Bringing Governments up to PAR: Democracy is the best instrument that humans have devised for ensuring individual liberty over the long term, but only when it exists within a framework of order established by law. We must develop a much more sophisticated strategy of creating the deeper preconditions for successful liberal democracy - preconditions that extend far beyond the simple holding of elections. The United States should assist and encourage Popular, Accountable, and Rights regarding (PAR) governments worldwide. To help bring governments up to PAR, we must connect them and their citizens in as many ways as possible to governments and societies that are already at PAR and provide them with incentives and support to follow suit. Building a Liberal Order: The system of international institutions that the United States and its allies built after World War II and steadily expanded over the course of the Cold War is broken. Every major institution - the United Nations (U.N.), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) - and countless smaller ones face calls for major reform. The United States has the largest stake of any nation in fixing this system, precisely because we are the most powerful nation in the world. Power cannot be wielded unilaterally, and in the pursuit of a narrowly drawn definition of the national interest, because such actions breed growing resentment, fear, and resistance. We need to reassure other nations about our global role and win their support to tackle common problems.

AMY GOODMAN: Yesterday, Arizona Senator John McCain gave a speech in Detroit, and he said, "I would remind Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and other critics of the Bush administration policies that the Framework Agreement of the Clinton administration was a failure." Explain what that Framework Agreement was. BRUCE CUMINGS: Well, it was an agreement that came after a very dire threat of war in 1994 that froze their entire plutonium facility at Yongbyon in North Korea. They had seals on the doors, closed-circuit television, and at least two UN inspectors on the ground, 24/7, all the time. So there isn't any possibility of that agreement having failed. It held for eight years and denied North Korea the plutonium that would have allowed them to make more bombs. Senator McCain is engaged in some sort of demagoguery here, because I don't know a single expert who would say that that Framework Agreement was not successful, at least for eight years, in keeping North Korea's plutonium facility shutdown. Now, the enriched uranium program is not even clearly a program for a bomb. It may be to enrich uranium for light-water reactors that were expected to have been built by the United States and its allies. But even if it is for a bomb, it's much more difficult to enrich uranium to a weapons grade and create a uranium bomb than it is to create a plutonium bomb, plus they already have now, thanks to the Bush administration's policies, the wherewithal for six to eight plutonium bombs, so in effect they don't even need the other program. People say North Korea cheated. Wow, isn't that really terrible? Kim Jong-il cheated. I don't know anyone who thinks that Kim Jong-il is a person who can be trusted, but I do know that North Korea kept that agreement made in 1994 and the U.S. did not. We pledged ourselves to normalize relations with North Korea. We didn't do that. We pledged ourselves to build light-water reactors. They got started in 2002. So when you actually look at that agreement between country X and country Y, rather than the endlessly demonized North Korean regime, you see that we are responsible, as well as the North Koreans, for the current situation. But as far as Senator McCain is concerned, he is just flat wrong. It's not a partisan question. It's a question of knowing what that agreement was and whether it was carried out or not.

The guy is crazy. He wants Nukes

We need to look long and hard at our methods and determine which were not effective.

No doubt, you being a free market type, would be happy to see the norks sell one to who ever wants to cough up the money.

Say we are neighbors, and I have 5000 guns in my house. You buy one gun, and I have a fit. That's what we look like....in other words, hysterical idiots.

it would be more accurate to say that we have 5000 guns (nukes) in our house--and have never declared our intent to use them in anything but a defensive capacity

The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

For ten years the US and other countries have tried to keep North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons. After 10 years, we have failed.

The statement didn't specify what those measures could be.

Yes the US is armed to the teeth and has been since the cold war began but we have never threatened the use of nukes except in defense of our country.

The NoKo situation was not changed one iota by the Clinton/Carter agreement regardless of the protestations of the Left.

We supplied the fissionable material that NK posseses today under that agreement.

It would be more accurate to say that we have 5000 guns (nukes) in our house--and have never declared our intent to use them in anything but a defensive capacity

If you are correct that the fissionable material was of Russian origin then that only proves that NoKo was already in violation of the Clinton/Carter agreement as they didn't turn that material over to the IAEA.

That you think that NoKo, a nutty, vile totalitarian state has every right to posses them is just unserious and you know it.

Anyone with any brains knows that North Korea has nukes now for one reason & one reason only... BILL CLINTON!

Kinda like suicide bombers

What would make me happy is the US taking the lead in worldwide disarmament. In this day & age...that would be suicide.