The past week has brought an interesting confluence of events: the U.S. announced the
initial deployment of destroyers that will make up a portion of the long planned, but seriously flawed, missle defence shield, and North Korea
announced they have nuclear weapons.
North Korea's announcement can be taken as a direct response to the deployment of the destroyers and together these events represent yet another escalation in the on-going stand-off between Washington and Pyonyang over North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
The standard view of events is that North Korea continues to act aggressively and in violation of international law despite genuinely good-faith, if uncompromising, efforts by the U.S. and her allies to arrive at an end to the stand-off. Critics, however, point out that the U.S.'s refusal to negotiate directly with North Korea has not led to progress and may, in fact, be making the situation worse. Under the Clinton administration a policy of continuous engagement was leading, if slowly, to progress. This progress was halted by the suspension of talks in 2001 and subsequent actions by the Bush administration, such as including North Korea in the "axis of evil", have made the situation worse. By linking nonproliferation with other issues that are known to be objectionable to the North Koreans, the Bush administration could be accused of obstructing progress, rather than encouraging it.
Which begs the question, why? The Bush administration has said that they will "not bow to nuclear blackmail or reward bad behaviour". However, another possibility should be considered - that an escaltation of tensions is precisely what the Bush administration wants to achieve in order to provide justification for the missile defence shield.
The development of the shield was a central Bush campaign theme in 2000 and it's deployment was ordered in 2002. However, not since the end of the cold war has there existed a nation with the capability and desire to strike at the U.S. with a long range nuclear weapon. Knowing this, the Bush administration has consistently raised the spectre of a nuclear North Korea as the central justification for missile defence, undeterred by the reality that North Korea did not (and still does not) possess the long range capabilities to hit the U.S. mainland. The escalation of tensions with North Korea since 2001 has, however, kept this justification alive and potentially even made the possibility of a North Korean strike more likely.
Could the Bush administration really put the safety and security of the U.S. at jeopardy for such self-serving reasons? Consider that they balked at capturing or killing the Al-Qaeda linked terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi prior to the invasion of Iraq so as not to remove one pretext for the invasion. Consider as well how the administration has dealt with the revelations regarding Pakistan's role in the worldwide trade in nuclear technology. The possibility of manipulating the North Korean situation to further missile defence is worse by an order of magnitude but, given the track record of this administration, can it really be dismissed?