U-Tubed, Part 2

[Part 1]

An honest appraisal of this new discovery means that those of us who are skeptical of AF 2.0 should grudgingly admit that it has produced at least one significant intelligence windfall, even if it was due to a North Korean oversight. Since that oversight will probably land a few people in front of firing squads, AF 2.0 proponents should at least draw the obvious conclusions to which this new intelligence leads. It seems difficult to deny that AF 2.0 draws near the end of its useful life, but Condi Rice can’t bring herself to let go:

QUESTION: Madam Secretary, I’m wondering if you can tell us what you think the significance is of the discovery of enriched uranium on the samples of the aluminum tubes from the North Koreans. Will this complicate the six-party process? And will it — does it raise any flags ahead of the declaration which they are supposed to present in about 10 minutes?

RICE: I’m not going to comment on specific reports or — certainly on intelligence matters. But we have been very clear that we expect a declaration from North Korea that is complete and that is accurate.

As you know, we have long been concerned about highly enriched uranium as an alternative route in North Korea. And so, we expect there to be a declaration that is complete and accurate.

I also want to note that there is a considerable diplomatic effort under way, not just by the United States but by other members of the six-party talks, to make certain that we can complete this second phase, both with the disablement, which I should underscore is going very well, and with the declaration.

I sincerely hope that it will be by the end of the year, but the key here is to get the process right. And we’re going to stay at this until we get it right. [Thanks to a friend for forwarding]

Reuters is also reporting, as I noted here, that AF 2.0 is in deep trouble.

The United States is still struggling to get North Korea to disclose its nuclear programs, a challenge in a society so tight-lipped that it would keep even clothing sizes secret, a U.S. official said on Thursday.

North Korea has promised to make a declaration by December 31 as part of a wider deal to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons in exchange for economic and diplomatic benefits from the United States and others.

The senior official told Reuters that reflexively secretive North Korea was reluctant to detail its nuclear proliferation activities — which it has steadfastly denied — as well as what it regards as military secrets in its declaration.

“They have real weapons and so they should tell us what the weapons program looks like,” said the official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the negotiations. [Reuters, Arshad Mohammed and Sue Pleming]

The article’s source then went on to offer this rather silly apology for North Korea’s refusal to abide by its agreements:

“That is where you get into military secrets and, in a country that would keep a sweater size secret, you can imagine the difficulty in revealing military secrets,” he added.

Lucky for us North Korea didn’t agree to disclose Kim Jong Nam‘s sweater size. Or Kim Jong Il’s condom size, for that matter.

As I guessed several months ago, North Korea’s “red line” in this process is revealing, disabling, or dismantling anything of real strategic value. Its goal for Agreed 2.0 is to gain as many concessions from the United States as possible without giving up anything of significance in return. It made significant progress in disabling Yongbyon, a facility that was already worn out, and whose much larger replacement lies half-built, stalled for the time being. Otherwise, it has disabled nothing of lasting importance to its nuclear program, has admitted nothing we didn’t already know, and has denied plenty that we apparently do know.

North Korea’s winnings have been impressive. It has escaped a tightening web of U.S. financial sanctions that virtually destroyed its palace economy in just a matter of months. It coopted the U.S. Federal Reserve into laundering its money. It effectively silenced the United States on its human rights atrocities, drug trafficking, and slave labor. It received a U.S. permission slip to sell arms in direct violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718 when that resolution wasn’t even half a year old, and generally swept 1718 into the great ash-heap where all U.N. resolutions go sooner or later. C-V-I-D? Forgotten. Finally, even if North Korea doesn’t succeed at getting itself removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terror, the Bush Administration’s willingness to pursue removal in exchange for little or no real verifiable progress on North Korea’s terrorism and terror sponsorship could give a future Democratic administration political cover to do what not even Bill Clinton dared to try.

An enduring feature of North Korean diplomacy is that its own concessions are eternally negotiable, while our concessions always lower the bar for the next negotiation. The stage is now set for North Korea to get everything it could possibly want from a Clinton or Obama administration, and no Republican who has supported the Bush Administration’s eleventh-hour folly will be in a strong position to criticize that.

The North Korea debate will now revert back to the specious false choice between appeasement and war. It will continue on those superficial terms because the State Department, spurred on by a South Korean client that has since been driven from office, persuaded the Bush Administration to abandon a highly effective strategy of economic pressure that nearly cost Kim Jong Il the ability to pay his army. Had that strategy ever been applied to the full extent of its potential, it might have secured North Korea’s disarmament on the only terms it will ever be verifiably secured — by breaking Kim Jong Il’s paranoid and secretive misrule for good.