Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis
Author: Mike Chinoy
Advance Praise for Meltdown
"It's easy to demonize the North Koreans, not quite as easy to dismiss them; although the Bush administration has tried to do both. Mike Chinoy brilliantly and painstakingly reconstructs the faltering and dangerous dynamic by which Washington and Pyonyang misread one another's intentions. It's a path that could well lead to nuclear catastrophe and a story that's been told here with unblinking clarity."—Ted Koppel
“Mike Chinoy’s superbly written book tells the tragic story of how Washington’s unwillingness to engage in serious diplomacy with Pyongyang contributed to a new nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, alienating our South Korean allies in the process. He goes on to document the dramatic reversal of course that has seen the Bush administration drop its failed policy aimed at isolating and confronting North Korea, adopting instead a creative approach that, if North Korea acts wisely and rationally, could finally end the nuclear crisis, bring North Korea into the community of nations, and improve the lives of the North Korean people. This book, and the blunt, no-holds-barred comments it contains from many of the key protagonists of this period, is not to be missed.”—Evans Revere, president, The Korea Society
“The explosion of a nuclear warhead by North Korea in October 2006 was the single greatest failure in a decades-long effort to contain the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Mike Chinoy's Meltdown tells the tale of the tortured path that led to that failure, and the ongoing attempt to contain the fallout, with an authority and a wealth ofinsider detail that is unmatched. Meltdown is a diplomatic history that reads like a spy novel. It takes us inside the Washington wars that crippled the Bush administration's North Korea policy, and offers fresh insights into the view from Pyongyang, as well as from Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo. Meltdown will be the gold standard for reporting on the North Korean nuclear crisis for years to come."—Daniel Sneider, Associate Director for Research, Shorenstein Asia–Pacific Research Center, Stanford University
The Washington Post - Glenn Kessler
a tour de force of reporting…Chinoy clearly sympathizes with administration officials who favored engagement with North Korea. But he lets officials who wanted to isolate Pyongyang make their case. More than 100 people granted him interviews, and the list is a who's who of both senior and junior U.S. players on North Korea policy.
Publishers Weekly
The Bush administration's bellicose but feckless attempts to quash North Korea's nuclear weapons program were the nadir of its famously maladroit diplomacy, to judge by this revealing blow-by-blow. Ex-CNN Pyongyang correspondent Chinoy details the rancorous infighting during which hardliners like John Bolton and Dick Cheney talked down State Department doves to impose an intransigent North Korea policy, replacing negotiations with Axis-of-Evil rhetoric and unilateral demands. Their approach backfired disastrously, he argues, as Pyongyang restarted and escalated its dormant nuclear initiative and finally tested an atom bomb while the U.S. fulminated helplessly-a needless outcome, he suggests, given the North Koreans' oft-expressed readiness to abandon their nuclear program in exchange for aid and normalized relations. Chinoy presents a lucid exposition of the issues along with a colorful account of diplomatic wrangling in which U.S. officials rivaled their North Korean counterparts in dogmatism and prickly sensitivity to niceties. (One joint statement was almost derailed when the Americans insisted on changing the phrase "peaceful coexistence" to "exist peacefully together.") His is a fine, insightful diplomatic history of a dire confrontation-and a hard-hitting critique of the Bush administration's foreign policy. Photos. (Aug. 7)
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Kirkus Reviews
A knowledgeable chronicle of U.S.-North Korean negotiations during the Clinton and Bush White House years. Chinoy (China Live, 1997, etc.) formerly covered North and South Korea for CNN and now studies them from afar as a fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy. He shows that Kim Jong-Il is indeed a dictator who continues the repressive policies of his father. Unlike many other journalists and foreign-policy analysts, however, Chinoy analyzes U.S. and South Korean policymakers just as closely as the North Koreans, with China, Japan and other nations also figuring in the mix. This provides welcome context for North Korea's development of a nuclear arsenal. If Kim Jong-Il comes across as a villain driving an "Axis of Evil" nation, current President Bush is painted in colors just as dark. In scene after scene, meticulously sourced by Chinoy (though some of those sources insisted on and received anonymity), Bush and his chief foreign-policy advisors come across as ideologues at best, fools squandering an opportunity for nuclear disarmament at worst. The author does not appear to be a shrill, knee-jerk Bush administration critic, but a journalist taking the story where the facts have led him. The irony is that the Bush administration built its foreign policy around the desire to prevent countries like North Korea from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, but failed in part because of its inability to negotiate effectively. Chinoy's depiction of the visceral, personal hostility Bush developed for Kim Jong-Il is especially disturbing, because he shows a U.S. president making decisions based on emotion instead of reason. The only caveat to make about this splendid book is that itsdetail is so immense, the back and forth of diplomacy that it describes so lacking in rationality, that the narrative occasionally becomes overwhelming. A triumph of explanatory reporting about foreign policy. Agent: Mel Berger/William Morris Agency
