Our Very Best Human Scum

Meanwhile, John Bolton needs no such transplants. When asked recently about how he would end the North Korean nuclear crisis, he held up a copy of “The End of North Korea.” You can hate Bolton’s directness, and you can even say that he’s out of his environment in Foggy Bottom (insert fogginess vs. clarity metaphor here). Bolton sees the North Korean situation for what it is and says so. His recent description of North Korea as “hell on earth” caused a case of apoplexy in Pyongyang. They denounced him as “human scum.” In Seoul, the main diplomatic push has nothing to do with getting North Korea to let inspectors see its gas chambers, concentration camps, mass graves, or nukes. It’s all about letting North Korea save face by clinging to its mendacity about its uranium program. Thus, after fifty years of America protecting the security of South Korea, the safety of post-9/11 America falls one notch below saving Kim Jong-Il’s gargantuan, puffy face in the list of Seoul’s priorities.

The question on our minds–those of us who care about the North Korean people–is, “Will Bush cave?” It’s an election year, and the last thing a sitting president needs is another crisis. But if Bush does cave in exchange for vague promises of freezes and eventual dismantling, he will do more than duck the greatest moral challenge of this decade. It will undermine his advantage of decisiveness and clarity over his Democratic rivals. Thus, those of us hoping for encouragement find it in the fact that Bolton is doing the talking as of late, not James Kelley or Richard Armitage. Of course, it takes a naive mind not to suspect that this is all coordinated and calibrated from the White House. Still, understanding that this is diplomatic SOP, we are encouraged to hear Bolton firmly refuse to let North Korea weasel out of admitting that it had a uranium enrichment program, or even to suggest that if North Korea doesn’t abandon this silly claim, that we might abandon the whole diplomatic charade. How, after all, can we ever put any stock in North Korean assurances, given recent history? Other than stalling us through the election, the only purpose for such a dubious dialogue with such an odious foe is the mistaken assumption that South Korea’s patience to appease the North is exhaustable.

Is it too early to hope that America will finally seek to isolate, subvert, and bring down this evil regime? It means that the threat of force–an essential ingredient in this case–has entered our diplomacy. Moral clarity is still too much to hope for.