Friends to the end - failure of Bill Clinton to comprehend North Korea's determination to develop nuclear weapons - Editorial

THE Clinton Administration has argued that its diplomacy with North Korea is a success, on the ground that it has "frozen" North Korea's nuclear-weapons development program. The argument rests on the technical fact that Pyongyang's principal known reactor, at Yongbyon, would need to be shut down in order for weapons-grade plutonium to be extracted, and, as long as the diplomatic minuet continues, North Korea has been discouraged from doing so. Thus (it has been argued), we have had Kim Il-Sung over a barrel ever since we caught him attempting to evade International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors. Even though he might already have obtained enough plutonium for one or conceivably two weapons, which is unfortunate, we have stymied any further advance.

This argument was always counterintuitive. It presumed, without any direct knowledge of what was going on in North Korea, that Kim Il-Sung couldn't be doing anything significant we didn't know about--as if he had sent all his nuclear technicians home on furlough for the duration. Unlikely. He was already moving ahead on "weaponization" (that is, developing what plutonium he had into a usable weapon), and moving ahead even more rapidly on long-range missiles to deliver it.

Now, revelations from the IAEA team's aborted inspections in March have knocked the Administration's argument into a cocked hat. While the team was barred from seeing all it wanted (which was ominous enough), it was able to observe some surprising new facilities under construction, including a parallel reprocessing line that could double North Korea's plutonium production capacity in six months. In addition, the team saw evidence of a giant 50-megawatt reactor under construction (presumably to replace the merely 5-MW reactor that has had the world community so in a tizzy).

It is a depressing picture, and enough to prove that the Administration's perpetual evasions are a grave mistake. The passage of time is our enemy. Unless we start thinking seriously about coercive options, we have no policy. It is time to bring the question of economic blockade to a head at the UN, letting the Chinese know that if they stand in the way, their Most Favored Nation status is dead. It is time also to reinforce our troops in South Korea. Defense Secretary William Perry has commented cryptically--but usefully--on NBC's Meet the Press that military options can't be excluded.

Finally, congressional Republicans must get behind the bill introduced by Representative Benjamin Gilman last November (H.J. Res. 292) that would support the President's use of "any means necessary and appropriate" to prevent the North Koreans from achieving a nuclear-weapons capability. This would strengthen the President's hand enormously for the crisis that may now be unavoidable.