Table of Contents:
1 "Without You There Is No Us" 1
2 So Close ... 21
3 Regime Change 43
4 "Axis of Evil" 65
5 The "Scrub" 81
6 High-Level Meetings 103
7 The Four-Letter Word 127
8 Meltdown 142
9 War Games 158
10 "Read My Statement" 175
11 "We Don't Negotiate with Evil. We Defeat It." 194
12 "Some Good, Some Bad, Some Ugly" 212
13 "We Have Manufactured Nukes" 225
14 The September 19 Declaration 241
15 Illicit Activities 252
16 Going Ballistic 274
17 The Bomb 292
18 "How Are We Going to Get Out of This?" 305
19 "We Are All Waiting for You" 322
20 "Dear Mr. Chairman" 340
Postscript 363
A Note on Sources 367
Notes 371
Select Bibliography 389
Index 391
Book about: A Theory of Incentives in Regulation and Procurement or Applied Economics
Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana
Author: Ann Louise Bardach
"Based on exclusive interviews with Fidel Castro, his sister Juanita, his former brother-in-law Rafael Diaz-Balart, the family of Elian Gonzalez, the friends and family of the legendary American fugitive Robert Vesco, the intrepid terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, and the inner circles of Jeb Bush and the late exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa, Cuba Confidential exposes the hardball take-no-prisoners tactics of the Cuban exile leadership, and its manipulation and exploitation by ten American presidents." Bardach homes in on Fidel Castro and his cronies, taking us closer than we've ever been - and on the militant exiles who have devoted their lives, with CIA connivance, to trying to eliminate him. From Calle Ocho to Juan Miguel Gonzalez's kitchen table in Cardenas, from Guantanamo Bay to Union City to Washington, D.C., Ann Louise Bardach serves up an unforgettable portrait of Cuba and its exiles.
Publishers Weekly
The 2000 custody battle between little Eli n Gonz lez's father, acting, according to Bardach, as the surrogate for the Cuban government, and his exiled Miami relatives, the surrogate anti-Castro forces, became a relentless media event and international affair. The PEN award-winning investigative journalist uses the Elian story as a starting place to examine the larger issues that have roiled Cuba-U.S. politics for four decades. Relying on interviews with Castro, U.S. and Cuban government officials, relatives from both sides of Elian's family and members of the Cuban-exile community, she explores the sources of American enmity toward Cuba and the blood feuds (for example, the Florida congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart is the nephew of Castro's former wife) that inform anti-Castro sentiments among Cuban exiles. Along the way Bardach finds craven political opportunism (hoping to secure Cuban-exile support, Bush and Gore both backed keeping Elian in the U.S. during the 2000 presidential campaign), political corruption facilitated by the power of the Cuban-exile community in the Miami area, and a shocking tolerance, by post-September 11 standards at least, within the exile community and U.S. government for terrorism directed toward Cuba. Bardach's credibility is sometimes undermined by her failure to critically assess her informants' accusations-innuendoes about Florida governor Jeb Bush's philandering fall into this category-and her tendency to hint at political conspiracies everywhere. All in all, though, Bardach's muckraker is entertaining and disturbing, as it reflects on the power of the dubiously motivated Cuban-exile community. 16 pages of photos not seen by PW. Agent, Tina Bennett. (On sale Oct. 1) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Foreign Affairs
A marvelous and evocative deconstruction of the incestuous relationships and hardball tactics that have kept Cuba firmly under Fidel Castro and U.S. policy toward Cuba paralyzed under the influence of Miami's Cuban Americans. Bardach pulls no punches here, making her book the most accessible account of this sorry tangle yet. She has talked to everyone: crooks, spooks, politicos, hired assassins, the inner circle of Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and even the garrulous and manipulative Castro himself. This is a story of betrayal, suspicion, and conspiracies, with agents and counteragents immersed in an ongoing Caribbean Cold War where John Le Carre would feel very much at home. Bardach also documents the exile community as it shifted from favoring paramilitary strikes against Castro to launching a brilliantly successful lobbying effort within the American political system in the early 1980s, modeled on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. As one former Washington official put it, "The Israeli lobby buys Democrats and rents Republicans, the Cubans buy Republicans and rent Democrats." As Bardach makes clear, the power of this lobby in Congress and beyond remains very much alive for now — as does Castro.
