Striking Iraq, Stroking North Korea

The Iraq crisis will probably be resolved one way or another over the next few months. Either U.S. military action or simply its threat will again prove effective. This is because Iraq has no significant deterrent to our use of force. In fact, the Iraq threat, although certainly serious, is comparatively small. So why, then, is the full force of our national invective being aimed at Baghdad, particularly when the world holds a much greater threat to the United States and its allies: North Korea?

In contrast to his demands for dealing quickly and forcefully with Iraq, President Bush seemed positively calm last month when discussing the disturbing news that North Korea has been -- and continues -- working on a uranium enrichment program. “We felt like they had given their word they weren’t going to do this,” the president mildly complained. He then went ahead and approved the delivery of a U.S. shipment of heavy fuel oil to North Korea under a 1994 agreement, which Pyongyang asserted was “nullified” or “hanging by a thread.”

North Korea attempted to justify its actions with the explanation that its designation by the U.S. as part of an “axis of evil” was tantamount to a declaration of war, and that therefore North Korea had every right to pursue the development of any powerful weapon it needed to defend itself. After Bush talked over the matter with his counterparts from Japan and South Korea, the three countries, in cautious diplomatic language, warned North Korea that its “relations with the international community” hinged on the prompt dismantlement of its clandestine nuclear weapons program. Further oil shipments have been halted.

Few in the United States or elsewhere have objected to the president’s coolheaded and multilateral approach to Pyongyang’s provocation. Americans, however, may be excused if they wonder whether Iraq or North Korea is the bigger threat and which is the best target for a preemptive American military strike.

North Korea has a far greater capability of inflicting death and destruction on the U.S. and its allies than Iraq. Pyongyang may already have one or more plutonium-based nuclear weapons and now brazenly admits to a program that, if successful, could lead to the production of six high-yield enriched uranium bombs a year. At the same time, intelligence agencies here and abroad agree that Iraq has no nuclear weapons and is at best four years away from obtaining them.

North Korea, meanwhile, is the world’s largest exporter of missile technology. According to the latest CIA National Threat Estimate, Pyongyang will by 2015 “most likely” possess missiles that could deliver nuclear weapons onto American cities. The same report judges Iraq as having only the “possibility” of building a similar threat in that time, and that would only be if international sanctions on Baghdad were lifted. North Korea also has an advanced program of chemical and biological weapons development and unlike Iraq did not have international inspectors detecting and destroying its stockpiles during the 1990s.

In explaining the differences between Iraq and North Korea, President Bush has emphasized Hussein’s oppression of his people, implying it is worse than that of North Korea. But in comparing the terrible things the two regimes have done to their respective subjects, the brutal totalitarianism of North Korea, by almost any measure, is considerably worse than the brutal dictatorship of Hussein.

In suppressing a Kurdish uprising during the 1980s, the Iraqi government killed some 5,000 civilians with poison gas. If there had been a similar uprising in North Korea -- a more closed society than Iraq -- the world would very likely never have heard of its bloody suppression. We do know from international aid workers, however, that as a result of disastrous economic policies, up to 2 million rural North Koreans have died of starvation, malnutrition and related diseases in recent years.

If a war on Iraq is to be considered part of a war on terrorism, North Korea has proved itself a far greater terrorist threat. Its agents blew up a South Korean airliner carrying 115 people in 1987, carried out assassinations in South Korea, kidnapped Japanese citizens and tried to kill a South Korean leader traveling abroad. Moreover, the regime has dealt in narcotics and distributed counterfeit U.S. dollars.

A conservative conclusion is that North Korea is certainly no less “evil” than Iraq and no less hostile to America. But it is without question much more powerful than Iraq and thus poses a much greater threat to the United States. But up to now neither menace has been imminent and thus neither has warranted preemptive destruction.

In 1950, when the North attacked South Korea, and in 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the regimes thought or had been led to believe the U.S. would not intervene. Since those dates, the two states, despite their intense hatred of the U.S., have been deterred from attacking either militarily or through terrorism. They know and greatly fear the inevitable reprisal that would surely end in their own ruin. Iraq, with its huge potential oil wealth, has even more to lose than desperately poor North Korea. But in both cases, deterrence has worked very well, and there is no good reason to believe it would not continue to do so.

On the other hand, when we turn the dynamic of deterrence around and calculate the cost to the U.S. of launching a preemptive war, we find a great difference between Iraq and North Korea. Iraq may have a few rusting Scud missiles hidden away in the mountains that might possibly hit invading American troops and Israel -- perhaps with biological and chemical weapons. The White House and the Israeli government, however, believe such threats to be containable; otherwise they would not be so willing to risk provoking them.

On the other hand, North Korea, as it has threatened, could unquestionably turn Seoul into a “sea of fire” in the event of a U.S. attack. The North has thousands of artillery cannon and missiles aimed at the South Korean capital and U.S. forces in the South. Most of North Korea’s million-man army is poised for attack near the border. This includes 50,000 special operations personnel trained for rapid deployment behind South Korean and American lines. One of the North’s fleet of submarines might get through and sink an American carrier. (Hussein, by comparison, essentially has no navy.) Washington must also assume that the North has at least one nuclear weapon that could conceivably be deployed in several ways. Eventually, American and South Korean forces would prevail, but hundreds of thousands or even millions could be killed.

This brings up the other telling difference between Iraq and North Korea. Almost every South Korean man, woman and child is aghast at the thought of the United States launching a preemptive war against the North. Without the most serious provocation or compelling proof of an imminent North Korean onslaught, South Korea would vigorously oppose any such American strike. The Israeli government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in contrast, is pleased with the prospect of America destroying a regime that it sees as one of Israel’s principal state enemies. The new Israeli foreign minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has publicly suggested that Israel’s hand in dealing with the Palestinians will be strengthened once the Americans get rid of Hussein.

Bush seems to recognize that the best way to deal with the serious threat that North Korea poses to the South -- and could eventually pose directly to the United States -- is to continue the policy that has succeeded over the long term with other powerful adversaries: working with regional allies to assure the continuation of collective military deterrence; pursuing diplomacy; and exploiting opportunities to open up the hermetically sealed enemy. In his first few months in office, Bush brusquely rejected this long-term approach to Pyongyang. Today, he wisely embraces it.

Why hasn’t the president adopted a similar policy of deterrence and diplomacy toward Iraq? The threat of war against Baghdad helped the Republicans, perhaps critically, in the recent elections. But Bush is also clearly convinced that a war against Iraq, unlike one against North Korea, could be concluded quickly and successfully with few casualties among Americans and friendly neighbor countries. In addition, Bush no doubt believes a successful military assault on Iraq would provide a needed victory for his newly proclaimed strategy of preemptive war and would, rather than provoking the “Arab street,” teach it a sobering lesson.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s success in getting the president to sign on to another round of U.N. weapons inspections may have slowed the momentum for war. And Bush senior advisor Karl Rove, with his Republican electoral victory in hand, may be less likely to urge Bush to action. Still, the threat of a costly, unilateral, preemptive war looms. One hopes the president will consider taking the same calm and deliberate approach with Iraq that he has taken with the more dangerous North Korea.