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US Delisting of North Korea Deals Japan "Bush Shock" |
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Written by Kosuke Takahashi
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Monday, 13 October 2008 |
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Page 1 of 3
 Anger and disbelief in Tokyo over betrayal by an ally
Along with plunging stock prices and the faltering United States financial system, the US decision this weekend to remove its terrorism support label from North Korea could go down as the “Bush Shock” in the modern history of Japan.
While the world's attention was mainly focused on the Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers' meeting in Washington, the George W Bush administration removed North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism—somehow discreetly. To Japan, it compared unfavorably with the so-called “Nixon Shock” of the 1970s when then-President Richard Nixon, without telling Tokyo, the US’s most important ally in Asia, announced that he was granting diplomatic recognition to Japan’s then-enemy, the Communist regime in China.
The administration appears to have to have taken cover under the world’s financial confusion in order to salvage the deadlocked nuclear disarmament talks. But the decision still gave its closest Asian ally Japan a surprising new twist on the US’s wavering policies toward North Korea in its final months in office, irritating Tokyo by removing, apparently without telling the Japanese, one of Japan’s few weapons in its attempt to discover what happened to many of the Japanese citizens who were abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.
In a hastily called press conference Saturday morning, the US state department announced the decision to delist North Korea. Neither Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice nor nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill were at what the state department called a “special briefing” on its homepage. Hill visited Pyongyang earlier this month attempt to resolve the North Korean nuclear standoff.
President Bush also did not make any official comment, downplaying the agreement with the North and showing Washington’s nervousness on the issue, probably afraid of criticism from conservative lawmakers who already believe that the US has been too gentle with Pyongyang.
The state department said that in the agreement, investigators will have access to all declared facilities at the North Korean nuclear facility in Yongbyon, and based on “mutual consent,” to undeclared sites. But it will be significantly difficult for inspectors to go to any undeclared sites and take material samples in North Korea, which strictly limits the movement of persons and material.
The agreement omitted—or procrastinates in the best of terms— about the issues of existing nuclear weapons; the controversial and problematic highly enriched uranium program; past proliferation activities involving nuclear material and missile technology to Syria and Iran, among other discrepancies.
Pyongyang has recently resorted to its favorite tactic of further brinkmanship to escalate tension and wring concessions. It said it was working on restarting its nuclear plant and dismissed the prospect of being removed from a US terrorism blacklist in return for a disarmament deal. It also once asked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the nuclear watchdog of the UN, to remove its seals and surveillance equipment from the Yongbyon plant.
Pyongyang is fully aware of the current US weakness. With the situation in Afghanistan deteriorating and with 140,000 troops tied up in Iraq, North Korea is not concerned with the threat of military action. This US weakness was crucially different from when the so-called 1994 Agreed Framework accord between the US and North Korea was formed. The US financial crisis also is diminishing US strength as the world’s superpower.
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