North Korea tests a bomb as GOP fights meltdown

Dr. Gilbert N. Kahn,
a professor of political science at Kean University in Union.

The timing of the North Korea nuclear bomb test could not have been worse for the Bush administration. Under increasing stress over the war in Iraq, the reemergence of Taliban power in Afghanistan, the stalemated efforts to move the Arab-Israeli peace talks along, and the growing threat posed by Iran’s own nuclear saber rattling, the one thing that President Bush did not need was another international confrontation.

There is a traditional decline in political clout and power of any president’s party in the off-year elections two years prior to the conclusion of his two terms in office. In Bush’s case, this decline could produce a serious meltdown. In the midst of a very close fight to maintain Republican control of Congress, the North Korea crisis could indeed be the final straw which will put the Democrats back into power.

The Bush presidency has been totally consumed by foreign policy issues, certainly since 9/11, despite the fact that when it entered office it was determined not to be. In recent weeks the White House successfully moved the public away from its focus on Iraq to consider the strength of its fight against terror. North Korea’s action brought all the administration’s foreign policy dilemmas back into sharp focus.

Since last spring’s failed testing of missiles by the government of Kim Jong-il, it was only a matter of time before the North Koreans would decide to demonstrate in some other way their continuing efforts at nuclear weapons’ development. North Korea was unwilling to engage in serious multilateral, diplomatic talks in which the United States, Japan, and China, among others, had sought to offer North Korea extensive economic and trade benefits in return for abandoning its testing program.

Most recent polls have suggested that the public disapproves of nearly all of the president’s initiatives in foreign policy, with the exception of his “perceived” strength in the war against terror. In Iraq the rising casualty rates, the growing civil war atmosphere, and the total lack of vision or strategy is beginning to bring even some of his own major congressional allies, including Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), chair of the Armed Services Committee, to question the administration’s conduct of the war.

Fighting in Afghanistan has intensified over the past several weeks, and the casualty rate there is rising rapidly. Despite Bush’s direct and three-way conversations with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Afghani President Hamid Karzai, few observers believe that the Taliban resurgence will be put down — certainly not with winter approaching. Turning over command of the forces in Afghanistan to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization may look like a success or a sign of U.S. disengagement, but it is merely a change in form, not in substance. In addition, there is a growing skepticism concerning the commitment of the Pakistani intelligence service to a genuine pursuit of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaida leadership believed to be hiding out in Pakistan.

With respect to Iran’s unwillingness to rein in its nuclear development program, the United States has not demonstrated any capacity to forge a United Nations Security Council resolution on sanctions. On the Arab-Israeli front, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent tour of the region did not produce any visible breakthroughs — no real movement toward the release of Israeli prisoners or an agreement on a joint Fatah-Hamas government.

With this track record, it is hard to imagine the diplomatic coup the administration could pull off after North Korea’s nuclear test, at least in a timely manner. (At most, it would be to construct a UN resolution combining some form of sanctions against both Tehran and Pyongyang.)

As if everything were not going badly enough on the international front, the congressional page scandal is forcing the administration to juggle how to isolate the actions of one former congressman, Florida’s Mark Foley, from the role and apparent failures of the Republican leadership to police and sanction its own.

Bush has less than four weeks to turn the public’s attention away from the Washington page scandal. He also must somehow bring his conduct of the Iraq war back into public favor, without the Republicans’ fractionalization getting any further out of hand. The president will need to rally the country behind his assertive action on Iran, Afghanistan, terror, and now Korea, and then hope that the voters will support him by voting for Republicans in the congressional races on Nov. 7. Given his lack of choices and time, this may be nigh impossible.