Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: John Bolton

  • Dealing with a Nuclear North Korea

    This article was originally published by Politico.


    Bennett RambergOnce again North Korea befuddles.


    On the cusp of receiving food aid from the United States as the quid pro quo for opening the Yongbong nuclear complex to international inspectors and a halt in missile testing, Pyongyang wasted little time to turn “progress” into a sink hole.


    The rub: a three-stage North Korean rocket set to launch a small satellite into orbit in the next few days. The concern, the data gleaned from the launch will mature Pyonygang’s ambition to build an intercontinental ballistic missile that could threaten the United States with a nuclear warhead.


    Maturation has been long in coming. North Korea first replicated the Soviet Scud rockets it acquired from Egypt decades ago, and has slowly developed a healthy inventory of short- and intermediate-range missiles. But the long-range rocket proved to be another matter. Its 2006 and 2009 launch attempts failed.


    In anticipating each, Washington first pouted, but then returned to efforts to coax Pyongyang back to the six-party talks to can fulfill the North’s 2005 nuclear disarmament pledge. For a time, Kim Jong Il did return, but winked — attempting to pocket any benefits he could, while continuing to modernize his secret nuclear enrichment enterprise.


    This has left Washington uncertain, as the new Kim prepares the missile launch. There are no perfect options. But there are at least four imperfect alternatives to deal with the North’s missile and nuclear programs, First, continue the policy of coaxing. Second, attempt further to isolate the regime. Third, use force to halt the most threatening nuclear elements. Or, fourth, accept what cannot be changed and learn to live with a nuclear armed North Korea.


    Coaxing is business as usual. Trying to get Pyongyang to reliably say “uncle” and give up the bomb does not seem to be in the cards. The international community has tried and tried again since South Korea, Russia, China and Japan joined the United States and North Korea in the six-party talks in 2003. The approaching rocket launch, coupled with reports that Pyongyang may yet test another nuclear weapon, suggests that the new Kim intends to continue the path of the old to stay in power.


    The second option might be called the Bolton approach. Former U.N. Amb. John Bolton has written many articles pressing for strict isolation of Pyongyang, to bring down the regime. He advocates detaching Pyongyang from “international financial markets, ramping up efforts to prevent trade in weapons…and pressuring China to adhere to existing UN sanctions resolutions.”


    The major impediment is that Beijing refuses to go along — making the strategy a chimera.


    Force marks a third option. Clinton Defense Secretary William Perry and Assistant Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, writing in The Washington Post and Time magazine in 2006, called on the Bush administration to initiate a submarine cruise missile strike to destroy Pyongyang’s long-range rockets on the launch pad. They argued, “the risk of inaction will prove far greater” for the United States — even at the risk of igniting a new Korean war.


    Carter is now deputy secretary of defense. But there is no public talk that his proposal has any traction today in the Obama administration.


    This leaves a fourth option — accepting what we can’t change while attempting to reduce nuclear risks. The stark fact remains that without regime change — which was key in the elimination of other nuclear arsenals, including the former Soviet republics and South Africa — North Korea will remain a nuclear armed state. Washington’s challenge is to assure that Pyongyang never uses the arsenal out of malice or fear.


    North Korea’s use of its arsenal without provocation seems farfetched. More than anything, the leadership seeks to stay in power. It must know that any nuclear launch would result in the regime’s demise in the devastating U.S. and allied response that would be sure to follow.


    Nonetheless, there remains the specter that North Korea could launch due to fear of preemption or as part of an escalating incident. Reducing these risks ought to be the priority.


    This requires better communication between Washington and Pyongyang. At the very least, there should be a negotiated hot-line, replicating the Cold War link between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Better yet, full diplomatic relations could reduce the likelihood of major misunderstanding.


    Neither a hot line nor diplomatic relations should be seen as reward to the North, but rather the realization that a nuclear Pyongyang is likely to be part of the northeast Asian landscape for the foreseeable future.


    Assuming otherwise — without taking the necessary measures to reduce risk — could create is a far greater problem for the United States than either proceeding with the failed policies of the past or the impractical options advanced by some.

