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Cato Daily Dispatch for August 18, 2003

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U.S. Steps Up Military Pressure on North Korea
Fresh Debate (Not Always Illuminating) Over Energy Policy
Sabotaged Iraqi Infrastructure Slows Reconstruction

U.S. Steps Up Military Pressure on North Korea

"The Bush administration, while preparing for talks soon with North Korea, is also stepping up military pressure with plans for a joint naval exercise next month to train for interdicting at sea arms and other materials being transported to and from the North," according to The New York Times.

"Administration officials and Asian diplomats said that the exercise would be carried out in the Coral Sea off northeastern Australia in September and that it was officially described as directed at no one country. A principal intention, however, was to send a sharp signal to North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, they said."

In "All the Players at the Table: A Multilateral Solution to the North Korean Nuclear Crisis," Cato Senior Fellow Doug Bandow writes: "Washington's dominant role in Northeast Asia was unnecessary when the North's threats were limited to conventional forces. That entanglement will be equally unnecessary--but far more dangerous--if North Korea becomes a nuclear power. . . . Multilateral negotiations and pressure from the four regional powers--China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea--offer the best hope of forestalling North Korean production and sale of nuclear weapons."

Fresh Debate (Not Always Illuminating) Over Energy Policy

"The nation's worst blackout is putting energy--especially upgrading high-voltage transmission lines--back on Congress' radar," reports The Associated Press. "But resolving the problem could be difficult and expensive.

"Regional conflicts, the controversy of electricity industry deregulation and concern about a power struggle between state regulators and those in Washington are among the issues that could sidetrack whatever might be needed to insulate the power system from future blackouts."

As policy makers debate how to go about preventing another blackout in the future, Jerry Taylor and Peter VanDoren, respectively Cato's director of natural resource studies and editor of Regulation magazine, write about their solutions in an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal.

"Market actors must be allowed to discover the most efficient transmission and generation arrangements without politicians imposing some uniform model upon the industry. Neither politicians nor regulators know how to organize industrial sectors or systematically arrange business transactions. If it were otherwise, Cuba and North Korea would be economic powerhouses.," Taylor and VanDoren write.

For more Cato scholarship on electricity policy, visit our research site devoted to the topic.

Sabotaged Iraqi Infrastructure Slows Reconstruction

"Suspected attacks on Iraq's infrastructure have closed its oil pipeline to Turkey only two days after it reopened and cut off water supplies to a large swathe of Baghdad," the Financial Times reports.

"Paul Bremer, US chief administrator, on Sunday said closure of the 300km pipeline from Kirkuk to Ceyhan, Turkey's southern port, would 'cost the Iraqi people $7m a day' and hurt the process of reconstruction."

In "Leave Iraq As Soon As Possible," Cato Director of Defense Policy Studies Charles Pena writes: "To prevent gratitude from turning to resentment and hostility, we must have the wisdom to leave as quickly as possible. If we don't, the United States runs the risk of enduring its own version of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan: Arabs and Muslims from the region may flock to Iraq to expel the American infidel, and the United States could be bogged down for years."

Jonathan Block, editor, jblock@cato.org