http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/076/oped/Bush_casts_shadow_on_Korean_sunshin
e_policy_+.shtml
Bush casts shadow on Korean 'sunshine policy'
By Mary McGrory, Globe Staff, 3/17/2001 WASHINGTON
PRESIDENT BUSH'S shabby treatment of Kim Dae Jung of South Korea remains a
mystery, but the first political returns are in: North Korea, obviously bent
on rubbing in Kim's humiliation in the Oval Office, has canceled scheduled
peace negotiations with Seoul.
Outside the White House, Kim Dae Jung is much admired. He is seen as a great
man, in a class with Nelson Mandela, another valiant visionary who endured a
lifetime of sacrifice and suffering to realize a patriotic dream. Kim's
breakthrough visit to North Korea won him the Nobel Peace Prize - but not,
for some reason, the regard of George W. Bush.
Not only did the president withhold his endorsement of Kim's risky but
promising ''sunshine policy'' to bring the two Koreas together, but he went
out of his way, in body English, to convey how cross and bored he was with
his visitor.
It was a day for a double whammy: The president also felled his own secretary
of state, Colin Powell, who had announced the day before the meeting that he
expected to pick up where the Clinton administration left off in its talks to
persuade Kim Jong Il, the paranoid chief of North Korea, to renounce
production of nuclear weapons. There would be no negotiations, Bush said
icily, until his administration has reviewed the North Korean situation.
Baffled observers on Capitol Hill speculated that Bush was really mad at
Powell for nudging him into a position he was not ready to take. But others
think he was sore at Kim Dae Jung over a joint declaration he issued in Seoul
with visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin in defense of the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty -which of course Bush longs to shred because it
forbids the deployment of the foreign policy project closest to his heart,
the nuclear missile defense system.
Arms control advocates accuse Bush of turning his back on a rare opportunity
to stabilize the wildly rocking North Korea, which puts manufacture of
nuclear weapons ahead of feeding its people. Spurgeon Keeney of the Arms
Control Association says Bush is ''trying to build up the case for building
an extremely expensive and provocative system that doesn't work - it's
madness.''
Democrats who were startled and puzzled by the diplomatic debacle of March 7
had nothing to say. They are cowed these days, and only Democratic Senator
Joseph Biden of Delaware, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, protested. He said he was disappointed at Bush's failure to signal
that he is ''willing to talk and negotiate if certain things happen as
opposed to emphasizing that these guys are bad guys, period.''
North Korea's cancellation of further talks with the south, Biden thinks, is
dangerous and could ratchet up the situation ''to the point where it could
get out of hand.''
President Clinton's first national security adviser, Tony Lake, thinks there
has been a good deal of ''overthinking'' in theories about Bush's motives and
strategy in the put-down of Kim Dae Jung. He thinks that what it all means is
that the Bush team, despite its vaunted reputation for management expertise,
just hasn't got its act together on Asian policy. He thinks in the end that
Powell's sensible suggestions about exploring ''the many promising aspects
that turned up'' in the Clinton talks should be pursued.
Sandy Berger, Clinton's national security adviser during the hectic final
weeks in office, thinks that what the commotion signifies is what he
delicately calls ''the instinct against continuity that new administrations
suffer from.'' In this case, that involves a tacit admission that Clinton
might have been on the right track. Berger says that Bush's suspicions about
bristling, bellicose North Korea are well-founded.
Kim Jong Il is universally regarded as a piece of work - he is
psychopathically secretive, and his country is a shambles. But he trusts that
Powell will prevail, and that in time the Bush administration will settle
down with his formula.
Kim Jong Il will take a great deal of hand-holding and schmoozing - something
Clintonites were superlatively good at, but not very viable options in an
administration that prides itself on being tough with commie tyrants. In the
last hours of his term, Clinton was torn between a dash to Israel and a dash
to Korea, and in the end went to neither place. ''We were not close to an
agreement,'' Berger says.
Bush has gotten bad reviews for his first major foreign policy encounter. If
he is to redeem himself from charges of making policy in a petulant and petty
manner, he will have to say something nice about Kim Dae Jung and his
''sunshine policy.''
It won't be enough not to be Bill Clinton if he's seen as prizing a gadget in
outer space over world peace.
