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Twelve years ago in a hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea, Emory University Distinguished Visiting Professor of History and Political Science Marion Creekmore was awoken suddenly in the middle of the night by a knock on his door. Standing before him in his pajamas was former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. “Get dressed,” Carter said. “We have to talk.”
Concerned over eavesdropping, the pair walked and talked in the hotel garden, deliberating over what the next move should be in what Creekmore calls one of Carter’s most important legacies – his diplomatic intervention in the 1994 North Korean nuclear crisis.
Creekmore, who was program director of The Carter Center at the time, has written about this historic trip in his new book A Moment of Crisis: Jimmy Carter, The Power of a Peacemaker, and North Korea’s Nuclear Ambitions. He was granted unparalleled access to archival materials, such as Carter Center papers, Carter’s diary notes, and conversations.
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Carter’s trip to North Korea took place in an atmosphere of diplomatic deadlock. Suspicions that North Korea was building nuclear weapons had led the U.S. to press for sanctions that North Korean leader Kim Il Sung insisted would be a declaration of war. Convinced that war was a strong possibility, Carter traveled to North Korea despite serious reservations in the Clinton Administration and South Korean government. His face-to-face talks with Kim Il Sung peacefully ended the crisis with an agreement that “kept the North Korean plutonium-based nuclear weapons program totally frozen,” said Creekmore.
“That agreement lasted for eight years. During that time North Korea did not produce one nanogram of plutonium – that was, until December 2002, when the agreement collapsed,” he said. Today, North Korea has resumed its nuclear program, boycotting six-party talks, involving China, Japan, the Koreas, Russia and the U.S., and insisting it will not return unless Washington drops financial restrictions.
Creekmore pointed to Carter’s insistence on treating everyone with great courtesy and respect in 1994 as a possible lesson for today’s crisis. “As Carter showed us in 1994, what we ought to be doing today is trying to find a way to negotiate with North Korea,” he said, “which means we have to give up things, just as we expect them to give up things. If we do that, we may cut a deal and if we don’t, we will have more support from others than we have today for more forceful action.
“I would submit that we can live with the existing communist regime in North Korea, it is not a vital American interest to see that regime fall. It would be nice if it happened, but we don’t need to bring about the destruction of that regime to protect ourselves, we simply need to work out an arrangement that they get rid of their nuclear weapons,” he said. |
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