Is the U.S. being Blixed again?

---

See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

The post-Iraq world will be a quite different place – whether U.S. military intervention is successful, or results in a further deterioration of world security. But on its eve, North Korea begs for attention as the world’s likeliest No. 1 trouble spot in the post-Iraq world.

Nor will Washington’s North Korean difficulties be any less complicated than Iraq. North Korea, a rogue state already selling missiles and, potentially, weapons of mass destruction [WMD] to pariahs, matches Sadaam Hussein in its oppression of its own people. Because Pyongyang holds Seoul’s population hostage to forces deployed on the so-called Demilitarized Zone, Washington has few options.

Therefore, the U.S. is trying what it could not do in the Persian Gulf where Iraq is surrounded by small, weak [if oil rich] states. It is trying to rally the region’s powers – South Korea, Japan, China, and perhaps Russia – to pressure North Korea to disarm. Behind that is the logic that none wants a nuclear armed North Korea or the arms race it would set off. That difficult process is fraught with handicaps. Not the least is that China is going through a difficult – probably unresolved — leadership changeover but Beijing remains key because of the dependency of the Pyongyang regime on its benevolence. Washington also probably does not have the option – even after the Security Council fiasco over Iraq – of excluding the UN. And the UN International Atomic Energy Agency has already reported the ousting of its inspectors to the Security Council.

Into this minefield has danced one Maurice Strong, a Canadian billionaire, a self-appointed messiah of environmentalism, benefactor of American politicians. [Although he has admitted to giving to both U.S. political parties to gain influence, he is a soul mate of Al Gore, and in fact, his 2000 contributions to Gore’s campaign have been under a cloud]. Strong, who says he owes his peculiar philosophy of “socialism with capitalist methods” to his dirt scrabble childhood during the Great Depression, has moved in and out of the oil business and Canadian government corporations. He was one of Pierre Elliott Trudeau's favorites, a worker in Trudeau’s garden of failed efforts to somehow distance Canada from its U.S. economic and security dependence. Strong headed Trudeau’s Petrocan, a Canadian government oil fiasco, later sold off to British-Dutch Shell after denouncing U.S. oil companies’ deprivations. More than a few of Strong’s antics have caused lifted eyebrows – e.g., gifting of Costa Rican wilderness for a national park by Ontario Hydro, a limping government corporation he chaired, that just happened to abut one of Strong’s ecotourism hotels. His Colorado-based foundation is a magnate for aging New Age devotees. His recent memoir recounts how his fellow UN aficionado Ted Turner literally, Strong says, got down on his knees to beg Strong to head Turner’s new multimillion dollar foundation promoting the UN, environmentalism, and the former CNN founder’s other hobbies.

It was Strong’s environmentalist peregrinations– he chaired the first Stockholm UN conference in 1972 leading to the Kyoto Protocols for the control of hothouse gases. The Clinton Administration‘s treaty would have cost the economy $400 billion per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency. Although EU governments signed the protocol to ignore it – the Bush Administration refused, suggested further negotiations. But “Kyoto” has become one of the slogans in the growing anti-American campaign in Western Europe.

In January, Strong went to North Korea as UN Sec. Gen. Kofi Annan’s personal representative. [As a dollar-a-year man, he had earlier been working on the UN’s accounts.] But instead of quietly reporting back to Annan, with his usual flamboyance, Strong told newsmen enroute back that North Korea and the U.S. had similar aims. That estimate would be laughable were it not indicative of his diplomatic abilities and his worldview. He also clamored for increased food aid, although there is some disagreement among those who know the North Korean food problem about just where it stands. More competent authorities have said Kim Jong Il diverts imported food gifts to his military, while more than two million of his countrymen starved in the late 90s. Washington has caved in, negating its earlier position all aid would be dependent on an end to Pyongyang’s nuclear program. Strong said there was only a communications problem, and that it could all be remedied with a structure for negotiations. It reminded all too many of Jimmy Carter’s intervention in the Korean crisis and the negotiation of the so-called Framework by the Clinton Administration whose breakdown has resulted in the present crisis.

The Ides of March find Strong scheduled to return to Korea for further negotiations. The Korean problem is too important to be left to dilettantes like Strong.