Word: deal
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...metric by which any diplomatic deal is judged is simple: Which side got more for less? By that measure, the U.S. and the Administration of President George W. Bush are the hands-down winners in the North Korean nuclear deal announced this week...
...What the U.S. did get, though, was real progress on a long-standing aim - the destruction of the Yongbyon nuclear facility, where North Korea's plutonium has been produced. The 1994 deal agreed by the Clinton Administration required that nuclear work at Yongbyon be verifiably frozen, but the new deal requires that the plant be incapacitated. On Friday the North Koreans blew up the facility's cooling tower and they have also committed to destroying, under international monitoring, the other functioning parts of the plant...
...Gary Samore of the Council on Foreign Relations, who negotiated the agreed framework in 1994 for President Clinton, says the new North Korean deal gets more than what he got on Yongbyon. "The Bush Administration has achieved an additional measure beyond what the Clinton Administration achieved in terms of Yongbyon ... a very, very substantial disablement which would make it difficult and time-consuming for the North Koreans to resume production." Says his Council colleague Charles Ferguson, "The Bush Administration has achieved more than the Clinton Administration in terms of really doing a substantial amount of disablement of that facility...
...None of which means the overall deal gets the U.S. free and clear of the North Korean nuclear threat. On the contrary, that threat is as bad as it has ever been, practically speaking. For starters, the North still has, by most estimates, between six and ten weapons' worth of plutonium, obtained since the Bush Administration in 2001 abandoned negotiation in favor of confrontation. The U.S. has a long and hard road to negotiate that plutonium out of Pyongyang's hands. Just as bad, the North very likely has an equally threatening uranium-enrichment program separate from the plutonium program...
...Still, considering that U.S. negotiator Chris Hill has managed to get destruction of Yongbyan in exchange for the meaningless delisting, the U.S. and President Bush have made out quite well in this deal...