Circling the drain

While listening to the increasing flood of partisan loyalists blame anyone but the current administration for the North Korea debacle, I saw this little analytical gem from Obsidian Wings.

Clinton vs. North Korea nukes, circa 1994:

(Fred Kaplan, Washington Monthly)
"Bill Clinton, a president not known for hawkishness, nearly went to war against North Korea in the spring of 1994. Five years earlier, during the presidency of George Bush's father, the CIA had discovered the North Koreans were building a reprocessing facility near their nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.

It was this reactor that, when finished, would allow them to convert the fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium. Now, barely a year into Clinton's first term in office, they were preparing to remove the fuel rods from their storage site, expel the international weapons inspectors, and withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (which North Korea had signed in 1985).

In response, Clinton pushed the United Nations Security Council to consider sanctions. North Korea's spokesmen proclaimed that sanctions would trigger war. Clinton's generals drew up plans to send 50,000 troops to South Korea--bolstering the 37,000 that had been there for decades--as well as over 400 combat jets, 50 ships, and additional battalions of Apache helicopters, Bradley fighting vehicles, multiple-launch rockets, and Patriot air-defense missiles. Beyond mere plans, Clinton ordered in an advance team of 250 soldiers to set up logistical headquarters that could manage this massive influx of firepower.

These moves sent a signal to the North Koreans that the president was willing to go to war to keep the fuel rods under international control. And, several former officials insist, he would have. At the very least, they say, he was prepared to launch an air strike on the Yongbyon reactor, even though he knew that doing so could provoke war.

Fast forward to 2002 - Bush vs. North Korea Nukes:

(Kaplan, again)
The CIA got wind that North Korea may have been acquiring centrifuges for enriching uranium since the late 1990s, most likely from Pakistan. By September 2002, the conclusion was inescapable...

On Oct. 4, Kelly flew to Pyongyang to confront North Korean officials with the evidence. The North Koreans admitted it was true.

For almost two weeks, the Bush administration kept this meeting a secret. The U.S. Senate was debating a resolution to give President Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq. The public rationale for war was that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

If it was known that North Korea was also making WMDs--and nuclear weapons, at that--it would have muddied the debate over Iraq. Some would have wondered whether Iraq was the more compelling danger--or asked why Bush saw a need for war against Iraq but not against North Korea.

The Senate passed the Iraqi war resolution on Oct. 11. The Bush administration publicly revealed what it had known for weeks about North Korea's enriched-uranium program on Oct. 17."

You heard that right, the Bush administration sat on news of an actual WMD program so that it wouldn't distract people from approving a war against suspected WMD programs.

Swinging around to 2003, we see Cowboy Diplomacy at work. Bush has declared that the United States and South Korea "will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea."

The pose having been struck, this President apparently believed his job was done:

"U.S. spy satellites detected trucks pulling up to the site where the fuel rods were stored, then driving away toward the reprocessing facility. When Kim Il Sung threatened to take this step back in 1994, Clinton warned that it would cross a "red line." When Kim Jong-il actually did it in 2003, George W. Bush did nothing.

Specialists inside the U.S. government were flabbergasted. This was serious business. Once those fuel rods left the storage site, once reprocessing began, once plutonium was manufactured, the strategic situation changed: Even if we could get the North Koreans back to the bargaining table, even if they would agree to drive the fuel rods back, we could never be certain that they'd totally disarmed; we could never know if they still had some undeclared plutonium hidden in an underground chamber. (Even before this crisis, the CIA estimated that the North Koreans might have built one or two bombs from the plutonium it had reprocessed between 1989 and 1994.)"

As hilzoy asks, "Do you feel safer now?"

Update:
US Intelligence confirms North Korea's detonation was a nuke. So much for conspiratorial optimism.

Update II:
And North Korea appears to be preparing for another detonation.