In 1994, Bill Clinton approved a plan to send more than $4 billion in "energy aid" to North Korea's Kim Jong Il in return for "a commitment from the country's hard-line Communist leadership to freeze and gradually dismantle its nuclear weapons development program." Clinton said of the agreement: "This agreement will help achieve a longstanding and vital American objective -- an end to the threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula." Part of the agreement committed South Korea to pay for 50% of the cost of building the North's nuclear reactors, and for Japan to pay an additional 30%. In addition to all that, the US agreed to send huge supplies of oil to North Korea for purposes of heating and other humanitarian needs, in defiance of the Pentagon who warned that NK would use the oil to fuel its "million man army". At the time little was known about Kim Jong Il, who had just stepped into power, but American, Japanese and South Korean intelligence officials had described him as "the chief proponent of the North's secret nuclear weapons program." Fast forward to today, we have the end result of that program. North Korea, exploding nukes and testing ICBMs, that may be able to reach the very desk that Bill Clinton signed the agreement on. And North Korea threatening the US, Japan and the South with weapons born of the very program that they themselves paid for. This, is exactly the polar opposite situation that was promised: "This agreement will help achieve [...] an end to the threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula." - Bill Clinton The agreement that Obama signed with Iran, the #1 sponsor of terror on the state department's list, seems to be the VERY SAME THING, and sold on the VERY SAME PROMISE. The time between the groundbreaking of NK's reactors and their first nuclear bomb test was about 20 years. How long until Iran tests their first nuke? Within 10 years, I'll wager. The questions submitted for respectful debate are these: 1) What is the difference between these two agreements? 2) Were there any positive gains from having made them? 3) Why do democrats tend to forge these agreements with our most hostile enemies? 4) How could we not have learned from NK when considering the Iran agreement? 5) Will Iran turn out just like NK did?
Would NOT making the deal have changed the fact that North Korea was building nuclear weapons? Seems North Korea did what they were going to do anyway, so the agreement really didn't help or hinder the process. Same with Iran. The agreement didn't help or hinder the process there, either. Were they ATTEMPTS to do something? Yes. Will they change anything? Probably not. The basic, underlying truth is that no country with nuclear weapons has ever been invaded. That is a tremendous incentive to develop nuclear weapons. Reagan could have intervened in Iran and North Korea. He chose not to. Bush I and II could have moved to stop the process. Neither did. It's a problem hardly limited to Democrats or Republicans. Every President since Truman has had to make decisions about sending troops into countries about to develop nukes - Russia, China, Pakistan - all Presidents have decided not to.
The North Korea agreement fell a part piece by piece, the first instance of one side complaining that the other wasn't meeting their end of the agreement came in 1998 when the US failed to remove economic sanctions on North Korea. In 1999 North Korea warned that they would resume nuclear weapon research if the US did not remove economic sanctions on them, but it wasn't until 2003 that the agreement completely fell apart. In the case of the Iran nuclear agreement, as of last month the current administration has reported that Iran has complied with the nuclear agreement http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/17/politics/trump-iran-complying-nuclear/index.html However, Iran is now claiming that recently passed sanctions by the US violate the nuclear agreement, and are issuing a complaint to the international body that is overseeing the agreement https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-usa-sanctions-idUSKBN1AI2N0 Will the Iran nuclear agreement go the same route as the North Korean agreement? only time will tell.
This thread is a true statement. A huge share of our problems can be laid at the door step of democrats.
