Bush’s ‘Appeasement’ Policy in North Korea

Re “Bush’s Passive Appeasement,” Commentary, May 31: George Bush’s policy toward North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is not “passive” appeasement, as Steve Andreasen claims. It is active appeasement. That’s because Bush explicitly dropped President Clinton’s promise to attack North Korea if the North removed from storage its nuclear fuel rods at Yongbyon. As Bush’s Secretary of State Colin Powell said in December 2002, “the Clinton administration did have a declaratory policy that if anything else happened at Yongbyon, they would attack it. We don’t have that policy.”

Leonard Wayne

La Crescenta