Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Norks overreach

Fred Kaplan:

The North Korean nuclear talks may be headed toward a collapse, and this time anyway, it isn't George W. Bush's fault.

What's the problem? And can anything be done to solve it?

After a promising resumption two months ago (which followed a yearlong hiatus), the "six-party talks" seem to be breaking down over the North Koreans' sudden declaration that they won't give up their nuclear-weapons program unless the other five powers—the United States, Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea—give Pyongyang the money to build a light-water nuclear reactor.

...

The demand is a nonstarter for two reasons: one political, one practical. First, the North Koreans have been enriching uranium—one method of building an atom bomb—at a reactor that wasn't designed for explicitly military purposes. Who's to say they won't do the same again? Second, nobody is going to buy them a reactor anyway. Russia, China, and South Korea agree with North Korea's claim that, as a sovereign nation, it has a right to nuclear energy. But that doesn't mean that they or any other countries have an obligation to supply it. They couldn't raise the money for reactors in '94, when an international agreement did obligate them to do so; they're not likely to raise it now.

The big question is whether the North Koreans really mean it when they say they won't budge on their nuclear materials unless they get a free nuclear reactor—or whether this is just a negotiating position. And if it's a negotiating position, do they intend at some point to cave in—or are they just stringing us all along while covertly proceeding with their plan to build bombs?

...

The danger—not just for us but for the North Koreans as well—is that Kim and his emissaries will hold out for too long. "They're terrible judges of timing," Pritchard said. The Bush administration went into this latest round of talks divided over whether they even should. In Bush's first term, Secretary of State Colin Powell, who favored talks, was outmaneuvered at every turn by Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and even his own undersecretary of state, John Bolton. Talks are happening at all only because, in the second term, Condoleezza Rice has enough leverage with President Bush to insist on them. But if the North Koreans keep diddling for too long, Bush—or even Rice—will lose patience. And then we'll all be back to square one.

The Norks word is no good. Making unreasonable demands based onit is a non starter.