The fallout last week led to North Korea threatening to reactivate the plutonium-producing Yongbyon reactor it had shut down last year and bar international inspectors, firing a couple of short-range missiles into the Yellow Sea for good measure. "The North Korean response was there was nothing in the language of any of the agreements that we signed that requires us to agree to an intrusive verification protocol before you take us off the [terrorism] list. You are in effect moving the goalposts. Technically, the North Koreans were right and I have had senior American officials acknowledge as much," Mr Chinoy said. "While the conventional narrative was 'Oh! It's the untrustworthy North Koreans cheating again', the reality was the Americans had gotten the declaration that was accepted by them and the six parties … and added a new condition." Mr Chinoy, now a senior fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles, based Meltdown on 200 interviews and published it in August. "When pushed, the North Korean side doesn't cave in, it pushes back twice as hard. All the attempts at coercion have ended up having the opposite of the intended result. The ultimate example is the nuclear test," he said. Christopher R. Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon.
Christopher Hill outmanoeuvred hardliners in a Bush Administration attempting to clean up its foreign policy legacy
Bush hardliners outgunned in North Korea deal
Kirsty Needham Deputy Foreign Editor
October 15, 2008
THE US's weekend move to drop North Korea from its list of sponsors of terrorism - sparking outrage from Japan, South Korea and some quarters of Washington - was the result of the negotiator Christopher Hill outmanoeuvring hardliners in a Bush Administration attempting to clean up its foreign policy legacy.
But Mike Chinoy, the former CNN chief Asia correspondent and author of Meltdown - The Inside Story Of The North Korea Nuclear Crisis, said the late shift back to diplomacy did not abrogate six years of failed and confrontational US policy that culminated in North Korea's 2006 underground nuclear test.
Mr Chinoy said a "civil war over North Korea policy" had consumed the Bush Administration, even as late as July, when a non-proliferation faction within the State Department imposed "extremely intrusive" conditions for verification and inspections on a deal that Mr Hill had negotiated with North Korea for its delisting.
The fallout last week led to North Korea threatening to reactivate the plutonium-producing Yongbyon reactor it had shut down last year and bar international inspectors, firing a couple of short-range missiles into the Yellow Sea for good measure.
"The North Korean response was there was nothing in the language of any of the agreements that we signed that requires us to agree to an intrusive verification protocol before you take us off the [terrorism] list. You are in effect moving the goalposts. Technically, the North Koreans were right and I have had senior American officials acknowledge as much," Mr Chinoy said.
"While the conventional narrative was 'Oh! It's the untrustworthy North Koreans cheating again', the reality was the Americans had gotten the declaration that was accepted by them and the six parties … and added a new condition."
Mr Chinoy, now a senior fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles, based Meltdown on 200 interviews and published it in August. "When pushed, the North Korean side doesn't cave in, it pushes back twice as hard. All the attempts at coercion have ended up having the opposite of the intended result. The ultimate example is the nuclear test," he said.
In a parallel with the US intelligence failing in Iraq, Mr Chinoy says 2002 intelligence about North Korea's uranium procurement attempts was "spun into such an imminent danger" by Bush hardliners. "There has never been, to my knowledge, credible intelligence that North Korea ever had a uranium-enrichment facility and it is a crucial distinction," he said.
Mr Hill, a source for the book, argued the main objective was to stop the Yongbyon reactor churning out weapons-grade plutonium.
The deal announced at the weekend by the US was described by the former UN ambassador John Bolton as "a 95 per cent victory for North Korea". It does not allow inspectors access to suspected sites beyond Yongbyon without "mutual consent".
"It was a compromise that got them off the hook," Mr Chinoy said. The pressure was on to stabilise a dangerous situation for the new presidency.
The Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, has been an advocate of military action against North Korea and his advisers highly sceptical of the deal. Mr Chinoy sees a McCain presidency taking a "pretty tough approach … possibly revisiting these deals".
