Bill Perry, who was Sec Def from 1994 to 1997, has a good column on North Korea in tomorrow’s Post. This passage captures the heart of the problem with Bush administration policy …
For almost six years this policy has been a strange combination of harsh rhetoric and inaction.
President Bush, early in his first term, dubbed North Korea a member of the “axis of evil” and made disparaging remarks about Kim Jong Il. He said he would not tolerate a North Korean nuclear weapons program, but he set no bounds on North Korean actions.
The Bushies claim that the Clinton policy was all carrots and no sticks. Not true when you consider we threatened war over the plutonium issue in 1994 — and like all effective threats of force, it succeeded in getting the North Koreans to sit down and negotiate. But the Bush policy has been no carrots and no sticks. President Bush won’t tolerate a nuclear North Korea. But he won’t do anything about it either. Clearly, in Bushspeak ‘won’t tolerate’ just means some high politics equivalent of ‘I’ll be vewwy, vewwy mad.’
As Perry says, harsh rhetoric and inaction.
