William Perry and Ashton Carter have an OpEd in the Times today which provides a good overview of Clinton administration policy toward North Korea. To my lights, Perry and Carter leave too implicit the ridiculousness and amatuerism of much of the Bush administration’s subsequent policy. But they’re technocrats and defense intellectuals, not polemicists. So what can you can do?
In any case, their piece does a good job fleshing out many of the complexities we face in Northeast Asia. It’s particularly good at making clear that there is a history to our dealings with the North Koreans between 1994 and 2002 — a point often missed in the cookie-cutter renderings of the situation one sees argued on the chat shows and in the press, which have a deal cut in 1994 and a sudden discovery of North Korean shenanigans in 2002.
See, in particular, their discussion of the 1998 review.