  • Answering Bolton and Yoo: New START Will Strengthen U.S. National Security

    Two staunch ideologues who served in the George W. Bush administration, John Bolton and John Yoo, ask rhetorically in a New York Times opinion piece, “Why Rush to Cut Nukes?”  Bolton, a recess appointment as United Nations Ambassador under Bush II, never met an arms limitation agreement that he supported.  Yoo, the lawyer who wrote memos supporting the legality of water boarding under international law (not a very favorable prospect for captured U.S. soldiers), worked in Bush II’s Justice Department.  Bolton and Yoo can find no good reason to support the New START agreement with the Russians, arguing that without amendments it will weaken “our national defense.”  

    Let me answer the question posed in the title of their article.  The Senate should support and ratify this treaty because it will strengthen U.S. national security by:

    • reducing the size of the bloated nuclear arsenals in both countries, creating a new lower level from which to make further reductions;
    • reinstating verification procedures that ended with the expiration of the first START agreement in December 2009;
    • building confidence in the Russians that we stand behind our agreements; and
    • sending a signal to the rest of the world that we are taking steps to fulfill our legal commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to achieve nuclear disarmament.

    The downsides of failing to ratify the treaty would be to remove restraints on the size of the Russian arsenal, forego inspection and verification of the Russian arsenal, undermine Russian confidence in U.S. commitments, and encourage further nuclear proliferation by other countries thereby increasing the possibilities of nuclear terrorism. Further, if the treaty is not ratified before the new Congress is seated in January 2011, its future ratification will be far more difficult.

    What do Bolton and Yoo say they want?  First, to remove language in the treaty’s preamble, which is not legally binding, that says there is an “interrelationship” between nuclear weapons and defensive systems.  That language only recognizes a reality.  Of course, there is a relationship between missiles and missile defenses.  Second, they don’t want the U.S. to be limited in putting conventional weapons on formerly nuclear launch systems.  But that is a price, and a fair one, that each side will pay for lowering the other side’s nuclear capabilities.  Third, they want a Congressional act for the financing, testing and development of new U.S. warhead designs before the treaty is ratified.  In other words, they want guarantees that the U.S. nuclear arsenal will be modernized.  They seek long-term reliance on the U.S. nuclear threat, but this means that U.S. citizens will also remain under nuclear threat for the long-term.

    Bolton and Yoo are an interesting pair.  The first would lop ten floors off the United Nations, the second do away with the laws of war when they aren’t convenient.  Do they deserve their own opinions?  Of course.  Do their opinions make any sense?  Only in the context of the American exceptionalism and militarism that were the trademarks of the Bush II administration and have done so much to weaken the spirit, values and resources of the country while continuing to haunt us in our aggressive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  

    One must wonder what possessed the New York Times to publish their rantings.  Additionally, using the word “Nukes” in the title suggests somehow that nuclear weapons are cute enough to have nicknames and not a serious threat to the very existence of civilization.  That Bolton and Yoo could rise to high positions in our country is a sad commentary on the country, but perhaps understandable in the context of the Bush II administration’s persistent flouting of international law.  That the New York Times would find sufficient merit in their discredited opinions to publish their article is an even sadder commentary on the editorial integrity of one of the country’s most respected newspapers.

  • On Eve of World Summit, Hurricane Bolton Threatens to Wreak Havoc on the Global Poor

    One of the truly heart-warming reactions to the suffering wrought by Hurricane Katrina is the response from the international community. The Red Cross received thousands of donations from individual foreigners—rich and poor—whose hearts went out to the victims. The governments of over 60 nations offered everything from helicopters, ships, water pumps and generators to doctors, divers and civil engineers. Poor countries devastated by last year’s tsunami have sent financial contributions. Governments at odds with the Bush administration— Cuba, Venezuela and Iran—offered doctors, medicines and cheap oil. The international response has been so overwhelming that the United Nations has placed personnel in the Hurricane Operations Center of the US Agency for International Development to help coordinate the aid.

