inside the glass house

N.Korean defiance and US diplomatic duplicity

NEW YORK-- A syndicated cartoon in US newspapers last week showed a subservient American president down on his knees facing a ferocious-looking North Korean wolf (read: Kim Jong Il) armed with an "obedience training" manual ordering Bush: "First, you learn: 'sit', 'stay' and 'roll over'.

With a new crisis catching the US off-guard, the American president is seen knuckling under a North Korea which is dictating terms to the world's only superpower.

The US thinks that not only is North Korea on the verge of going nuclear but is also suicidal and crazy enough to use the devastating weapon to destroy its neighbours-- and itself.

Critics of American foreign policy are watching with glee a defiant North Korea puncturing the American superpower ego.

Besides threatening to continue with its nuclear programme, North Korea has also thrown out UN inspectors delivering a resounding slap to the United Nations.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has warned that once North Korea starts the reprocessing nuclear fuel into plutonium, it will have the capability of producing about five to six nuclear weapons before the end of this year.

The North Korean threat is a nightmare for the US-- particularly at a time when it has been successfully cracking its whip at so-called "rogue states".

On Thursday, North Korea defied the international community by formally annoucing its decision to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The North Koreans have also made a mockery of the recently-enunciated Bush foreign policy doctrine which gives Washington the unilateral right to launch pre-emptive military strikes on any country involved in the production of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

The proposed military attack on Iraq is based on this new found principle of pre-emption. But the country that is ripe for a US attack under its own self-declared rule is not Iraq but North Korea.

The Iraqis have been doing exactly the opposite of what the North Koreans are doing: they say they have terminated their nuclear programmes, have no weapons of mass destruction and have welcomed UN arms inspectors after an absence of nearly four years.

On Thursday, the UN's chief arms inspector Hans Blix declared that there is no evidence of a "smoking gun"'- at least, so far - to indict Iraq on charges of developing or hiding weapons of mass destruction.

Blix told reporters that his team of over 100 arms inspectors has been gettting more and more information from Iraq over the past six weeks in its search for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

But his primary complaint was that the 12,000-page Iraqi arms declaration submited last month has "not helped very much" because it has left many questions unanswered.
Blix is satisfied with the "passive cooperation" his team has received from Iraq but is seeking "pro-active cooperation."

Despite the fact that North Korea is on a rampage, the US would only say it will deal with North Korea "diplomatically" while it has threatened to unleash its formidable military force on Iraq.

The different yardsticks to measure two US adversaries have sparked a contentious debate even among right wing hawks in the Bush administration who are divided on the issue. It has also revealed the duplicity of American foreign policy.

Asked about North Korea, Bush told reporters: "I believe this is not a military showdown; this is a diplomatic showdown."

If ever there was an understatement, it came from Secretary of State Colin Powell who said last week that North Korea "is not yet a crisis."

The US has undoubtedly the ability to take out the North Korean nuclear facilities in Yongbyon but the reality is that it will not be able to effectively protect a North Korean counter-attack on Japan and South Korea, two of America's closest allies.

Additionally, the US has about 37,000 soldiers in South Korean soil vulnerable to a counter-attack.

With growing anti-American demonstrators in the streets of Seoul demanding the withdrawal of US troops, some Republicans are urging the Bush administration to end the American military presence in South Korea.

But the South Korean government says that any such pullout could send foreign investors "flooding out of the country" threatening political instability and throwing the booming economy into turmoil.

When Bush was asked by a reporter whether he is planning to go to war, the US president replied: "With which country?."

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld boasted last month that the US was capable of successfully fighting two wars at the same time.

But when it comes to an unpredictable and erratic North Korea, the military reality may be far removed from the political rhetoric.

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