North Korea’s decision to conduct a nuclear test this week reminds us how bad nuclear deals can go awry. After all, a quarter century ago, Americans were promised by their commander in chief that this would never happen, that we had reached a historic agreement to “end to the threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula.”
On October 18, 1994, President Bill Clinton announced that his administration had reached an agreement on a nuclear framework with North Korea. He promised:
This agreement is good for the United States, good for our allies, and good for the safety of the entire world. It reduces the danger of the threat of nuclear spreading in the region…. [A]fter 16 months of intense and difficult negotiations with North Korea, we have completed an agreement that will make the United States, the Korean Peninsula, and the world safer.
Under the agreement, North Korea has agreed to freeze its existing nuclear program and to accept international inspection of all existing facilities.
This agreement represents the first step on the road to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. It does not rely on trust. Compliance will be certified by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The United States and North Korea have also agreed to ease trade restrictions and to move toward establishing liaison offices in each other’s capitals. These offices will ease North Korea’s isolation….
Today all Americans should know that as a result of this achievement on Korea, our Nation will be safer and the future of our people more secure.
As we were reminded yet again this week, it did not work out that way.
President Bill Clinton listens as a soldier explains the defensive positions of the US forces inside the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea, July 11, 1993. Reuters.
Clinton’s promises in 1994 were eerily similar to the promises President Obama made in announcing his nuclear deal with Iran last year. Like Clinton, Obama declared that his administration has taken the “first step” toward “a deal to stop the progress of Iran’s nuclear program.” Like Clinton, he said his deal “is good for the security of the United States, for our allies, and for the world.” Like Clinton, Obama promised “international inspectors will have unprecedented access” to all existing facilities, and that that “this deal is not based on trust, it’s based on unprecedented verification.”
And as with Clinton, all those promises will be for naught. Indeed, Iran is already violating the terms of its agreement by carrying out ballistic missile tests. And the Obama administration is doing back flips to make excuses for Tehran so that its fragile foreign policy legacy does not prematurely implode.
It took just twelve years from Clinton’s announcement for North Korea to explode its first nuclear bomb. And earlier this year a report from US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and National Defense University warned that Pyongyang is on its way to amassing as many as 100 nuclear weapons by 2020.
Something to think about when President Obama touts his nuclear deal with Iran as one of his administration’s crowning achievements.
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