U.S. takes a calculated risk in North Korea

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See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

One of the ÒdiscoveriesÓ in Iraq is just how slipshod, corrupt, and inefficient Sadaam Hussein was. However, he could and did maintain totalitarian domestic oppression insuring Òthe peace of the graveÓ. We should not be surprised: it was the history of former Communist states and of heterodox tyrannies from Haiti to Serbia.

The U.S. is dealing with this phenomenon in trying to analyze and diffuse the North Korean threat to stability in Asia, and by extension to the world. For just as Sadaam threatened dominance of the Gulf oil states and support of anti-American terrorism around the world, a decrepit North Korea poses the danger perhaps even more as a proliferator of missiles and weapons of mass destruction to other rogue states, rather than as a threat itself to the peace of the Peninsular.

Almost daily the observer must deal with contradictory North Korean statements as must U.S. negotiators and experts. We know now from bitter experience that bluster, lies and blackmail are standard to Pyongyang. Mistranslations become 24-hour crises; small talk outside the confines of formal negotiations has to be given Delphic scrutiny.

But Washington also has to fear behind all this confusion and secrecy is a real threat. That has posed a dilemma for policymakers in Washington.

The Administration, not without a good deal of internal dispute, has chosen to meet this North Korean threat through the use of multilateral diplomacy, mobilization of an alliance of neighbors with like interests. In a sense, that policy has been adopted force majeure. For while Sec. Rumsfeld has argued we have the military wherewithal to conduct war in the Mideast and use military force on the Korean peninsular, there is no doubt U.S. resources are strained. Iraq will require significant U.S. force for some time to clean up the mess, and to prevent ø if nothing else by our very presence ø meddling by neighbors like Iran and Syria. Furthermore, in pursuit of a settlement for Iraq that would influence the area, President Bush has lent his weight to entreaties of the State Dept., our European allies, and particularly the British, to make a dramatic push for a settlement of the nearly 100-year-old Zionist-Arab dispute. That, too, requires American muscle ø or the threat of it, for example, to force Syria to abandon supporting terrorist operations against Israel.

If there were basis for indecision in Washington, it is heightened by attitudes among our allies, Japan and South Korea. Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi was apparently finding a meeting of minds with British Prime Minsiter Blair on the need for patience in the Korean crisis. [Although one has to wonder if this is not still another example of the famous Johnson-Kishi misunderstanding in which Japanese wakadimashita was translated ÒI understand your meaning and agreeÓ instead of ÒI understand your position but donÔt necessarily agreeÓ.] Still his apparently influential foreign policy adviser Okamato said rather bluntly [for a Japanese official] -- Ò"I suspect that North Korea may be buying time until it can possess practical nuclear weapons." Furthermore, Okamoto said there was little value in involving Japan in talks with North Korea at this stage, although that was precisely an aim ø in a pretty modest agenda øof U.S. negotiators in the Chinese-sponsored trilateral talks just ended.

In the case of President RohÕs new South Korea government, the U.S. has a hard time getting its ducks in a row. Roh is pursuing a domestically oriented agenda continuing the so-called ÒSunshine PolicyÓ which his predecessor sought to buy off the North Korea with economic assistance, resources they divert to maintaining their huge military establishment threatening half South KoreaÕs population in Greater Seoul. Despite the most deliberate affronts, Seoul has renewed its negotiations for continued assistance. That flies in the face of what eventually must be the only weapon of a non-military approach: an economic blockade to bring the North Koreans to a real bargaining table.

Chinese spokesmen, again often as opaque as the North Koreans, have indicated they, too, oppose the nuclearization of the Peninsular by the North Koreans. China supplies some 70 per cent of North Korea's fuel needs and about 30 per cent of its food. Leverage such as this makes its conformity crucial in any strategy -- short of war -- to force Kim to drop his nuclear ambitions. Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations, Renmin University, says Beijing's concerns needed more assurances from Washington. In return, Beijing "Écould increase pressure by tactically withdrawing part of our assistance and part of our aid."

Ahead, then appears to be an extended period of nerve-wracking negotiating punctuated by periodic bursts of Pyongyang propaganda further complicating the difficult problem Washington will have in coordinating a na•ve and inexperience South Korean president, a Japanese prime minister with a failing popularity curve, and an ambivalent China in a united negotiating position to defuse what may be a ticking North Korean timebomb.