Decaying as it already was, a crucial part of US foreign policy went up in nuclear dust on Monday in the mountains of North Korea. Under threat and systematic provocations soon after George Bush’s unceremonious entry into the White House six years ago, Pyongyang on Monday made good on its announcement that it would soon conduct a nuclear test.
The communist state said it had successfully tested a nuclear weapon underground with 100 percent indigenous technology. According to the country’s official news agency, the test was “a great leap forward“ toward self-defense.
Objective assessment is organically alien to American leadership. For obvious reasons Bush and his neocon enclave are no exemption and given their pitiful performance, there is no reason why they should. For those who have kept track of the abysmal record of the present crop of Washingtonian rulers will tell you that they are masters in making things difficult.
It is not the function of this column to analyze the pluses or minuses of the vision of North Korean leaders in going ahead with the nuclear test. As for the establishment in Tehran, its position on nuclear weapon tests is abundantly clear and often made public at different levels of power.
What is and should be the focus of attention is that US foreign policy has become more dangerous ever since we ushered in the new millennium. From one failure to another (Iraq and Afghanistan are only two recent examples), Washington has embraced a shameless policy of lies and deception.
Strange, but not surprising, American public opinion has blindly accepted Bush’s justifications for all that has gone wrong as a result of his arrogance and ignorance. The same is true of the so-called international community or whatever that remains of it. When the West takes the liberty to permanently speak for this nearly paralyzed community, it is apparent that its protestations will hardly matter when it is obliged to take a clear stance on important international issues.
In the case of North Korea, the Bush team effectively killed the ’Agreed Framework’ on Pyongyang’s nuclear program put together in late 1994 after years of hard work that led to a halt in all major nuclear activities of that country under close International Atomic Energy Agency watch.
Due to neocon bullying and pressure tactics, the initial agreements to supply North Korea with free American nuclear fuel and atomic power plants in exchange for the freeze were all respected in the breach. By the same token, the tortuous six-party talks that had begun in 2003 hit snags at every bend and in the same year Pyongyang announced that it was getting out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Over the coming days the international community and their not-so-honest spokespersons will take turns to condemn the North Koreans and pour scorn on their leader, Kim Jong-il for their provocations and going against the will of the peace-loving world!
A great service will have been done to global peace and stability if the US-led western hemisphere takes a closer look at the history of the Korean Peninsula to realize that the North remains pretty sensitive to foreign provocations.
As has been seen with a host of countries that took the nuclear path before today’s test, the world will gradually learn to live with hard facts and bitter realities, irrespective of the wish and whim of warmongers and their equally greedy clientele.
For a whole lot of valid reasons, the western covenant “believe our doctrines or go to hell“ has been consigned once more to the thrash can of history. There’s a lot of explanation the US and its assorted allies should make about their own nuclear ambitions before preaching to others.
Western double standards and the habit of not practicing what you preach have turned out to be more dangerous and disastrous than thought earlier. It is time we all, policy- and decision-makers in particular, realize in the interest of universal peace and security that you cannot have summer and winter on the same roof.