More positive signs for NK Nuke deal

Is the North Korean Nuclear Disarmament deal a positive step towards world peace and rational US foreign policy?

Your CaliBlogger is pleased to provide you with the best evidence that it is: the neo-cons hate it.

The White House yesterday found itself fending off a conservative revolt over the North Korea nuclear deal, even scrambling to mollify one of its own top officials who expressed sharp disagreement with a provision that could spring Pyongyang from the list of countries that sponsor terrorism, U.S. officials said yesterday.

Surely anything reviled by the folks who gamed us into the disaster in Iraq, and are so urgently trying to do the same with Iran can't be all bad.

But what I find particularly revealing is the nature of their criticism.

John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called the agreement -- in which North Korea would freeze its main nuclear facility in exchange for an initial supply of fuel oil -- "a bad deal" that violated principles that were closely held in the beginning of the Bush administration. [Emphasis mine-CK]

Of course I might argue that the agreement is likely a good deal BECAUSE it violates the same Bush admin principles which entangled us in Iraq and are propelling us into violent confrontation with Iran. Like I said, if John (the Walrus) Bolten hates it, it can't be all bad.

And the National Review, a conservative bastion, yesterday slammed the agreement as essentially the same one negotiated by President Bill Clinton in 1994 -- a charge the Bush administration rejects. [Emphasis mine-CK]

I, of course, would point out that those agreements were working reasonably well until BushCorp™ adopted its "closely held" principles of confrontation and swagger in 2001.

Current and former Bush officials said they fear that after six years they are losing control of foreign policy to more pragmatic forces. The shift, they said, has become especially apparent with the departure of Donald H. Rumsfeld, who as defense secretary was often seen as a counterweight to State.

More specifically, conservatives said, they worry that the administration's willingness to bend on North Korea does not bode well for hard-line policies toward Iran, the Palestinians or other issues. Indeed, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov yesterday called on the United States to demonstrate "the same flexibility, a sensible flexibility" toward Iran's nuclear program. [Emphasis mine-CK]

The neo-cons fear they are losing control of BushCorp™ foreign policy?

Let us pray that the assesment of their own decline is better than any of the predictions they've made about US foreign policy.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the neo-cons were indeed in their last throes?

North Korea to nix nukes

Good international news? During the Bush administration? Wow.

And even though I fully expect any number of setbacks alongthe way I'm having trouble seeing todays news about today's nuclear disarmament agreement with Noth Korea as anything but a good thing.

BEIJING, Feb. 13 -- In a landmark international accord, North Korea promised Tuesday to close down and seal its main nuclear reactor within 60 days in return for 50,000 tons of fuel oil as a first step in abandoning all nuclear weapons and research programs.

North Korea also reaffirmed a commitment to disable the reactor in an undefined next phase of denuclearization and to discuss with the United States and other nations its plutonium fuel reserves and other nuclear programs that "would be abandoned" as part of the process. In return for taking those further steps, the accord said, North Korea would receive additional "economic, energy and humanitarian assistance up to the equivalent of 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil."

The pledges -- in an agreement reached here by North and South Korea, China, Russia, Japan and the United States -- marked North Korea's first concrete commitment to carry out an agreement in principle, dating from September 2005, to relinquish its entire nuclear program. In the view of U.S. and allied diplomats, they also amounted to a down-payment on establishment of a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and a new set of relations among the countries of Northeast Asia.

And while a nuke-free Korea is a good thing in itself, what strikes me as more important is how this agreement was acheived: diplomacy.

North Korea is the only member of the "axis-of-evil" with whom the US has conducted actual negotiations.

North Korea is also the only member of the dread "axis" with whom war, or really any US military intervention was unlikely. In fact the US has actually REDUCED its troop strength along the de-militarized zone on the North/South Korean border.

And I suspect military action was never seriously contemplated, even by Darth Cheney. Not with our rich uncle China (the one who's loaned us all those billions of dollars) just across the border from Pyonyang.

And North Korea is the only one we've had any real success. Co-incidence?

I don't think so.

The real question is whether BushCorp™ is capable of learning from its only success in the last 6 years.

Nukes, navies and national pride

The recent adoption by the UN of sanctions against Iran for pursuing its nuclear ambitions (whatever those are) got me thinking about the whys of nuclear power.

I suppose that I should stipulate that, not withstanding its protestations to the contrary, it seems to me that Iran would very much like to have nuclear weapons.

They live, after all, in a very dangerous neighborhood, with Israel's nukes the worst kept secret in the region.

But other reasons exist for Iran's desires to pursue nuclear capabilities, chief among them, and the reason Iran's leaders continue to have popular support on the issue, is simple national pride.

Modern day nukes are, in several ways, the equivalent of 17th-20th century navies.

The development of naval power was both a cause for the development of nation states like England, France and Spain, as well as an instrument for their further expansion.

Why? Because navies cost a lot of money. And since ancient Athens, were affordable by only those conglomerations of individuals we call states.

By the 17th century, using England as an example, a navy sufficient to protect its growing commercial interests could not be funded by royal revenues alone, but required national taxes granted by parliament.

And so it went, the need to protect commerce required bigger navies. The bigger navies encouraged the further development of commerce, both because the seas were safer and because the taxes required to pay for the navy needed more commerce.

And so on.

But regardless of strict economics, a nation's navy became the source of its national pride:

Rule Britannia!
Britannia rule the waves.
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.

Britain's empire was a direct result of the dominance of its navy, the destruction of which, in WWs I and II, a major reason for the dissolution of that empire.

And while navies continue to provide a major way for a nation to extend its power, the real action in the 21st is, and apparently will continue to be, nuclear weapons.

If it has nuclear capabilities (e.g. Israel, North Korea), even the smallest nation can become a significant world actor. Even if it does nothing with them, just possessing nuclear weapons makes the rest of the world, even a superpower, take notice.

And Iran, through its long history, oil reserves (and the west's continued need for that oil) is already far from a minor player.

Since the overthrow of the Shah, a US puppet, and the fall of the Soviet Empire, Iran has increasingly taken on the role of the US' great enemy, fighting proxy wars of sorts in Israel/Lebanon/Palestine, and now in Iraq.

The Ayatollahs have, of course, always seen it that way.

But only recently, through the ongoing series of foreign policy failures that characterize BushCorp™, has the US needed to see it so as well.

No wonder then that Iran will not give up its nuclear ambitions.

Would Queen Victoria have given up her navy?

[Naval history courtesy of Love to Know]