John Boehner, October 14, 2006

Last week, Kim Jung Il – the two-bit dictator of North Korea’s oppressive Marxist government – claimed that his country had successfully tested a nuclear weapon. Whether or not North Korea actually achieved what it said, we must now work to prevent this madman from exporting his technology, and we must do all we can to protect ourselves from the threat posed by rogue regimes with weapons of mass destruction.

In deciding how we move forward, it’s important to know where we’ve been. North Korea first made its nuclear ambitions known when it withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1993. The Clinton Administration darted around the problem, and - under the so-called “Agreed Framework” - promised North Korea the free oil, food and nuclear technology it was desperately seeking.

In exchange for a promise to end North Korea’s nuclear program, Clinton committed to provide Kim Jung Il two light water nuclear reactors. He agreed to provide 500,000 metric tons of oil to North Korea annually until the first of the two nuclear reactors became operational. And he promised to establish full diplomatic relations with North Korea and to end economic sanctions by June 2000.

Kim Jung Il was supposed to halt development of his weapons programs in return for all of these goodies. He did the exact opposite.

In 1998, Congress was assured by the Clinton Administration that North Korea had no ballistic missile program. A week later, Kim Jung Il launched an ICBM over Japan. What was Clinton’s response? Another multi-million dollar aid package. Instead of getting tough, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright traveled to Pyongyang to present Kim Jung Il with a basketball autographed by Michael Jordan.

After President Bush came to office, he discovered that North Korea had been violating the “Agreed Framework” by continuing work on a covert nuclear weapons program. When the Bush Administration confronted the North Koreans with this evidence in 2002, they shrugged -- after all, they’d had eight years to keep working on nuclear weapons while we gave them food, oil, and technology under the “Agreed Framework.”

Now that Kim Jung Il has succeeded in doing what he set out to do in 1993, Albright says America needs “a willingness to engage in direct talks” with North Korea again. Unfortunately, the all-carrots-and-no-sticks approach of the 1990s where we directly negotiated with North Korea has already failed.

The right approach is for America to work with other members of the international community as we did this weekend when tough new sanctions were imposed on North Korea. Rogue regimes must know there are consequences for their actions. And we must encourage North Korea to re-engage in “six party” talks with America, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and China.

At the same time, we must continue developing an effective U.S. missile defense shield. I’ve fought against efforts to gut our missile defenses -- but we must do more to boost our capabilities, and I remain committed to making it happen.

We must also prevent North Korea from exporting its technology to rogue regimes like Iran and terrorist organizations like al Qaeda. With his country impoverished and lacking products to export, Kim Jung Il would surely like to become a “nuclear supermarket.” We can’t afford to let that happen.

The “basketball diplomacy” of Clinton and his allies has failed us -- appeasement does not work. We must now move forward with strength and purpose, and be willing to back up our words with action.

Congressman John Boehner is the House Majority Leader. Boehner, a Republican, represents Ohio's Eighth Congressional District, which includes Miami, Butler, Preble, Darke, and Mercer Counties.