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Cato Daily Dispatch for August 28, 2003

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North Korea Has Nukes Ready to Test
Peace Roadmap Leads to More Violence
Judges Handing Down Shorter Sentences

North Korea Has Nukes Ready to Test

"North Korea startled a six-nation conference in China on East Asian security by announcing its intentions to formally declare its possession of nuclear weapons and to carry out a nuclear test, an administration official said Thursday," according to The Associated Press. "North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il also told the gathering that his country has the means to deliver nuclear weapons, an apparent reference to the North's highly developed missile program."

In "Options for Dealing with North Korea," Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato's vice president for foreign policy and defense studies, argues that the United States should reduce the U.S. military presence in South Korea and Japan and give those countries the green light to deal with North Korea as they see fit.

Cato Senior Fellow Doug Bandow echoes that sentiment in "Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Why Military Action Should Not Be Used to Resolve the North Korean Nuclear Crisis." He writes: "Rather than adopting the most dangerous course of action as a first resort, the United States should instead take the opportunity to reduce its threat profile in the region by focusing on multilateral diplomatic efforts that place primary responsibility for resolving the crisis on those regional actors most threatened by the North Korean nuclear program."

Peace Roadmap Leads to More Violence

"When President Bush announced his support of an ambitious Middle East peace plan four months ago in the Oval Office, he offered an admonition to everyone concerned: 'In order for peace to occur, all parties must assume their responsibilities,'" The Washington Post reports.

Some officials are blaming the new violence in Israel partly on the United States, saying America "failed to serve as a public, transparent monitor, an essential ingredient of the plan."

In "The Real Lesson of the Oslo Accord: 'Localize' the Arab-Israeli Conflict," a 1994 Cato Foreign Policy Briefing, Research Fellow Leon Hadar argues that the United States should remove itself from the strife in Israel. "The United States has little reason to commit significant time or resources to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict," he says.

"Instead of trying to micromanage the Arab-Israeli peace process, the United States should minimize its financial commitment to Israel and the emerging Palestinian entity and encourage economic cooperation between Israel and the Arab states, which could be the foundation for an interdependent Middle Eastern economy. Regional prosperity will advance peace far more effectively than American payoffs to prop up an artificial pax Americana."

Judges Handing Down Shorter Sentences

"From Maine to California, federal judges are using their gavels to express disapproval of lengthy mandatory sentences and strict sentencing guidelines by routinely giving convicted offenders less time than the law requires, federal sentencing records show," reports USA Today. "In fiscal 2001, the bulk of downward departures from the federal guidelines--nearly 70 percent--came in drug and immigration cases...."

Cato Associate Policy Analyst David B. Kopel addresses the federal sentencing guidelines in "Prison Blues: How America's Foolish Sentencing Policies Endanger Public Safety." He writes: "Today, prisons are bursting at the seams, and there is insufficient room for hard-core violent criminals because the space is already taken by nonviolent criminals serving mandatory minimums. Mandatory minimums are the best thing that ever happened to violent criminals, because mandatory minimums prevent today's judges from doing what they want--putting violent thugs away for a long time--and force the prison system to waste precious space on nonviolent offenders. The violent criminals out on parole are given their opportunity to commit more crimes by a criminal justice system fixated on drugs.

"... It is time for America's prisons to recognize that their primary mission is not the punishment of voluntary capitalist acts between consenting adults, even if the acts involve substances disapproved by the majority. It is time for America's prisons to be redevoted, as they were in previous, safer generations, to the incapacitation of violent criminals."

Wyatt Dubois, editor, wdubois@cato.org