E-Mail This Article to a Friend The kimchi factor (continued)

Q: Let’s touch in tandem on the two other points in the "axis of evil," North Korea and Iran. We don’t hear much about North Korea these days. Is it still a threat, and, if so, what’s the specific nature of the threat?

A: North Korea is a threat, not so much to the United States of America; it’s a threat to its more immediate neighbors. That’s because it has no capacity to deliver any weapons outside of its immediate geographic area, and nobody’s assuming it will. North Korea is a threat because Kim Jong Il, the leader, is so capricious or so unpredictable that it is possible that if his regime collapses he would either invade South Korea — apparently he has at least two nuclear weapons — or he might even use those against neighbors. And so it is very dangerous to have North Korea with weapons. The second major problem with North Korea, of course, is that we know that North Korea has kept itself in power by selling missile technology to Pakistan. The way Pakistan got its missile technology was buying it from North Korea. And so the fear is that Korea would become a center of proliferation in order to raise money to support itself. I think the reason we don’t hear much about North Korea is that I think gradually the situation is becoming much more positive. China and the US in particular have been working on cutting a deal with North Korea where they would surrender their programs with rigorous inspections in return for financial aid from China, Japan, South Korea, and the US. And I think that while there’s still major points of disagreement between North Korea and the United States, my own sense is it’s moving in the right direction.

Q: You mentioned nuclear proliferation. Again, months ago there was a lot of talk about fear that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon. Do you think the danger still exists that there could be a North Korean–Iran connection, or do you think that might be neutralized?

A: The connection that is more worrisome is the one that’s already occurred between Iran and Pakistan. And we know now that Abdul Kadir Khan, the father of the nuclear program of Pakistan, sold equipment for enriching uranium and some nuclear technology to the Iranians. So their nuclear program clearly grew out of the Pakistani effort. I believe that Iran is truly committed, deeply committed, to developing nuclear weapons, and it’s going to be very difficult for any American administration to head them off from doing this. And what’s interesting is that one never knows how far to believe the Iranians. But the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations — who, by the way, is widely known among those of us who follow Iran as a really good guy — appears involved. For example, he was crucial in negotiating the release of all of the American hostages who were held in Lebanon by Hezbollah back in the 1980s. He was the guy who was flying to Lebanon to try to get the US hostages out. So he’s played a positive role in the past. Well, he’s been sent by the Iranians to be the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, which means he’s the highest-ranking Iranian official in North America, and of course he has an office in New York. There are a lot of negotiations going on between him and [the former Bush-administration] senior officials, included Brent Scowcroft, about a so-called grand bargain which the Iranians have offered the United States. The Iranians have offered to give up their nuclear program, end support for terrorism, and open their economy to foreign investment if the United States eliminates sanctions and recognizes the government of Iran. So there’s been a lot of great interest on the part of [George W.] Bush’s father’s national-security adviser and lots of other people on this deal. Now, the present Bush administration won’t buy into this and it’s continued to be dominated by the hard-liners who haven’t been willing to explore the extent to which the Iranians are really serious about this. But one of the problems with dealing with Iran — unlike North Korea, unlike Iraq — is that Iran has a political process. I mean there’s a real opposition going on in Iran. About 75 percent of the population of Iran is opposed to the present system. So the problem for us is that if you really clobber these guys you’re going to alienate the rest of the population who hate them, too. The question is how to stimulate the political process in Iran to move the system on. One last comment on Iran. I know Iran well, and I am utterly convinced that there is no revolution possible in Iran for the foreseeable future. I mean this is way off. And so of course there are lots of Bush hard-liners who think the US could stimulate a revolution in Iran, and that’s just totally false.

Q: Let’s return to the United States. If you were to explain to a sort of quintessential middle-class, educated Frenchman or German, look, you may not like what the United States is doing — and I’m not suggesting you have to — but let me explain to you why the United States is acting the way it is, what would you tell them? Sort of a reverse kimchi factor.

