NORTH KOREA AND THE “AXIS OF EVIL”

• First, a comment about the political partisanship surrounding North Korea.  The Democratic Party claims that had the president talked with North Korea, this could have been avoided.  Is this true?  There is really no shred of evidence that talking with North Korea effects a change in their behavior.  In fact, the history of negotiations with this country proves just the opposite.  The most significant example of this proposition comes from the Clinton administration.  In October 1994, the US and North Korea signed the Agreed Framework, by which North Korea promised to renew its commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, lock up its nuclear fuel rods, and allow inspectors back into the country to monitor its facility.  In exchange, the US, with financial backing from South Korea and Japan, agreed to provide two light-water nuclear reactors for electricity, send a large supply of fuel oil and promised that it would not invade North Korea.  No part of this agreement was ever fulfilled because North Korea did not keep its word.  No intellectually honest person is going to argue that negotiations with North Korea work.  In short, the entire Non-Proliferation Treaty seems to be a blatant failure.

• Second, in a powerful article in The Atlantic, “When North Korea Falls,” Robert D. Kaplan makes the case that the real danger of North Korea is its imminent collapse as a nation.  Borrowing from Robert Collins, retired Army officer and now a civilian expert for the American military on Korea, Kaplan argues that there is a seven-stage paradigm for collapse and that North Korea is currently at stage four.  Resources are depleted, its infrastructure is falling apart, there is widespread corruption and the central government can no longer manage the nation.  According to Kaplan, it is doubtful that there would be a neat merger of North and South Korea as there was between East and West Germany, for example.  Human deprivation is already extreme and relief efforts defy imagination right now.  Further, the US commitment to this peninsula is huge:  It has been 56 years now and more than ten times as many Americans have been killed on the Korean peninsula than in Iraq.  American still has 32,000 troops in Korea, more than half a century after the armistice.  So, what we see is a desperate regime, seemingly imploding, trying everything to get the world’s attention.  Further, several questions loom:  Would North Korea launch an attack to preserve its own leadership?  Would it sell or use nuclear weapons to stave off collapse?  What would a desperate, irrational leader like Kim Jong Il do if threatened with destruction from inside?  These are pressing questions that have no simple answer.

• Third, North Korea simply must be stopped.  But how?  No nation on earth right now will invade North Korea to stop its nuclear program.  So, some form of deterrence is needed.  Both Charles Krauthammer and David Ignatius, respected columnists, regard some form of “nuclear accountability” as the only viable option.  Quoting from Graham Allison’s book, Essence of Decision, both comment that if some type of nuclear device using North Korean material explodes anywhere and harms American citizens or property, inside or outside of the US, the US will retaliate with devastating force against North Korea.  Deterrence in this sense is the guarantee that the US will retaliate with proportionate force, in a devastating and unmistakable manner.  Krauthammer suggests that the president make this declaration:  “Given the fact that there is no other nuclear power so recklessly in violation of its nuclear obligations, it shall be the policy of this nation to regard any detonation of a nuclear explosive on the United States or its allies as an attack by North Korea on the United States requiring a full retaliatory response upon North Korea.”  Albeit frightening, the raw fact is that nothing else has worked with North Korea.  It is silly to believe that sitting down with North Korea at a negotiating table will stop it.  We have tried this for 56 years and they have developed the bomb!  Deterrence is seemingly the only option.

• Finally, Russia and China need to wake up to the real world.  Tom Friedman suggests that the date, 9 October 2006, may be one of those watershed dates of history.  He somewhat humorously calls this date, the date North Korea tested its first nuclear device, the beginning of the “post-post-cold war.”  Unless halted by unforeseen developments, this new era will have three distinct features:  1.  A nuclear Asia.  How long will Japan, Taiwan and South Korea remain nonnuclear with Kim Jong Il brandishing his bomb?  2.  A nuclear Middle East, with Shiite Iran following North Korea’s lead, causing Sunni powers such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria to follow suit.  3.  A disintegrating Iraq in the heart of the Middle East, with its concomitant impact on oil and terrorism.  It will be a much more dangerous and hostile world, unless China and Russia wake up!  Quite frankly, the only countries that can have a dramatic and decisive impact on North Korea and Iran are Russia and China.  A nuclear North Korea, followed by a nuclear Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, are not in China’s interests.  Further, Iran sees China and Russia as far more sympathetic and Iran has thus successfully split the world.  There can be no tough sanctions against Iran unless Russia and China join, and the Europeans are simply too spineless to act.  It is in the interests of both China and Russia to have a nuclear free Asia and a nuclear free Middle East.  As Friedman argues, “They’ve got to start paying a price to preserve this world.”  The US alone simply cannot stop Iran and North Korea.  Russia and China must join with the US to preserve true nuclear non-proliferation.  If they do not, both will bear major responsibility for a very different and very dangerous new world order.

See Tom Friedman’s editorial, New York Times (11 October 2006); Charles Krauthammer’s editorial, Washington Post (13 October 2006); David Ignatius’s editorial, Washington Post (11 October 2006); Robert D. Kaplan, The Atlantic (October 2006), pp. 64-73; Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com; Glenn Kessler and Peter Baker, Washington Post (10 October 2006).