Obama’s Sweet-Talking Pyongyang And Tehran Is Failing

Lee Lukoff / December 01, 2010

Naively thinking that Pyongyang and Tehran could be sweet-talked out of their nuclear programs was one of President Obama’s earliest foreign policy blunders. Despite initial giddy expectations that the Obama Administration would achieve a breakthrough in the six-party talks, Pyongyang quickly sent clear signals that it would not adopt a more accommodating stance. But in response to its series of rapid-fire provocations in 2009, the Obama Administration realized that that approach was a failure and reversed its policy 180 degrees to adopt a two-track strategy of pressure and conditional negotiation.

Now we hear that North Korea has admitted to having thousands of uranium enriching centrifuges at their Yongbyon nuclear facility, validating Bush Administration assertions that it was pursuing a covert uranium-based nuclear weapons program. (more…)