A dismal legacy revived: Hillary Clinton lets the “Dear Leader “off the hook

When Hillary Clinton went before the Senate Foreign Committee for hearings on her nomination for Secretary of State, a few senators raised the issue of her husband’s role as operator of the Clinton Foundation.

This outfit receives large contributions from foreign governments like Saudi Arabia.  The obvious concern was over the potential for at least the appearance of a conflict of interest when the Secretary of State deals with governments that are forking over money to the fiefdom of the Secretary of State’s husband.

A few weeks into Ms. Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, her husband’s interests may already be influencing her diplomacy, though not in the way some of us feared.  Rather, it is Ms. Clinton’s desire to defend former President Clinton’s policy towards North Korea that suddenly seems problematic.

Secretary Clinton sprang to the defense of the 1994 Agreed Framework, negotiated with North Korea by her husband (with Jimmy Carter’s help) in the hope of preventing the regime of Kim Jong Il from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Ms. Clinton asserted that the Bush administration’s decision to “tear up” her husband’s deal helped create the current crisis with North Korea. There are only two problems with Clinton’s claim: it isn’t accurate and it weakens our diplomatic position.

The Agreed Framework was negotiated in response to concerns that North Korea was on the path to developing nuclear weapons.  North Korea agreed that its graphite-moderated nuclear power plants, easily capable of producing weapons grade plutonium, would be replaced with light water reactor power plants, which the “the international community” would provide.

North Korea also promised to remain a party to the nuclear non-proliferation agreement, while the U.S. agreed to provide additional financial support.

The stated premise of the Agreed Framework was that light-water reactors cannot produce weapons-grade plutonium.  However, as Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute has pointed out, there is no such thing as “safe” plutonium; Nagasaki was incinerated by an atomic bomb from similarly “safe” plutonium.

Moreover, there were suspicions that the North Koreans had extracted enough plutonium from their reactors to build one or two nuclear weapons.

The Clinton administration probably understood all of this.  In fact, The Washington Post has reported that, far from relying on “safe” plutonium, President Clinton was actually betting that the North Korean government would collapse before the nuclear power plant project was completed.   

That turned out to be a bad bet.  Kim Jong Il’s regime survived and, as Bill Clinton’s second term expired, it raced to build an uranium-based weapons program, in clear violation of North Korea’s various non-proliferation commitments.

The Clinton administration chose to ignore the evidence of North Korean cheating.  However, early in the Bush administration, a U.S. delegation confronted North Korea with that evidence.  According to the U.S. delegation, the North Koreans admitted they had been enriching uranium.

The North Koreans say they made no such admission, and that they denied any intention to produce nuclear weapons using enriched uranium, while insisting on their right to do so.

This represents a “non-denial denial” of uranium enrichment.  In any event, the evidence that North Korea enriched uranium in violation of its obligations is overwhelming.  It comes not just from our own agents, but also the likes of “Islamic Bomb” pioneer A.Q. Khan.

Secretary Clinton now says “there is a debate within the intelligence community as to exactly the extent of the highly-enriched uranium program.”  But President Bush could hardly ignore clear measures by the North Koreans in furtherance of developing nuclear weapons until our intelligence community reached consensus on “exactly” how much progress the cheating regime had made.

In short, the Agreed Framework collapsed because, not surprisingly, the North Koreans violated their treaty commitments.

In pretending otherwise, Hillary Clinton does more than butcher history, she injures our position going forward by letting North Korea off the hook for its past treaty violations.  Clinton argues that North Korea developed nuclear weapons because, in her words, “all bets were off” once the Bush administration “tore up” the Agreed Framework.  If this is so, how can we object?

Clinton may believe that by confessing the Bush administration’s “error,” the U.S. can win back the trust of Kim Jong Il.   But this makes no sense even on its own absurd terms.  What guarantee does the Dear Leader have that in less than four years, another “rogue” American administration won’t “tear up” whatever agreement the current “good cop” administration makes?

Unfortunately, Clinton’s craven approach to North Korea fits seamlessly into the fabric of President Obama’s foreign policy.  For example, Obama saw fit during an interview with the al Arabiya television network, to express misguided criticism of America’s policies toward Muslim counties.  It seems the dictator of North Korea is not the only foreigner we have wronged.

Iranian president Ahmadinejad, promptly announced that he would be willing to consider an improvement in relations with the U.S. if Obama will apologize for America's many offenses against Iran.

As my blog partner John Hinderaker wrote, “this demand is quite reasonable: How can Obama refuse after his own public condemnation of his country's past policies?”

Bashar Assad, the leader of Syria, also construes Obama’s apologetic message as an invitation to drive a hard bargain.  Syria's ambassador to Washington describes new overtures towards Damascus as being "of extreme importance and depth," but has emphasized that Syria is still waiting to see if they will be matched by substantive change in "the manner of dialogue between us and America."

Assad himself adds that we “are still in the period of gestures and signals; there is nothing real yet.”  Thus has the new administration enabled this vicious tyrant to insist, in effect, that the U.S. “show him the money,” just as Kim Jong Il successfully demanded of President Clinton in 1994.

It may be unfair, then, to blame Secretary Clinton’s supine approach to the Dear Leader on fealty to her spouse.  Thoroughly ingrained Democratic habits -- blaming America first, appeasing our enemies, and demonizing George W. Bush – may constitute explanation enough.

Sunday Reflection contributor Paul Mirengoff is a lawyer in Washington, D.C., and a principal author of Powerlineblog.com.