# Posted 9:39 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

WHEN DOVES ATTACK, PART III: OxBlog is in hot water. In my posts on North Korea yesterday and the day before, I referred to a number of fellow bloggers, including Josh Marshall, CalPunditand The Agonist as doves. I was mistaken and I take it back.

As Josh and Sean-Paul have pointed out, they are liberal internationalists who are not afraid of using force to accomplish principled objectives. Josh has often defended his views in print and Sean-Paul has done so online. I think Kevin might well fall into the same category, though he has not seen the need to say so explicitly.

That said, let's get back to North Korea. Today, the President's critics unveiled their newest argument: that Bush's pre-crisis rhetoric of pre-emption has provoked the North Koreans into dangerously raising the stakes of the current crisis. In addition, the administration's timid response to North Korea's defiance has convinced Kim Jong Il that he should go ahead and develop nuclear weapons since the United States will not launch preeemptive strikes against him.

With slight variations, this argument represents the views of Paul Krugman, Josh Marshall and the Democratic Leadership Council. As I see it, the argument has two main flaws.

First, the North Koreans have said over and over that what they want is not to develop nuclear weapons, but to negotiate a non-aggression pact with the United States. Krugman totally misses this. In contrast, Marshall and the DLC recognize that Kim wants concessions. Still, neither one explains what exactly the North Koreans would have done differently if Bush hadn't provoked them with his doctrine of preemption. Unless one really believes that an unprovoked North would've agreed to disarm instead of demanding a non-aggression pact, it's hard to argue that Bush pre-emption rhetoric had any impact whatsoever.

The second major problem with the critics' new argument is that it does nothing to explain the fact that North Korea began its secret uranium-enrichment program long before Bush became president. Neither Krugman, Marshall (in today's posts), nor the DLC can bring themselves to even mention that fact. And why should they? If the North Koreans set off the current crisis by continuing to do exactly what they had been doing throughout Clinton's second term, there isn't much to hold Bush responsible for.

In addition to these flaws, the adminstration's critics are still a number of disingenuous things which I've pointed out before.

First, not one of them has suggested an alternative to the administration's current strategy. Krugman and Marshall say sanctions and isolation are unworkable. Yet just yesterday the South Koreans "stepped up diplomatic overtures to Russia and China to seek help in pressuring North Korea to compromise."

Incomprehensibly, the DLC has called upon Bush to abandon his unilateralism and work with other nations to end the crisis. The best explanation I can come up with for this one is that the DLC refuses to read either the NYT or the WaPo.

Marshall has also begun to accuse the administration of having no plan at all, which doesn't exactly fit with his previous accusation that their plan isn't working.

Second of all, not one of the administration's critics has suggested any alternative to publicly confronting the North once the US has compelling evidence of that it had a secret weapons program. As I asked yesterday,

What was the President supposed to do after the CIA provided him with compelling evidenfce that the North was pursuing an illegal uranium-enrichment program designed to produce nuclear weapons?

Inaction might have delayed a US-North Korean conflict, but that might have given the North time to mount its uranium warheads on a missile pointed at Japan. In addition, confronting the North now -- in the aftermath of a unanimous Security Council decision to condemn Iraq's nuclear program -- ensures that the UN will have to apply the same strict standard to North Korea as it has to Iraq.

The point still stands.

Now, if after all this criticism of what I disagree with, you want some sense of what I do support, take a look at Charles Krauthammer's column on the crisis. While he is convinced that sanctions, he emphasizes the important point that the US has an important card which it hasn't yet played: Japan. With the exception of an independent Taiwan, China fears nothing more than a nuclear Japan.

While one can't expect Krauthammer to footnote his columns, it's worth noting that his view coincides with that of Tom Christensen, perhaps the leading expert on Chinese military and security policy. After conducting extensive interviews with Chinese officials, Christensen concluded that the US has significantly underestimated both their fear of Japan and their appreciation of US efforts to preventing Japan from becoming too powerful.

As Christensen points out, it is not widely known that Japanese defense expenditures are far higher than the PRC's, even though they consume a much, much lower percentage of GDP. Thus, the Japanese also have an almost unlimited potential to increase their military spending in the event of a crisis. Colin Powell's protestsaside, we are now in the midst of a crisis.

Finally, I'm going to plug Josh Marshall's post on whether or not the North has nuclear weapons and why Powell keeps insisting that it does. While the administration's strategy for dealing with North Korea is the best one available, it seems totally unable to talk straight about the crisis with the American people. Now that is serious grounds for criticism.



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