Today much positive media attention has been directed towards the fact that the Bush administration has decided to remove North Korea from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List:

It seemed dramatic. President Bush stepped into the Rose Garden to announce plans to remove North Korea from the U.S. terrorism blacklist and ease sanctions against a country he once branded as part of his “axis of evil.”

But just as soon as he said it, he played down its significance.

Bush said what the U.S. was giving North Korea in exchange for its long-awaited accounting of its secretive nuclear program was largely symbolic — that they would have little impact on North Korea’s financial and diplomatic isolation.

If removing the North Koreans from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List is symbolic then the nuclear declaration the North Koreans presented to get off the list is just as symbolic because it leaves out key nuclear information:

The number of bombs in storage, or information about what’s going to happen to them. The North proved it could build a working nuclear bomb when it carried out an underground nuclear test blast in October 2006. Details on the bombs, however, will be left to the next stage of the talks, when Pyongyang is supposed to abandon all its nuclear weapons program.

_Details about North Korea’s suspected nuclear program to seek weapons fueled by enriched uranium.

_An account of North Korea’s alleged role in helping Syria build what senior U.S. intelligence officials say was a secret nuclear reactor meant to produce plutonium used in making high-yield nuclear weapons. Israeli jets bombed the structure in the remote eastern desert of Syria in September 2007.

For those that don’t know there are two ways to make a nuclear bomb either through uranium or plutonium. The nuclear bomb the North Koreans detonated in 2006 was a plutonium bomb which was made by plutonium extracted from the nuclear facility at Yongbyon that the North Koreans dismantled for a steep price even though the facility was old and decrepit and wasn’t safe to operate anymore anyway.

Then late last year North Korea was caught proliferating nuclear technology by helping the Syrians construct a nuclear weapons facility that has since been linked to Iran’s nuclear program. Despite all of this the Bush administration is still eager to cut a deal with North Korea. Why is this?

The Bush administration has been so eager to cut a deal with the North Koreans in order to create the illusion of a rare foreign policy achievement. It has gone to great length to appease North Korea by even returning money to them raised through counterfeiting American currency and even agreeing to launder the money for them through the US Federal Reserve.

Even more incredible is the fact that the US government agreed to these demands due to a vague promise from North Korea to use the money to buy humanitarian aid. The odds of Kim Jong-il using this money to buy humanitarian aid is about equal as the odds of him dismantling his nuclear program, which as their nuclear declaration shows is zero.

It is unlikely North Korea will admit to their secret uranium program as well as it is totally unlikely they will actually dismantle the nuclear weapons they currently possess. A goal of the North Korean strategy for using the six party talks is to buy time. The more the North Koreans delay the more time they buy for their scientists and researchers to further develop their infant nuclear program and improve the capabilities of their tactical ballistic missile program. In just the past few month the North Koreans have been conducting regular missile tests of their newly developed missiles. Once the North Koreans have developed their nuclear and missile programs to a level they feel would ensure the regime’s survival from external attack they will then begin to implement the policy of Strategic Disengagement.

So why is the US government so desperate to keep this deal at all costs? The reason is to keep the myth of progress alive. The Bush administration is desperate for a non-military foreign policy success in order to bolster their diplomacy credentials. So in order to keep the myth of a “diplomacy success” alive, the Bush administration is willing to appease the North Koreans and mortgage the North Korean problem for the next US presidential administration to handle. It is 1994 all over again and this time Jimmy Carter wasn’t even needed.

However, the big difference from 1994 is that when North Korea decides to act up again under the next US presidential administration to test and see what they can get out of them, they will be playing with a much stronger hand with the possession of nuclear weapons and a tactical ballistic missile program to deliver them. The payoff next time for appeasement will come at a much higher cost.