Examining the North Korea deal

A step in the right direction, but maybe not all it's cracked up to be. Fred Kaplan:

There was always one loophole in that document. The Bush administration, in summarizing the deal, said that it required the North Koreans, among other things, to list all their nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs. However, that wasn't quite accurate. The document said only that the North Koreans "will discuss" such a list. (Italics added.)

One lesson learned by those who negotiated the 1990s' Agreed Framework was this: The North Koreans will exploit every loophole, so nail the language down tight. That didn't happen this time—for understandable reasons, which we will soon discuss, but still.

The North Koreans did discuss a list. But, according to some knowledgeable sources, the 60-page list that they actually provided pertains only to the Yongbyon nuclear reactor and to its nearby reprocessing plant. Now this is a big deal. Plutonium is the element that produces the largest number of nuclear bombs in the shortest span of time. But it's not quite the deal that the administration said, or perhaps thought, it was getting. The list was supposed to—or, minus that pesky "discuss" loophole, it looked like it was supposed to—cover "all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs," not just those dealing with plutonium. Other programs would include highly enriched-uranium facilities, high-explosive test sites, nuclear test sites, and storage facilities that might contain bombs and fissile materials. The list reportedly does not include any of that.

Kaplan began the article by clarifying that North Korea only destroyed the cooling tower at Yongbyon.