One Large Step for North Korea, One Even Greater Step for Disarmament

The New York Times reported on Monday September 3 that North Korea announced the United States will be lifting economic sanctions from and removing it from the list of countries charged with sponsoring terrorism. Christopher Hill, the chief American envoy to North Korea, disagreed with the announcement saying that the country still had a long way off before the United States would lift its sanctions. Although, North Korea will definitely be providing a full declaration of all their nuclear programs and will DISABLE all of them by the end of THIS year, as in December 2007.

This is a HUGE deal for the Bush administration (I mean, come on, we went to war in Iraq looking for a couple of WMDs and well, nada, nothing…), and for global disarmament. Looking back on the article regarding disarmament, there are more failed attempts at peaceful weapons limitations than won. Looking past the fact that the United States is one of the five recognized nuclear powers and is able to deploy missiles at will, I give major kudos to the U.S. for making the world a little safer. According to the article, there are only three other treaties to have successfully implemented peaceful limitations, and one of them, the Washington Treaty, didn’t really work either. (Japan eventually pulled out of the agreement.) There are still countries building up their nuclear weapons program (i.e. India, Iran, etc.) and posing a threat to security…but there is hope! If a seemingly unreasonable Kim Jong-Il was able to be negotiated with, maybe there is hope for other slightly power crazed leaders like President Ahmadinejad of Iran. This is one large step for North Korea and one even greater step for global safety.