    Unbeknownst to the US public, however, at the very time impoverished Americans are being showered with support from the world community, the Bush administration’s newly appointed UN ambassador, John Bolton, has been waging an all-out attack on the global poor.

    Tomorrow, September 14, over 175 heads of state will gather in New York for the World Summit. One of the major items on the agenda is global poverty. Back in 2000, 191 nations listened to the desperate cry of the world’s poor and developed a comprehensive list to eradicate poverty called the Millennium Development Goals. The goals, to be achieved by 2015, were to reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality, stop the spread of HIV/AIDS, improve maternal health and reverse the loss of environmental resources. To achieve these ambitious goals, the rich countries made a commitment to spend 0.7 percent of gross domestic product on development. The upcoming Summit was supposed to review the progress toward achieving these goals.

    But even before the first world leader landed in New York, John Bolton threw the process in turmoil. In a letter to the other 190 UN member states, Bolton wrote that the United States “does not accept global aid targets”—a clear break with the pledge agreed to by the Clinton administration. (While some countries, including Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have already reached the aid target of 0.7 percent, the United States lags far behind, spending a mere 0.16 percent of its GDP on development.)

    Bolton wanted these goals to be eliminated from the document being prepared for the World Summit leaders to sign. In fact, Bolton stunned negotiators when less than one month before the Summit, he introduced over 500 amendments to the 39-page draft document that UN representatives had been painstakingly negotiating for the past year.

    The administration publicly complained that the document’s section on poverty was too long and instead called for greater focus on free-market reforms. But those free market reforms did not include encouraging corporations to promote the public good. On the contrary. Bolton wanted to eliminate references to “corporate accountability.” And he went even further, trying to strike the section that called on the pharmaceutical companies to make anti-retroviral drugs affordable and accessible to people in Africa with HIV/AIDS. Bolton’s message that corporate profits should take preference over social needs offers no comfort to the 30,000 poor who die daily from needless hunger and curable diseases.

    In another area that severely impacts the world’s poor—climate change— Bolton has been equally brutal. While Hurricane Katrina was lashing the Gulf states, Bolton was slashing the global consensus that “climate change is a serious and long-term challenge that has the potential to affect every part of the world.” Not only did he attempt to wipe out any references to meeting any obligations outlined in the Kyoto Protocol, but he also stunned negotiators when, in the section on the UN’s core values, he tried to cut the phrase “respect for nature”.

    Finally, with global resources that could used to alleviate poverty instead going into the never-ending arms race, Bolton’s agenda moves us in the direction of an even more dangerous and violent world. He tried to eliminate the principle that the use of force should be considered as an instrument of last resort, slash references to the International Criminal Court and calls for the nuclear powers to make greater progress toward dismantling their nuclear weapons, and cut language that would discourage Security Council members from blocking actions to end genocide.

    John Bolton’s slash-and-burn style has convinced many global leaders that the US agenda is not to reform the United Nations but to gut it. In fact, Bolton even called for deleting a clause saying the United Nations should be provided with “the resources needed to fully implement its mandates.”

    The Bolton/Bush agenda reflects a misguided belief that absolute US sovereignty should take precedence over international cooperation. It also sends a message that the US government feels no responsibility towards—or compassion for—the world’s poor.

    UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has urged the United States to back down and reaffirm its support for the millennium development goals, goals that he says have been embraced by the whole world as a way to help poor people who want to live in dignity. Even U.S. allies like Tony Blair have stepped in to try to stop Bolton from wrecking the Summit.

    The outcry from the global community is forcing Bolton to back down on some of his more outrageous demands. But the Bolton/Bush agenda still refuses to seriously address the critical issues of our times, ranging from global warming to the arms race to grinding poverty. We citizens must demand that our government’s face to the international world not be that of a mean-spirited, aggressive bully but one that reflects the compassion and commitment to alleviating suffering and environmental devastation that the world has shown us in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

    Please take a moment to fax John Bolton at http://www.globalexchange.org/getInvolved/actnow/bolton.html.

    Medea Benjamin is Founding Director of the international human rights group Global Exchange.