USA Today, 3/8/01]
2001: North Korea Pursuing Nuclear Arms Program Aggressively Since 9/11. Since 9/11, North Korea has accelerated their nuclear efforts. A report by the National Security Advisory Group issued in July of 2005 states that "North Korea's runaway nuclear program could be a direct path to nuclear terror...North Korea sells missiles and other dangerous technology worldwide, with no apparent limits or compunction...[the country's] leaders and elite engage in smuggling, counterfeiting, and other illicit activities. These same people might traffic in nuclear materials the way A.Q. Khan trafficked in Pakistan's nuclear technology." [Worst Weapons in Worst Hands, The National Security Advisory Group, July 2005]
2002-2003: Under Bush's Watch, North Korea Withdrew from the Non Proliferation Treaty. Between December 2002 and January 2003, North Korea ejected IAEA inspectors and announced its withdrawal from the Non Proliferation Treaty. [Arms Control Today, July/August 2006]
2003: CIA Informed Foreign Officials North Korea Had Small-Nuke Technology. The CIA informed South Korean and Japanese officials that North Korea began testing conventional primary explosives associated with advanced nuclear warheads. Smaller nuclear warheads, which the CIA suspected North Korea possessed, could increase the deliverable range of North Korean missiles and places U.S. forces in Japan (roughly 60,000) and South Korea (roughly 35,000) well within range. The CIA also found that the North Koreans had a conventional weapons test site that was capable of testing nuclear weapons. [New York Times, 7/1/03]
2003: Bipartisan Senators Criticized Bush Administration Policy on North Korea as Inadequate. During testimony by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, the two ranking members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Ranking Member Joseph Biden (D-DE), criticized the Bush administration's policy on North Korea as inadequate. Calling the Bush administration's North Korea policy "largely reactive and predictable," Biden ordered the administration to regain the initiative on discussions. Lugar said that Bush should show "immediate U.S. leadership" by increasing dialogue and selecting a senior coordinator for the policy. [Washington Post, 2/5/03]
2003: North Korea Claimed They Could Produce Half-Dozen Nuclear Bombs. North Korean officials said that they had finished producing enough plutonium to make a half-dozen nuclear bombs and that they would move ahead quickly to turn the material into weapons. [New York Times, 7/15/03]
2005: North Korea Has Quadrupled Nuclear Arsenal Since 2001; Experts Say Bush Administration Has Limited US Options. A report by the National Security Advisory Group states that under the Bush Administration, the North Koreans went from having no plutonium production to four to six nuclear weapons worth of plutonium. The report states that the "The U.S. is in a far worse position to stop North Korea diplomatically than it was on 9/11 [because]: The plutonium at Yongbyon is out - and the North Koreans say they are making bombs with it; more plutonium is in the making at the Yongbyon reactor; an unchecked uranium enrichment program has had four years to grow; North Korea is boasting of becoming a nuclear power; and except for Japan, the parties the Bush Administration brought together to deal with North Korea are all criticizing the U.S. rather than following its leadership." [National Security Advisory Group, 7/05]
2006: North Korea Tests Numerous Missiles, Including Long Range Missile. "The [long range] Taepodong-2 was the third of at least six missiles launched beginning at 2:33 p.m. EDT and ending four hours later. They included two short-range Scud missiles and three medium-range Nodongs, another type of Scud, Hadley said. It was the first time in recent memory that North Korea had launched so many missiles at once." [Washington Post, 7/5/06]
2006: North Korea Conducts Nuclear Test, Successfully Defying United States. "The North Korean test appears to have been a nuclear detonation but was fairly small by traditional standards, and possibly a failure or a partial success, federal and private analysts said." Experts believe that North Korea had successfully defied American, Chinese and Japanese warnings about building weapons and testing them, and that the Bush Administration is now "simply trying to manage the aftermath." [New York Times, 10/10/06]
Experts Blame Bush Administration For North Korean Crisis
President of Council on Foreign Relations: Iraq War "Absorbed A Tremendous Amount of U.S. Military Capacity," "Weakened Our Position" on North Korea. Richard N. Haass, president of the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations and head of policy planning at the State Department during the outbreak of the Iraq war in 2003, said the impact of the Iraq war on U.S. foreign policy at this point was "clearly negative." The war, he said, "has absorbed a tremendous amount of U.S. military capacity...it has therefore weakened our position against both North Korea and Iran." [Council on Foreign Relations Interview, 3/14/06]
Nunn: We Have to Deal With Results of Bush Administration's Failed Strategy. "'What it tells you is that we started at the wrong end of the axis of evil,' former Senator Sam Nunn, the Georgia Democrat who has spent his post-Congressional career trying to halt a new age of proliferation, said in an interview. 'We started with the least dangerous of the countries, Iraq, and we knew it at the time. And now we have to deal with that.'" [Washington Post, 10/10/06]
Experts Say Bush Administration Strategy Has Claimed Credit For Diplomatic Process But Failed to Take Any Responsibility for a Lack of Results. A report by the National Security Advisory Group issued in July of 2005 states that "Since 9/11, in the face of North Korea's runaway nuclear program, U.S. policymakers: did nothing as North Korea crossed redline after redline; claimed credit for diplomatic process (the Six-Party Talks) but have taken no responsibility for total lack of results; attempted to outsource the issue to China and then blame the failure on China; [and] tried to blame the Clinton administration, the administration that actually stopped plutonium production in North Korea." The report continues by saying that during the Clinton Administration, North Korea had no plutonium, but during the Bush Administration, North Korea has at least four to six nuclear weapons worth of plutonium. [Worst Weapons in Worst Hands, The National Security Advisory Group, July 2005]
Failures of Bush Diplomacy Have Led to the Current Impasse. "The Bush administration has tried to ignore North Korea, then, reluctantly, to engage it, and then to squeeze its bankers in a manner intended to make the country's leader, Kim Jong Il, personally feel the pinch. Yet none of these steps in the past six years has worked. So now, after a barrage of missile launchings by North Korea, President Bush and his national security advisers found themselves on Wednesday facing what one close aide described as an array of 'familiar bad choices.'" [New York Times, 7/6/06]
While Other Presidents Had Difficulties with North Korea, Bush's Policies Have Made the Problem Worse. "Dealing with North Korea has frustrated every president since Truman. But it has proved particularly vexing for Mr. Bush because his administration has engaged in a six-year internal argument about whether to negotiate with the country or try to plot its collapse -- it has sought to do both, simultaneously -- and because America's partners in dealing with North Korea each have differing interests in North Korea's future." [New York Times, 6/6/06]