A: I think that’s very good. I think that we have to start with the hatred of the Bush administration for Iraq, and there are a lot of reasons for that. One was the Gulf War, one was the use of weapons of mass destruction, a third was the attempt to assassinate the father of this president. And I think they all entered office, I mean all — I’m talking about Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz — committed to regime change in Iraq. So one is that there’s been this focus on that which was. The second major thing I think is it is very difficult for people outside the United States to appreciate the depth of the assault that Americans felt on September 11th. We had a sense of security which was bred of our geography and our two great oceans that have protected us, our ability to stay out of the horrendous damage of World Wars I and II. It came from the sense that the world had turned in our favor with the collapse of the Soviet Union and communism and pretty much out of the total blue. Then we had this spectacular devastating attack on these tremendous symbols of globalism and American economic prosperity and the death of 3000 Americans. And I think it put such fear into the American people that there was this sense that the need to punish, the need for revenge, the need to do something was very powerful. And finally I would say that, added to that, has to be the fact that the president of the United States, as he has told us again and again and again, is a born-again Christian who found Jesus Christ when he was 40. His life was totally transformed, he gave up alcohol and drugs, and he became this pretty ascetic, disciplined man committed to faith-based initiatives. And he was the man who took the oath of office to defend and protect the United States of America and he failed. And I think there’s such a sense of rage on the president’s part and sense of having to rectify his failure to protect this country, that it also explains why he struck out. And this is not the time to take allies, this is the time to act vigorously; and that’s what he did.

Q: Bearing in mind what you’ve just said, how would you see the campaign between Kerry and Bush playing out?

A: [Laughing] If Senator Kerry doesn’t get off the ski slopes soon, it’s going to be over before he even starts. [Laughing] The Bush administration has done such a fabulous job of beginning to portray him as not of presidential stock, that if he doesn’t get going and counter this picture they’ve been painting so effectively it’s really going to be very difficult to overcome. I mean, he’s up against the most formidable team we’ve seen in American politics for a very long time. So I think it’s going to be a pretty dirty campaign, I think it’s going to be a lying campaign, I think there will be constant defamation of character. And it’s clearly the case that the senator really couldn’t possibly win on his own. What he’s going to need to do is mobilize all these new groups that have been formed, like, for example, the money of George Soros. If these guys begin to act with some effectiveness and a useful vice-president is picked and the senator becomes a better campaigner, then I think it’s going to be, as they say, a real close election.

Q: I’ve pressed a lot of hot buttons in our brief conversation here. What should people be thinking about, worrying about, contemplating that we haven’t spoken about? What are some of the ...

A: Two things. First, which we haven’t really talked about exclusively, is terrorism. And there are two issues about terrorism which I think need to be said. The first is to deal with people like Ayman Al-Zawahiri or Osama bin Laden and the other terrorist leaders — the appropriate policy is murder. I mean the United States has to kill those people. There is no other way to deal with them. Or arrest them and permanently incarcerate them. That’s easy and that’s the policy, obviously, the Bush administration is committed to. There’s a second policy which they have not demonstrated they’re committed to, which is crucial, which is you have to slow the recruitment process into terrorism. The analogy I make is with malaria. If you have malaria you kill a lot of mosquitoes, but the basic way you eliminate malaria is you have to dry up swamps, you have to drain swamps, the breeding ground from which the mosquitoes come, and that’s what you do with malaria. That’s what you’ve got to do with terrorism. So what does that mean? It means that these many failed countries that are out there — Pakistan, Yemen, even Saudi Arabia — need to begin to see meaningful change, democracy, opening up, liberalism, investment, economic development, which they haven’t seen. In addition to that, the centerpiece has to be settling the Arab-Israeli issue. And there has been no meaningful effort by the Bush administration to do that; it has committed itself totally to Israel and has done nothing about advancing a settlement other than the one Ariel Sharon is imposing on the Palestinians. That’s the first thing that’s crucial.

Second thing that’s crucial is the American economy. Americans should be worrying about a number of aspects of the American economy. Number one, we consume from abroad about $550 billion more than we sell abroad. The result of that is that we need to take in from other people $550 billion a year to pay for the stuff we buy from abroad. So foreigners have to send Americans $550 billion every year; $500 billion is $2 billion a day pretty much for every working day of the year, 50 weeks a year, five days a week, every day foreigners have to send us $2 billion. You have to ask how long they’re going to think that’s a good idea and how long it’s possible for that. Because we’re getting all the money that would otherwise go into economic development. So that’s going to come to an end, and if it comes to an end abruptly it’s going to be catastrophic for the American economy. The last thing about the American economy is it seems to me that our present economic policies are really despicable, because what we’re doing is we’re fighting a war in Iraq and we’re stimulating our economy on the backs of our children. We’re having a pretty good time economically and our children are going to have to pay for it because we’re building up federal-government debt at an unprecedented rate. And it seems to me that’s not what most parents want for their kids.

Marvin Zonis will read from his book, The Kimchi Matters: Global Business and Local Politics in a Crisis-Driven World, at the Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Ave, in Cambridge, on Monday, March 29, at 7 p.m. Peter Kadzis can be reached at pkadzis[a]phx.com