I thought we were a) holding out on our fuel oil around '96 our so; b) we never gave them the reactor? Fuck, can’t find that article.
GAO Accounting of Heavy Fuel Deliveries to North Korea as of July 1999
As of July 31, 1999, 1.9 million metric tons of heavy fuel had been delivered to North Korea at an approximate cost of $222 million. For the first 3 years of the Agreed Framework’s implementation, shipments to North Korea were not regular and predictable because the Korean Peninsula Energy Development (KEDO) – the organization that has arranged and paid for the majority of the heavy fuel oil shipments – did not always have sufficient funding to pay for heavy fuel oil deliveries. For the past 2 years, shipments of heavy fuel to North Korea have been made more regularly because of increased contributions from the organization’s members and decreasing commodity and freight prices.
In other words, reality is exactly the opposite of what you “remember.”
This 1999 report is the only GAO report I could find, and it will do, though reports also exist for 2000 and 2001 accounting.
Um, Dan:
As of July 31, 1999, 1.9 million metric tons of heavy fuel oil had been delivered to North Korea at an approximate cost of $222 million. For the first 3 years of the Agreed Framework’s implementation, shipments to
North Korea were not regular and predictable because the Korean
Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO)—the organization that has arranged and paid for the majority of the heavy fuel oil shipments—did not always have sufficient funding to pay for heavy fuel oil deliveries. For the past 2 years, shipments of heavy fuel oil to North Korea have been made more regularly because of increased contributions from the organization’s members and decreasing commodity and freight prices. However, a recent rise in oil and freight prices caused the organization to seek additional funding from the United States in order to pay for this year’s remaining scheduled heavy fuel oil deliveries.
I think “not regular and predictable for the first three years” is code for “we didn’t give them any.”
And they say we never gave them the reactor. So I’m not sure how we were holding up our side of the treaty.
Is that the code of make-believe? The charts show they were storing tens of thousands of metric tons of fuel oil that we apparently didn’t give them.
Another lesson in why one should not bother bringing facts into an online debate – as Jason demonstrates once again his unwillingness to read (or apparently even skim) any of the reports I link to.
As Mehrunes helpfully observes, the GAO report itemizes the tonnage of fuel oil by delivery by year by site, going so far as to name the storage sites and track the year-on-year stocks of heavy fuel at each.
I leave the link, and the rest of my arguments, in your hands. You may now return to your parallel universe.
(Preemptive rebuttal to Jason’s next point, which he has not yet posted: “Okay, so we delivered fuel, I guess. But what about the reactor?”
Well: http://www.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2002/12628.htm
Shortly after the Framework was signed, KEDO was created and since 1995, the United States and our allies have spent over $1.3 billion to finance reactor construction and to provide 500,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil annually to the North in accordance with our commitments.
After further reading it looks like the annual delivery of 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil is a temporary measure until the first of the nuclear reactors is complete.
1st time I opened this thread, and only had to scroll down just a bit to find a really stupid post! Congratulations, Doug.
N. Korea is a completely different strategic and political situation from the Middle East, and so probably needs completely different responses, you think?
I’m always amazed how those who are so outraged at military action in Iraq are the first to call for the same against N. Korea.
And just so we get things straight, I would have nothing against Islamisists if they weren’t responsible for 99% of the terror in the world today, and if all the “good Muslims” would clean up their own dirtbags. The fact that they don’t gives me pause.
If you ask me, it’s these so-called “good Muslims” who are the real appeasers.
Point remains: no reactor.
Of course there’s no reactor, North Korea’s nuclear weapons program was disclosed five months after they poured it’s foundation. A year later the project was suspended as a result of North Korea’s breach of the agreement. The future of the light water reactor project is supposed to be decided by the end of this year.
Sigh, this is getting embarassing. Wish I could find that article.
Here we go:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2102963
http://www.kedo.org/pdfs/AgreedFramework.pdf
Bush, it must be said, was not entirely responsible for the Agreed Framework’s collapse. The United States and North Korea both started to renege on it before Bush’s inauguration. The accord called on the United States, South Korea, and Japan to deliver the first of two light-water reactors by a target date of 2003, yet the financing went awry almost at once. Within three months of the accord’s signing, the United States and North Korea were to lower trade barriers and open consulates in each other’s capitals, with the aim of moving “toward full normalization of political and economic relations.” None of those steps was ever taken.
