January
17, 2003, 10:10 a.m. An
Ominous Drift
The
hour is late.
By NR Editors
he ominous
feeling of drift in American foreign policy at the moment is, we hope,
the product of two failed policies — inspections in Iraq and appeasement
of North Korea — coming to the end of the line, in one final whimper.
The time for President Bush to separate his administration from these
policies is rapidly approaching, especially in the case of Iraq. If he
doesn't, the consequences for America's standing in the world and for
his own presidency will be grave.
The case against
renewed inspections in Iraq was always strong. Indeed, Bush administration
officials have in the past made the case themselves. Inspections were
designed to verify that cooperative states were complying with international
standards — not to ferret out the truth from recalcitrant regimes.
As Vice President Cheney noted last fall, we have learned more about Iraqi
weapons programs from defectors than from inspections. David Kay, former
nuclear inspector for the United Nations, said that the only "inspections
regime" that would work in Iraq would be indistinguishable from an
occupation.
If the inspections
of the 1990s were dubious, the new round of them now is even more so.
For one thing, the Iraqi regime has had years to arm and to hide its weapons.
For another, the chief inspector today, Hans Blix, is a man who is unwilling
to report bluntly about Iraq's weapons offenses since that might prompt
the West to go to war — and indeed was chosen for his job by Baghdad's
patrons in the U.N. for that very reason. Blix is now acting as though
his chief imperatives were bureaucratic, and no revelation — the discovery
of undeclared chemical warheads Thursday being an example — seems likely
to jolt him from this mode. He wants more staff and he wants his mission
to extend further into the future, perhaps indefinitely.
The administration
knew that going to the U.N. and resuming inspections was a risky course,
one that could build international support for its campaign to overthrow
the Iraqi regime but could also bog it down. The latter possibility is
now coming to pass. None of our allies is going to commit to action when
we ourselves appear to hang back. Allowing Blix to continue his work beyond
the Jan. 27 report to the Security Council stipulated in Resolution 1441
would be an unacceptable concession to further delay and inaction.
The situation in
North Korea is still more alarming. The Bush administration says it is
willing to discuss aid and a non-aggression pact and that it does not
contemplate using military force. Thus is provocation rewarded, and invited.
Several points may
be adduced in Bush's defense. Foremost among them is that the troop build-up
in the Gulf continues, and the time now occupied with Blix's meanderings
may simply be necessary to complete it. The administration has also cut
off aid to North Korea, and is seeking to build international support
for sanctions on it. For every worrying rhetorical feint, there is a tougher
one — President Bush's complaint that he is "sick and tired"
of Iraqi deception being one of the latter. Finally, the administration
can reasonably plead that, especially in the case of North Korea, it has
no good options.
Removing our troops from the peninsula might force China and South Korea
to confront the regime, and the mere possibility of it may already have
improved relations between Seoul and Washington. But actually going through
with it, now, would be interpreted by everyone as a huge reward for Pyongyang.
Going to war with North Korea could involve massive casualties, and neither
the public nor our allies may have the stomach for simultaneous engagements
with two regimes. (Whether we have the military resources to fight Iraq
and North Korea at the same time is a different question. Everyone in
Washington seems to be worried about that except, oddly, for the Pentagon.)
It should not surprise
us that a happy course of action is hard to find. One of the marks of
bad policy, of the sort that Clinton bequeathed to Bush in North Korea,
is that it narrows our options to the unpalatable. But that is all the
more reason not to continue such policy. The goal of the U.S. on the Korean
peninsula should not be cutting another deal with Pyongyang, in which
support for the regime is exchanged for more empty promises, but ending
the totalitarian government there.
While the build-up
around Iraq continues and the administration — one hopes — formulates
a new North Korea policy, the administration can obviously be forgiven
for temporizing. It often has its place in international politics. It
also, needless to say, has its limits. President Bush famously said that
"time was not on our side," and thus implicitly was on the side
of the axis. We have reminded him often of those words, while also deferring
to some extent to his judgment. The hour is getting late.
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he ominous
feeling of drift in American foreign policy at the moment is, we hope,
the product of two failed policies — inspections in Iraq and appeasement
of North Korea — coming to the end of the line, in one final whimper.
The time for President Bush to separate his administration from these
policies is rapidly approaching, especially in the case of Iraq. If he
doesn't, the consequences for America's standing in the world and for
his own presidency will be grave.
