Iraq & North Korea: The double-bladed axe

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

If Òthe axis of evilÓ was only a rhetorical phrase when President Bush threw it out just a year ago ø a misguided one his critics maintain ø that is certainly no longer the case. Every day presents new evidence the two major foreign policy issues are no more separated than the three Axis powers of World War II.

Naming the North Koreans as international culprits did not provoke a new crisis in the Peninsula. Just as in 1993-94, when they first used the threat of weapons of mass destruction to squeeze aid and a respite for a tottering regime from the Clinton Administration, the formula is much the same. Their threat of a new nuclear weapons program and further development of missiles was already underway.

While their goals may seem lunatic to the rest of the world, the North Korean leadership Ñ with one whopping exception,, the initiation of the Korean War in 1950 Ñ always has shown cunning to play from a weak hand. Now, as in the past, their tactics have been brutal ø and often cavalier; their propaganda has been Goebbels-style ø the big lie and baseless calumny. But all, as they say, has been crazy as a fox.

Their long and successful use of competition between Communist China and the Soviet Union has now been replaced by a more sophisticated manipulation of Japan, South Korea, Russia, and even China, against the U.S. and each other. Their appeal to Korean nationalism in a newly prosperous and self-confident South Korea is clever and has accurate gauged the mood. Their appeal to Japanese leadership suddenly plunged into the realities of WMD so near at hand, partially succeeds. They know they present their Chinese Communist partners with equally unpleasant alternatives if Beijing intervenes ø nuclear weapons in the Korean peninsular if Pyongyang goes ahead, and possibly eventually as a result in Japan and Taiwan, or implosion of a regime if the pressure to halt it should go awry that would bring a flood of refugees and probably the unwanted reunification of Korea.

The critics have argued that U.S. policy is different in Korea and Iraq. Hello! Of course that is the case. In the Korean peninsula we are dealing with a regime with a long record of state terrorism that has, we have publicly said, several nuclear weapons, proved missile capacity to strike our most important allies in the region, and probably other WMD. In Iraq, we are trying to halt just this kind of new threat arising from a tyrannical regime with a history of trying to achieve that weaponry.

Dealing with the two problems, therefore, ipso facto, requires different strategy and tactics. In the case of Iraq ø the origin of the Gulf War ø we have a rogue state with the capacity to dominate its weaker Arab neighbors. That domination would not only pose a regional threat but would threaten the worldÕs energy markets and supplies, to permit blackmail of the major powers even before it would, presumably, continue to develop intercontinental WMD. Nor is there any reason to doubt that such a regime, left to its own devices, would collaborate with the extranational terrorist enemies of the U.S. such as Al Qaida.

In the case of Korea, the regional powers are not oil-rich pygmies but major powers ø Japan, South Korea, China and Russia. It is therefore logical that the U.S. wage a diplomatic campaign to neutralize an existing WMD threat in collaboration with its allies, Japan and South Korea, and with China and Russia who have a common interest in restraining a failed state in possession of nukes and which might set off a regional nuclear arms race.

But these differences do not dissolve the connection between the two crises. Obviously, Pyongyang is trying to exploit the U.S.Õ major military effort focused on the Mideast. It also hopes to exploit the U.S.Õ European alliesÕ reluctance to use force in Iraq. The UN fulminations over inspection in Iraq are a splendid model for any effort ø when that kind of negotiating becomes relevant ø to enforce denuclearization with a reluctant North Korean regime. Already the expulsion of the UNÕs International Atomic AgencyÕs North Korean inspectors poses a dilemma for China with its veto at the UN Security Council, at a time when an equally excruciating call for Security Council action on Iraq may be required. The bandwagon effect for accepting the use of force in Iraq , which seems to be taking place among the U.S.Õ allies on Iraq has important implications for Japan and South Korea, perhaps even China, in the Korean crisis.

Managing skillfully the Iraq problem ø even if that means an eventual decision to go to war Ñ will lend weight to any U.S. diplomacy which the Bush Administration has rightfully said is the strategy for defusing the North Korean WMD blackmail.