North Korea will pose the next problem

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 12, 2002 | by James Lacey

North Korea has nukes? I am shocked. North Korea admits it has been building nuclear weapons and administration officials state they already have assembled a couple!

The news hit like a thunderclap on official Washington. How could they be doing this? After all, North Korea promised not to assemble nukes as long as we built two nuclear reactors for them, shipped them 500,000 tons of oil a year, fed their army and overlooked a few other little things.

That these "little things" happened to include firing ballistic missiles over Japan and starving a couple million of its own citizens to death were just not the kind of thing to cause diplomatic upset.

The North Koreans say it is all our fault. They had no other choice after we included them as part of the "Axis of Evil." It is interesting then that as soon as they made the shortlist of evil they immediately started doing whatever it took to ensure that they were worthy of inclusion. But does anyone really believe they managed to jump-start a nuclear-weapons program and build the bomb in a year's time?

I am sure the "head-in-the-sand" Clinton administration would love to believe that. It is easier than admitting it was duped once again.

Maybe in a few months, some former Clinton official will come forward to announce that Bill Clinton had a special, supersecret plan to dispose of the North Korean threat--"if only the incoming Bushies had implemented it!"

It is time to stop looking backward. North Korea has the bomb; now we have to deal with it.

Many on the left already have come forward to ask why North Korea should be treated any differently than Iraq. That should be seen for what it is--code talking for "Let's not do anything about Iraq."

The easy answer, though, is that North Korea is different from Iraq, but I guess it takes a particularly subtle geopolitical mind to see it. As Secretary of State Colin Powell told Fox News, "[Saddam] Hussein in recent years has invaded two of his neighbors. He has used these kinds of weapons of mass destruction against his own people, as well as his neighbors. He has resources available to him. It's a very wealthy little country. They've misspent their wealth, but it is a very wealthy little country. And Korea is an isolated country with no wealth, with a broken economy, a broken society, desperately in need, and with neighbors who are not going to be happy with this new development." Of course those on the left are not often blessed with this kind of keen insight, but for the rest of us the differences are pretty plain.

Iraq might be the first and most important issue on our plate, but after we have sorted that out it will be necessary to turn our full attention to North Korea. This does not mean that a military response is called for, though it is too early to rule out that option. The only threat North Korea possesses is its nuclear weapons, which can reach Japan, South Korea, China and Russia.

South Korea is no Kuwait and could defeat or at least badly bloody a cross border assault. This does not mean that North Korea's probably certifiable "Dear Leader," Kim Chong-il, would not order his army across the border in some Asian Gotterdammerung, but for now we may need to accept that risk. Unlike Saddam, the Korean ruler has shown no inclination to gamble his regime or his own survival.

Though North Korea has not attacked anyone lately, that is no reason to trust in its long-term peaceful intentions. North Korea is a nation in the process of disintegration. Its economy is in ruins and famine stalks the countryside. There is the very real chance that before the end comes Kim will decide to go out in an orgy of fire and ruin.

That is why North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons is untenable. This is not the time to precipitate action, unless of course we can target his nuclear facilities and weapons with an ultrahigh degree of certainty. As a start though, we need to work with every nation in the region to apply pressure on the Korean regime to dismantle its weapons and nuclear infrastructure.

As Powell says, none of them can be very happy with this development, though they probably are not naive enough to be as surprised by it as we apparently were.

In the meantime, we need to accelerate deployment of antimissile systems. This is both to protect our allies and our own forces in Korea and Japan. Now that a rogue power has both nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them we no longer can depend on the good will of others to protect our troops in the region.

It also should be beyond question that it is past time to stop paying for the construction of nuclear reactors and sending oil that is being used to supply the Korean war machine. All these payments amounted to little more than blackmail that the Clinton administration was willing to pay for good behavior. That failed. Now it is time for President George W. Bush's foreign-policy grown-ups to fashion a policy that will work.

JAMES LACEY IS A COLONEL IN THE U.S. ARMY RESERVE AND A NEW YORK-BASED COLUMNIST WITH EXPERTISE IN FINANCE AND MILITARY AFFAIRS.