Imagine If...

The Yongbyon nuclear facility is no more. A great triumph for diplomacy:

I did a scan of NRO and The Weekly Standard and the silence on this issue seems a bit deafening. But this is a big deal. Either Bush has, whatever criticisms one might have of his early policy toward the DPRK, done a good an important thing here or else he's become a victim of the very "false comfort of appeasement" he's warned against.

At a minimum, there seem to be obvious implications for the ongoing Iran debate. Most of them -- diplomacy works, there's no substitute for talks and mutual concessions, etc. -- reenforce liberal points unless you're willing to turn around and denounce Bush. But one can also observe here that working out a reasonable accommodation didn't require a presidential summit and it's actually possible to conduct constructing diplomacy while also maintaining the sort of hex on "evil" regimes that Obama wants to dispose of.

UPDATE: I obviously didn't scan NRO very well since I missed their editorial on the subject which does, indeed, slam the deal. My apologies, I don't know how I made that mistake since it's right on top of their site. I believe it was even before National Review's founding that William F. Buckley was condemning Ike as an appeaser for holding some meeting with Khruschev. So let's give three cheers for consistency here.

Comments

Uh, I guess. You could also make the point that despite the destruction of this reactor in 2008, pulling out of the Agreed Framework was really, really dumb and served no purpose other than to allow North Korea to develop an unknown amount of weapons-grade plutonium.

But then, I do suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome.

APS

Posted by Ape Man | June 27, 2008 11:35 AM

Well...not exactly. The only thing destroyed was the cooling tower. The reactor is still there as are the enriched uranium rods.

Posted by Pan | June 27, 2008 11:36 AM

I did a scan of NRO and The Weekly Standard and the silence on this issue seems a bit deafening.

Ouch! In one stroke they lose their justification for a war with N. Korea and their approach that could lead to another war with Iran. You know they're hating this.

Posted by LFC | June 27, 2008 11:39 AM

Matt you are missing the neo-con perspective on this, which is that they always are right. If diplomacy works, it's only because they threatened to start a war. If diplomacy doesn't work, it's because diplomacy never works. It's much like Iraq. Violence is down? Proof that the surge is working. Violence is up? Proof that the surge is working.

What's truly disgusting is that so many of the neo-cons consider themselves to be fact-based and hard-headed, intellectually superior to those who disagree with them, but they are oblivious to inconvenient facts, and regularly conflate their ideology and world view with evidence.

Posted by Gene | June 27, 2008 11:41 AM

What Pan said - the only thing that was destroyed was the cooling tower.

Cooling tower =/ Yongbon nuclear facility. Matthew should make an effort to learn the difference.

Posted by Al | June 27, 2008 11:45 AM

Matt, by writing about this topic, you, too, are appeasing Nazis.

Posted by El Cid | June 27, 2008 11:49 AM

What's truly disgusting is that so many of the neo-cons consider themselves to be fact-based and hard-headed, intellectually superior to those who disagree with them, but they are oblivious to inconvenient facts, and regularly conflate their ideology and world view with evidence.

I see this on the left a lot, too. Those with Bush Derangement Syndrome are surprised by this deal, when they shouldn't be.

Maybe this deal went through only because the Chinese came around? Who knows.

Regarding the Iranian regime, they are the bad boys now, so this deal further alienates them. I'm just hoping Israel doesn't attack, b/c it would be a disaster.

What about Mugabe and the Burmese junta? They're just screwing their own people, so we don't need to worry about them.

Posted by Peter K. | June 27, 2008 11:52 AM

Cooling tower =/ Yongbon nuclear facility. Matthew should make an effort to learn the difference.

I've got no problems with the North Koreans running their reactor as much as they want without a functioning cooling system. Any countries downwind of the resulting clusterfuck might have a different opinion.

Posted by daveNYC | June 27, 2008 11:54 AM

"I believe it was even before National Review's founding that William F. Buckley was condemning Ike as an appeaser for holding some meeting with Khruschev."

Unless there's another meeting I don't know about, this meeting was several years after NR's 1955 founding. In 1959, IMS.

