U.S. Mistakes with North Korea Provide Lessons for Dealing with Iran, by Jiri Valenta

            Fool us twice? Shame on us.

Secretary of State John Kerry has just followed the Ayatollah´s Pied Piper, Hassan Rohani, into Iranian quicksand.     As with Nixon during Watergate, all the domestic scandals and incompetence surrounding this administration have inevitably been echoed in our foreign policy, and we are in trouble.

                Doesn´t Mr. Kerry realizes that some of his predecessors, first Democrats, then Republicans,     engaged in similar kinds of negotiations with duplicitous North Korea?  Is ne not replicating what they did in Iran with similar good faith and gullibility?  Here´s the record;   Jimmy Carter was sent as Clinton´s envoy to North Korea in 1994 to execute an “Agreed Framework.”  It specified that America would provide oil and food and build two light water reactors for North Korea, in return for Pyongyang ending plutonium production, halting its nuclear program and returning spent fuel rods.  However, during the negotiations, Carter dropped two key demands that U.N., on-site inspections resume. 

                President Bill Clinton asked Kim Jong II to resume inspections.  Despite Kim´s refusal, the U.S. sent North Korea 600,000 tons of grain.  In October 2000, Clinton´s Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, conducted further negotiations with Pyongyang with tremendous fanfare.  She not only quaffed 12 hours of their lies and deceptions along with the wine and delicacies, but she literally danced a jig before Kim´s guards.  What did she achieve?  The North Koreans again permitted the U.N. inspections dropped by Carter, but the agreement was not verifiable.   The agreement to turn over spent fuel rods was dropped.  As a result, the North Koreans reprocessed and used them.

Albright deserves great credit for her dealings with the former Yugoslav crisis. I know a lot about Albright as her father, leading scholar Joseph Korbel, was my friend, mentor and employer for a year.  She convinced President Clinton that war was the only recourse to prevent even larger killing fields in Yugoslavia.  She had lived there with Korbel, and knew about European communism.  Sadly, she knew the Far East far less.  The only truth the North Koreans appear to have told her was that their country was in dire straits.   Nothing was going to keep them from attaining the sacred treasure of which they are now so proud.  She would do a great service to the cause of nuclear non-proliferation by frankly assessing the present negotiations with Iran comparative to her prior ones with North Korea.

  What were the mistakes and how can John Kerry avoid them in the future?

Condoleezza Rice was clearly just as naïve as indicated by both Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in their memoirs.   I know Condi too.  Like Madeleine,   she began as an expert on Czechoslovakia in 1968.  She wrote her first academic essay, ¨The Czechoslovak Army¨ in Communist Armies in Politics, with me.  I was born in Czechoslovakia.  More on my relationship with these women is in my forthcoming memoir, ¨Are You Starting a Revolution Here?”

 In dealing with the Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, being built with help from North Korea.  Condi recommended taking the issue to the U.N.    Wrote Cheney,  “I strongly recommended that we ought to take it (the reactor) out.”  He further summed up that “Condi was on the wrong side of all of these (nuclear) issues.”   Her engagement with North Korea ultimately led to their reneging on everything.   She also recommended and achieved the removal of North Korea from a list of state sponsored terrorists.  Neither can I forgive her that as National Security Advisor she ignored the vital pre-911 memo warning that Al Qaeda might hi-jack planes to attack America.  One of the problems with American politics and Condi is that the time required for self-promotion subtracts from the time required to research and do the job.   From what they wrote, Dick and Donald agree. 

So what should we do?     As with Carter, Albright and Rice, the present Kerry deal falls short of removing from Iran its potential to make nuclear weapons.  Already there is disagreement over the agreement.  Rouhani, known to be a strong supporter of Iran´s nuclear program, is already crowing that the agreement gives them the right to enrich uranium.  Kerry is saying it doesn´t.  The agreement says Iran can do it up to 5%.  There should be NO enrichment!  The only thing we may have bought is a little time.   

Albright recently indicated in an RIAC blog with former Russian Foreign Minister Ivanov that we should work with Russia, which has its own stake in Iranian behavior.  It´s an idea we have been promoting.   Can America, with Russia´s help, prevent the making of a Middle East North Korea?   This may well be one of the most serious issues our President, the U.S. Congress and the America and people face.    One is reminded of Churchill´s comment, that it is unwise to feed an alligator under the assumption that it will eat you last.