Library Journal
The quagmire of the shattered Cuban family is the background for PEN Award-winning journalist Bardach's investigation of the tragic parallel universes in the two Cubas: the largest island in the Caribbean and the diverse, multifaceted exile community in Miami. Since 1959, Cuban families have suffered, driven apart by politics, geography, conflicting convictions, secrets, and the anguish of separation. Four decades of seething betrayal, suspicion, and conspiracies culminated in world media attention during the Eli n Gonz lez affair, the single most transforming event of Cuba-U.S. relations since the Bay of Pigs. Drawing on ten years of reporting on Cuba and its exiles, Bardach transitions effectively between profiles of aging patriarch and leader Fidel Castro and Cuban exiles seeking freedom but shunted into silence by hard-liners committed to revenge, retribution, and power. Designed for a general audience, this compact volume offers clear explanations of events, individuals, and dynamics since the Cuban Revolution, telling the story of the Gonz lez family and many others. Bibliographic citations incorporate bilingual print, online resources, and interviews. Highly recommended for purchase by large public and academic libraries and specialized contemporary Latin American studies collections.-Sylvia D. Hall-Ellis, LIS Program, Coll. of Education, Univ. of Denver Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
An illuminating portrait, by a first-class investigative journalist, of the half-century-long civil war that has divided Cuban against itself. Drawing on ten years of reporting among south Florida's exile communities and in Cuba, Bardach (ed., Cuba: A Traveler's Literary Companion, p. 453) offers an extraordinarily complete view of the personal and political gulf that separates Cubans. Here are all sorts of revelations, few of them comforting. Florida's Cubans, 95% of them white, disdain their mixed-blood and black island compatriots, in good part on racial grounds, so that, as one Miami talk-radio host remarked, had Eliбn Gonzбlez been black, "he would have been tossed back into the sea." Castro (who lobbied hard for the Soviets to launch a nuclear attack on the US), cursed with an elephant's memory and a deep well of vengeance, has devoted much of his energy to punishing former enemies, like the boyhood rival who served 20 years for having once punched him in the face. (Castro's friend Gabriel Garc'a Mбrquez was once moved to remark, "I can't think of a worse loser than Fidel.") At once pawns and generals in the superpower struggle, Cubans in the US have enjoyed unusual privileges, from the "wet foot/dry foot" policy that "grants any Cuban who makes it to land the right to stay" to perks such as free private-school tuition and special loans from the Small Business Administration. Bardach writes with an awareness of the Big Picture-two of her best moments come in deconstructing the Eliбn affair and in tracing the influence of Cuban exiles in all branches of the Bush family-but her focus tends to stay on individual actors, from exiled terrorists who dream of assassinating Castro tofamilies whose members, for political reasons, haven't spoken to each other for 40 or more years. Were Castro to die tomorrow, Bardach suggests, the Cuban civil war would flame up again unabated. Powerful, evenhanded, thoroughly edifying. Author tour