Posted by Stephen Frug | June 27, 2008 11:59 AM

We still have no idea how much plutonium the NKs have, where its stored, or a plan that does something with it. This is just one of many things bush will leave for the next president to finish.

Posted by jerri | June 27, 2008 12:04 PM

The point about this only being the destruction of the cooling tower is that cooling towers are by far the easiest part of a nuclear reactor to build. You can't run in without one -- but you can rebuild a destroyed one a whole lot easier than you could rebuild the entire reactor.

So, it's a step in the right direction. But only a very small one.

Posted by wj | June 27, 2008 12:17 PM

Behold the Power of Diplomacy!
The State Dept.'s "soft power" is so awesome it made the North Koreans blow up their _own_ cooling tower. Meanwhile, everyone agrees that blowing this up with American aircraft would have resulted in the destruction of Seoul by massed North Korean artillery.

Also, Al & Pan need to realize that a reactor without a cooling tower will not function. Yes, wj, it is easy to rebuild, but it is also a very visible act that can be observed by satellites, making its destruction highly effective and its continued compliance easy to verify.

Posted by DCreader | June 27, 2008 1:05 PM

The point about this only being the destruction of the cooling tower is that cooling towers are by far the easiest part of a nuclear reactor to build. You can't run in without one -- but you can rebuild a destroyed one a whole lot easier than you could rebuild the entire reactor.

Fair enough. But as visible symbols go, it's also the only thing you can really blow up for the cameras.

It's not like we can say: If they were really serious about disarmament, they would have dynamited the more expensive and technically challenging reactor core. Blowing that up would have had unpleasant consequences to say the least. We'll want them to disassemble it and find a way to bury the nuclear material, but none of that makes for good television.

Plus, they do need a cooling tower to actually run the reactor. If they build another one, it's plainly visible from space. So we'll at least know and have indisputable proof that they're going back on their word.

It's not everything, of course. But this is far more than I ever dreamed the Bush administration could accomplish. We ought to give them their due.

Posted by southpaw | June 27, 2008 1:52 PM

Why does anybody take NRO seriously at this point? Their complaints, to the degree that they're valid, ALL stem from withdrawal from the Agreed Framework.

So what do they blame? A return to something like the Agreed Framework.

Posted by Luke | June 27, 2008 1:56 PM

I've got no problems with the North Koreans running their reactor as much as they want without a functioning cooling system.

You see that river in the background of that picture? It's conceivable they could run pipes into the river for coolant intake and discharge to cool the reactor, that is if it doesn't get iced over during the winter.

Posted by Pan | June 27, 2008 2:32 PM

Again with the scare quotes around "evil." Regardless of which policy you think best, is there any doubt that the North Korean regime is evil?

Posted by David J. Balan | June 27, 2008 2:49 PM

You see that river in the background of that picture? It's conceivable they could run pipes into the river for coolant intake and discharge to cool the reactor, that is if it doesn't get iced over during the winter.
Posted by Pan

That concealment wouldn't work. We operate satellites in infrared and would detect the thermal bloom in the river. And China is watching them too, because Bush was wise enough (strange to say that these days!!!) to insist on 6-party talks which links Chinese face and prestige with the NORKs on the line now about not just avoiding backstabbing the US, but also China.

I did like a joke I heard.

"By blowing up Yongbyon's cooling tower, the NORKs, though still bizarre and insane, will be removed from the lists of nations sponsoring terror in a few months. Thus the world knows two countries have been removed from the Axis of Evil.
But what the NORKs don't know is that while being downgraded from the Axis of Evil, they will instead be placed on lesser list of vexing irritants known as the "Axis of Assholes". Which includes KSA and Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.

Good news is it is even safer to escape that list. France made it off it, so did Libya. And in 2005, Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger sucessfully petitioned to take Malibu and San Francisco off the Axis of Assholes list."

***************
The NORKs still have a long,long way to go before they get anywhere near being a normal, accepted nation. They are further behind the 8-ball than even The Congo.

Posted by chris ford | June 27, 2008 3:39 PM

"They are further behind the 8-ball than even The Congo."

Wouldn't be a Chris Ford post without the Ku Klux Klan racism.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 27, 2008 6:59 PM