Kerry calls for détente

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Kerry calls for détente with Iran and North Korea.

Tuesday, September 14, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

Who says we aren't getting a foreign-policy debate this election season? In addition to Iraq, the Kerry-Edwards campaign has decided to make an issue of how to handle two other members of the original "axis of evil," Iran and North Korea. In a phrase, they are proposing to take us back to the future of arms control.

Some of us were hoping that that doctrine had died along with the Cold War, but Mr. Kerry is bidding to revive it as the centerpiece of his anti-nuclear proliferation policy. The idea--much loved during the "detente" with the Soviet Union during the 1970s--is that the way to make the U.S. secure is to persuade adversaries to sign treaties promising not to build more weapons, or in the present era not to become nuclear powers in the first place. We will then dispatch U.N. inspectors to verify compliance, and everyone can sleep better at night.

This past weekend, Mr. Kerry suggested that President Bush is to blame because North Korea unilaterally withdrew from its nuclear nonproliferation agreement with the U.S. in 2002, and is now believed to possess at least a couple of nuclear warheads. There's one slight problem with this argument: North Korea is the party that broke its promise.

Under the arms control agreement negotiated by the Clinton Administration--the so-called Agreed Framework of 1994--the U.S. attempted to buy off Pyongyang with fuel oil and two light water reactors in exchange for North Korea giving up its nuclear program. But as soon as the North deemed it convenient, it repudiated that pact, booted U.N. inspectors out of the country, and turned off the TV cameras monitoring its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon. It then began demanding even a larger payoff in return for giving up the nuclear program it had earlier vowed it didn't have.

Having been burned once, the Bush Administration has since been trying (in concert with our Asian allies) to negotiate a new nonproliferation regime that is more credible than one more North Korean promise. But Mr. Kerry seems to be worried that the White House has been driving too hard a bargain: He wants the U.S. to agree to sit down, one-on-one with the North (so much for multilateralism), and hash out another Agreed Framework. No wonder Pyongyang is avoiding any serious negotiations until after it sees who wins in November.

The same arms-control mentality also marks the Kerry strategy toward Iran. Mr. Edwards recently said that a Kerry Administration would allow Tehran to fire up its Russian-built nuclear reactors, and even provide them with fuel, so long as the mullahs agreed to let the international community repossess the weapons-usable byproducts.

This too is the triumph of hope over experience. Just yesterday the member countries of the International Atomic Energy Agency were meeting in Vienna to discuss the next steps in response to nearly 20 years of Iranian deception. Two years ago an Iranian resistance group alerted the world to Iran's previously undeclared nuclear sites, and subsequent inspections have provoked a familiar pattern of bluster and lies that practically screams "bomb program."

Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center points out that the fresh nuclear fuel that Messrs. Kerry and Edwards want to give the mullahs is already halfway along the enrichment process toward being weapons-usable. With sophisticated and hidden enrichment capabilities of the type we know Iran already has, the country could be within days of having a bomb core were it to seize and divert the reactor fuel. In any case, the mullahs are currently ruling out the possibility of a Kerry-Edwards type deal, demanding to be recognized as a normal nuclear nation with a right to control all stages of its nuclear fuel cycle.

IAEA member states are increasingly frustrated by the mullahs' deceptions and may be ready to refer them to the U.N. Security Council for sanctions by next time the IAEA meets in November. We wish we could be more confident that the Bush Administration was working on pre-emptive military options should they become necessary. But at least it has refused to accept the inevitability of a Persian nuke. "We're determined that they're not going to achieve a nuclear-weapons capability," says Undersecretary of State John Bolton.

The essence of the Kerry-Edwards proposals, by contrast, is that if Iran and North Korea have a history of dealing in bad faith it's because we Americans aren't being cooperative enough. "The idea that there's a big bargain out there that the Iranians will live up to is nutty in light of the last six months," says the Nonproliferation Center's Mr. Sokolski.

So Americans really are getting a proliferation policy choice presented to them this November. If voters think that arms-control agreements like those in the 1970s and during the Clinton years are the best way to rein in rogue states with nuclear ambitions, they should vote for the Kerry-Edwards ticket.

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Kerry wanted détente with the Soviet Union, and fought President Reagan every step of the way. Thank God Reagan had the moral courage to stand up to the girliemen in our country and Europe during the 1980's. Let's hope the girlieman isn't elected in November, or our kids will grow up in a world dominated by terrorism, as we grew up in a world dominated by the Cold War.