When Bush came to the White House, he aggravated tensions by disavowing the Agreed Framework, criticizing South Korea’s new policy of détente with the North, and advocating regime change in Pyongyang. The rupture came in October 2002, when U.S. intelligence discovered that North Korea was secretly enriching uranium—an alternative method of making nuclear bombs. The intelligence also indicated that the covert enrichment had begun during Clinton’s presidency.
If we “moved towards relations normalization”, I missed it.
The IAEA report appears to be about suspicions that they understated their plutonium stockpile and wasn’t letting the IAEA inspect do inspection of suspected waste storage sites.
Were they violating it? Probably. Was this before or after our non-compliance? Can’t tell.
Note that the US had financing troubles all along on the reactor, the US didn’t move towards normalizing relations, etc., etc. Treaties are treaties.
The world would be better of if Kim spontaneously exploded. But, it remains:
- Conservatives said that the NK was violating the treaty all along. They were. However, the evidence for when they started violating is ambigous; was it reaction to our compliance dodginess, or unilateral violation?
- Conservatives said that you can’t trust NK and we shouldn’t bribe them out of their nuclear program. You probably can’t trust them, but again, hard to tell who cheated first.
- Bush (or his ascendent vizier at the moment) appears to have finally realized that the US has no leverage at all; our only non-bribery option is risking the death of millions of Koreans in a war, possibly with a nuclear detonation.
- NK clearly doesn’t give a shit about its citizens, so it’s not like we can threaten them into backing down. NK actually does satisfy a subet of the “possibly-crazy rogue state” criteria that conservatives were so fond of arguing for Iraq.
- Bush has decided to bribe them. Where’s the howls of outrage from conservatives?
What non-compliance? You still have yet to show a shred of evidence proving that. We supplied fuel oil at the rate of 0.5 million tons per year as agreed, construction of the reactor was underway. Completion was contingent on North Korea’s compliance (Section IV:3 of the Agreed Framework), which was nowhere to be found. The bulk of the financing came from South Korea (who had to raise their own taxes to pay for it) and Japan, we represented less than 10% of the grand total, any financing difficulties were not our doing.
See: normalization of relations.
But really, that’s not what I started this thread about; even if we were 100% in compliance, our only policy solution was bribery. It took Bush 3 frickin’ years to figure this out.
Just for fun, let’s summarize the evolution of McCullough’s argument over this thread. It really does offer a classic example.
He began with three contentions:
1. The U.S. reneged on its commitments to the Framework by failing to deliver heavy fuel.
2. The U.S. reneged on its commitment to build a reactor.
3. Even if the U.S. has been in full compliance with the Framework, new concessions to Kim are the only sound policy now that we find ourselves in a standoff caused by Kim’s bad faith.
Contention #1 is refuted with extensive data. McCullough concedes it.
Contention #2 is refuted with extensive data. McCullough seems to concede it, while childishly dodging: “Point remains, no reactor.” That’s right, sir. There’s no reactor – because the plug was pulled on it when we discovered the nuke program. You’re arguing that we should have delivered a nuclear reactor to Kim anyway after discovering his nuke program – so as to be in full compliance, right?
(And must we also point out that the U.S.'s good faith compliance constituted the normalization of relations that McCullough claims to find missing in all this?)
Bloodied but unbowed, Contention #3 remains his fallback position. In his trademark style, he retreats to an “Alamo” of final intellectual resort: “But really, that’s not what I started this thread about; even if we were 100% in compliance, our only policy solution was bribery. It took Bush 3 frickin’ years to figure this out.”
I’ve got one last thing to say on this thread, and it’s in answer to this final contention: “Bribery” is precisely the policy we set forth in 1994. In case you hadn’t noticed, our bribery has won exactly NOTHING from North Korea. Our good faith has been met with a nuclear kick in the balls. Bribery has demonstrably failed – it’s now time for international enforcement of the NPT.
(P.S. That doesn’t mean war. It means the real and serious threat of war, so as to force Kim to negotiate in good faith. Force – a word I know is out of fashion.)
With the ongoing Iraq debacle, I don’t think there’s a way we can make a real and serious threat of war with the much more formidable North Korea. Arm-twisting that might have worked on our allies pre-Iraq will be resisted much more forcefully now.
And I thought the general consensus was that starting a war with North Korea was to be avoided at all costs, even at such a time when the US military could focus all it’s efforts on Korea, and that it’s in the best interests of everyone involved to just wait until the regime collapses.
Well excuse me, I was misinformed.
And whose Army are we going to threaten Kim with?
In case you hadn’t noticed, our bribery has won exactly NOTHING from North Korea.
Kept them from proliferating for a few years, no?