Cooling Off a Hot Head : Administration’s phased-in approach toward North Korea gains backing

Key international support seems to be forming behind the Clinton Administration’s proposal to compel North Korea to drop its nuclear weapons program by subjecting it to graduated sanctions.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev indicates his country is ready to accept sanctions as a last resort. Japan says it will go along with any sanctions voted by the U.N. Security Council. China continues to regard sanctions as “ineffective.” Significantly, though, China chose to abstain rather than vote against the recent decision by the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency to end technical assistance to North Korea because of its refusal to allow full international inspection of its nuclear facilities. That abstention strongly hints that China might well decide not to cast a veto when the sanctions resolution comes before the Security Council.

The sanctions debate has a long way to go. The U.S. draft resolution has just reached the council, and it will probably be several weeks before a final resolution is ready to be voted on. However, it’s beginning to appear that the Clinton Administration’s efforts to line up countries whose support for sanctions is essential is meeting success.

A big reason could be that there’s now a new appreciation of how appallingly high the stakes in this confrontation really are. A nuclear-armed North Korea would produce a radical shift in the balance of power in Northeast Asia, making it perhaps all but certain that South Korea and Japan would feel compelled to acquire their own nuclear arsenals. But disruptions to the international balance of power wouldn’t end there. If Pyongyang reveals the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to be little more than an unenforceable scrap of paper other nuclear wanna-bes--Iran and Iraq among them--could quickly try to realize their ambitions.

The Clinton Administration’s phased-in approach is the necessary one for gaining political backing in the international community. Equally vital now is that North Korea be left in no doubt about the readiness of the United States and its allies to respond with overwhelming force if Pyongyang seeks to move this confrontation into the arena of open conflict.