WASHINGTON, 17 January 2003 — As North Korea burgeons on the scale of international concern, many here are questioning the apparent inconsistency of the Bush Administration’s policies of Iraq and North Korea.
In response, several groups of lawyers are actively voicing their concern over the government’s nuclear policy.
“The inconsistency is not what bothers me so much as the fact that the Bush Administration is taking a unilateralist and military approach, especially in Asia and the Middle East,” said John Burroughs, executive director of the New York-based Lawyer’s Committee on Nuclear Policy, and co-editor of the recently published book: “Rule of Power or Rule of Law?”
“What stands out to me about North Korea is the bankruptcy of the US policy regarding the non-proliferation treaty. North Korea has just announced it’s going to withdraw from the treaty, and apparently has been violating the treaty with its uranium enrichment process, but the US has also been violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in major ways.”
Regarding the US policy towards Iraq and North Korea, he said it “has to do with greater military vulnerability with Iraq, a record of aggression of the Hussein regime, the Bush Administration’s desire to create a political/imperial presence in the Middle East, and the interest in controlling sources of oil.”
Asked if he thought controlling oil was on the Bush Administration’s agenda, Burroughs said: “Yes. Not necessarily just for US consumption, but on behalf of the US and its allies. That doesn’t mean that US companies would own the oil, either, but once you’re there in the country, you have a great deal of influence on how the oil is handled.”
Burroughs believes the US cannot afford a $400 billion military budget, a war with Iraq, and to install a post-occupation regime. “I don’t think they can do all that, and have health care, functional cities, functional state governments, and all the things that people take for granted in this country.”
On the other side of the continent, Jackie Cabasso, executive director of the anti-nuclear Western States Legal Foundation, in Oakland, California, was equally critical of the Bush Administration.
“The players in the administration, and the interests that they represent, are a kind of ‘fundamentalist imperialists.’ They really seem to believe that they have an inherent God-given right to determine who controls the world’s resources — and that it’s them.”
Cabasso said the administration appears to believe it can initiate a military action against any target anywhere in the world for any reason whatsoever, with or without the concurrence of allies or the international community, and that this ideology has been transplanted into official policy.
“I think the Bush Administration fundamental supremacist ideology is an element that is translating into its actions around the world,” said Cabasso.
Speaking on the differences of North Korea and Iraq, she said the administration “is calculating how many Americans will die, how much the war will cost, and what the long term benefits will be to US elite interests that are being served — because this policy is certainly not serving the interests of the vast majority of the American population.”
