Iraq ø and N. Korea

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

There are moments when Iraq and Saddam Hussein looks ÒeasyÓ compared to North Korea and Kim Il Jong. Neither, of course, are. There is, in fact, a certain symmetry. For at the moment, not only do we face dangerous pariah regimes in both places, with track records of barbarous behavior that demand international policing, but in both situations we are opposed by old and well meaning allies who simply do not want to face up to obvious truths.

There is, of course, the timeline. In North Korea, our opponent has used our fecklessness over the past decade to build weapons of mass destruction [WMD] now abuilding in Iraq. First, Carter and then the Clinton Administration negotiated agreements with a proved state terrorist regime, author of one of the bloodiest wars in history, intended to buy peace and stability. As Victor Galinsky, a nuclear expert has written, incredibly we offered as part of our package of palliatives additional nuclear technology as part of our gifts to buy off their animosity.

Now, after another decade of barbarism including a state-induced famine that may have cost two million lives, the same people who gave us the Framework of proposed reconciliation with Pyongyang, are telling us, again, that the regime has changed its spots. The new despot, Kim Il Jong, has seen the error of his ways, we are told, is moving toward a negotiated settlement, with the help of Beijing. He intends, they say, to liberalize his economy because he can do no less. He would negotiate an end to a second nuclear weapons program ø and God knows what other biological and chemical weaponry. And he would halt the sale of his missile technology to other pariah states [and alas! to some of our allies like Egypt and Pakistan].

All of this is possible, we are told, because of a change of heart in Pyongyang and because, ultimately, our side is more powerful.

Yet, the fact is that we have absolutely no evidence for this argument. When we told North Korean interlocutors we knew they were building a second nuclear technology only a few days ago, they denied it, then came back to tell us not only that it was true [is it?] but warned us they had even more diabolical devices. When they apologized to the Japanese [not yet to the South Koreans] for abducting their citizens, they obviously lied about what had happened to them, did not come clean about their numbers. When they suddenly set up a Potemkin village to prove they were moving toward market economics, they chose one of the biggest crooks in Mainland China to manage it øpromptly thrown under house arrest by Beijing.

This is the new and different North Korea with whom we can do business? Hardly likely.

What are we to do? Not only do we face a duplicitous enemy across the Demilitarized Zone with our tripwire force of 32,000 American soldiers and Seoul under their guns, but also Washington is discouraged to build a new and constructive strategy by our allies. Unless the Korean Republic voters refuse President Kim Dae Jung AdministrationÕs protŽgŽ in the December election ø the conservative opponent is at the moment ahead but SeoulÕs presidential selection is a fickle process involving last minute party restructuring ø South Korea continues economic aid that, diverted to PyongyangÕs million-man army, keeps it alive. Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi, unable to bite the bullet at home so far to prevent the collapse of the Japanese banking system, went cap in hand to Pyongyang, with new knowledge of violations of past agreements.

Bush has got ChinaÕs [probably] lame duck Jiang to Òtut-tutÓ about nuclear warheads on the Korean Peninsular. But it is less than a secret China has been lending technology and probably components to the North Korean missiles program all along. It is less than a secret, too, that a prominent Bangkok Sino-Thai has played middleman, and like the German and Ukrainian firms trading with Iraq, it can hardly be that Beijing [as Berlin and Kiv] do not know and condone by looking the other way.

Under the best of circumstances, an economic embargo by the allied powers and China against North Korea, would be a dangerous enterprise. There is circumstantial evidence ø the flight of refugees into ChinaÕs Manchuria, for example ø that the regime is near collapse. [One has only to remember how our West German allies insisted that East Germany was ÒdifferentÓ from other Bloc members, a solid citizen that could endure whatever, on the very eve of its implosion.] A disintegrating Stalinist state armed with WMD is a Moscow theater full of armed and hysterical Chechen terrorists writ large.

Yet there can be no other strategic option for Washington than to lobby our friends in Seoul and Tokyo to cut off the North KoreansÕ water. Jiang and Chinese leadership, including the Third Generation waiting in the wings, now needs U.S. trade and technology transfer as never before to solve their own domestic woes. Making cooperation on North Korean state part of American China policy ø must be the quid pro quo for such things as a resumption of military exchanges now said to be in the offing.

No one ever promised us a rose garden in Northeast Asia. The road ahead will be as difficult if not more so than the trail we are blazing at the UN into the Persian Gulf. But the beginning of wisdom is to recognize the desperate situation for what it is, not to try to relive the Carter and Clinton wannabe diplomatic ÒsuccessesÓ.