"It is rewarding bad behavior of the North Koreans by promising fuel oil," said former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John R. Bolton, who emerged as an outspoken critic of the nuclear accord.
"It's a bad signal to North Korea and it's a bad signal to Iran," Mr. Bolton said in an interview, noting that the message to would-be arms proliferators around the world is that "if you hold out long enough and wear down the State Department negotiators, eventually you get rewarded."
Also, giving up financial leverage on North Korea after further talks by agreeing to lift banking sanctions is a "huge" mistake, Mr. Bolton said. "That leverage is what brought them to the table. ... The Chinese were paying them to come to the talks. Now we're paying them."
I am sympathic to this view. I want to squeeze North Korea until they collapse. It isn't clear to me that this deal either undermines this goal or supports it. Many details are yet to be revealed or even negotiated. This deal might not lessen the squeeze enough to really matter. Even if North Korea continues to crumble at a slower rate than before, they might still be crumbling.
As for the signal, I have to disagree on two points.
One, saying this sends a bad signal to Iran assumes that Iran could be persuaded to halt their drive for nuclear weapons. I don't think that Iran under the current mullah regime can be persuaded by any diplomatic approach to voluntarily halt their nuclear weapons programs.
Second, arguing we are sending a bad signal to Iran assumes that Iran is the intended target of this message.
What if the Europeans are the intended target of this message?
So what if the North Korean deal is nothing that saves North Korea in the long run, but provides us with a great example that we really will cut a deal--even an imperfect one--and are not determined to go to war with a member of the Axis of Evil? What if this deal lets us paint Iran's refusal to deal --even as we've shown we will deal with another member of the Axis of Evil--as evidence the mullahs are determined to go nuclear and unwilling to negotiate with us?
What if the North Korean deal helps us rally support for forceful action against Iran?
Even if this is a bad deal when examined in isolation, we might be starting down this path in order to advance a more important goal--halting Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And with North Korea being so weak after years of squeezing them, maybe they will collapse despite this agreement.
Or we could be pulling a Carter/Albright fiasco. That, too, is possible. Remember, the Clinton administration assumed that North Korea would collapse before they could get nuclear weapons under what they knew was an imperfect agreement. Even though North Korea is far weaker today than in 1994, we could be assuming too much if we think an imperfect agreement won't matter because Pyongyang is collapsing anyway. I just don't know.
I guess I'll wait before I judge this a mistake or not. My gut feeling says it is a mistake, but I don't want to be afraid to take yes for an answer if this is indeed a yes. Nor do I assume that this should be judged in isolation from the broader Long War. The President has defended it. Is he right? We shall see.
