The Defining Crisis : Unless U.S.-North Korea Talks Start Soon, War Remains an Option

Just beyond the horizon looms what could be the final phase in the ever-deepening crisis over North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program--an end game of horrendous conflict resulting in massive destruction and loss of life that will make or break the Clinton presidency, define the future of the non-proliferation system and shape the geopolitics of East Asia. Former President Jimmy Carter’s mediation efforts have temporarily halted the downward spiral of action-reaction that was narrowing the choices to either retreat and acceptance of a nuclear North Korea or a deadly confrontation. North Korea’s offer to Carter to freeze its nuclear program and to permit the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to continue monitoring its reactors reopens the still slim hope for a diplomatic solution.

It is hard to overstate the gravity of the Korea problem. This is not Bosnia or Somalia or Haiti, human tragedies producing existential angst in the White House seminars that pass for policy deliberations. We are not talking about peacekeepers or immigration dilemmas. This is the real thing: Korea involves vital national interests and has major regional and global consequences. In what should not be dismissed as mere rhetoric, Pyongyang warns that the U.N. sanctions the Administration is seeking to impose mean war. Yet, the Administration has barely begun to prepare the American public for the potential consequences of its policies.

The showdown with North Korea entered a dangerous new stage last month, when Pyongyang removed fuel rods from its 5-megawatt graphite reactor, thus deliberately destroying key evidence of its past nuclear activities. This willful rejection of its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations led the watchdog IAEA to refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council and to cut off its technical assistance to North Korea.

That triggered Pyongyang’s announced withdrawal from the IAEA. North Korea has still not thrown out two IAEA inspectors monitoring the fuel rods or destroyed the cameras and monitoring equipment at its Yongbyon nuclear complex. As revealed during conversations with Carter, Pyongyang is using those remaining shreds of accountability to bargain for a new round of talks with the United States. If North Korea decides to separate the plutonium from the fuel rods, it could have enough for five or six bombs within the next two months.

At this point, the only way to assess its past nuclear behavior--whether Pyongyang does have enough plutonium for one or two bombs, as U.S. officials suspect--would be to submit to intrusive special inspections as part of the diplomatic bargain. If North Korea goes the final step and removes the IAEA inspectors and monitoring equipment, the worst-case will be seven or eight bombs--with no basis for guesstimates. When you add in Pyongyang’s crash effort to build new ballistic missiles that can hit Japan and its penchant to export such missiles and nuclear material to other rogue states, such as Iran or Libya, the gravity of the threat posed to international security becomes palpable.

But would the application of U.N. sanctions change North Korean behavior? Not likely. As a general rule, carrots work better than sticks. The Administration’s two-phase approach, with an initial, mild, slap-on-the-wrists sanctions resolution to take effect after a grace period if Pyongyang does not cooperate, would probably gain Security Council approval if a new diplomatic effort fails. But that would only buy more time for a final effort to resolve the issue.

The bottom-line question is whether Pyongyang will trade its nuclear program for any package of political and economic blandishments, or whether the isolated regime regards its nuclear program as an ultimate insurance policy? By removing fuel rods from its reactor, it may be trying to have both the ambiguous status of a threshold nuclear power and economic and political rewards. Pyongyang may seek a deal based on accepting the possibility that it may have one or two bombs in exchange for relinquishing further nuclear-weapons activities.

The problem with the Clinton Administration’s policy is that, after 16 months of diplomatic cat-and-mouse, we still don’t know if any deal is possible. Washington has yet to present North Korea with a clear and precise incentive package, spelling out what is required to resolve the issue and how the United States, South Korea and Japan would respond at each step if North Korea forsakes its nuclear program.

Any credible package must require Pyongyang to cooperate fully with the IAEA, dismantle its reprocessing facility and implement the denuclearization agreement it signed with South Korea in December, 1991. Washington should lift its trade embargo, provide food aid and, along with Japan, offer diplomatic recognition. In addition, the United States, South Korea and Japan should jointly devise a plan to decommission North Korean nuclear reactors in exchange for the financing and construction of more proliferation-resistant light-water reactors and other energy alternatives in a reciprocal step-by-step process.

The Carter trip offers an important lesson to the White House: For diplomacy to work, the highest-ranking Administration officials must deal directly with top leadership in Pyongyang. Returning to the bureaucratic routine of assistant-secretary-level talks will mean a return to petty haggling and game playing. Clinton should follow up on the Carter visit by sending a high-powered presidential envoy, a prominent figure with stature and bipartisan credibility, such as Gen. Colin L. Powell, to Pyongyang with full authority to outline a road map for a peaceful resolution.

This move should be accompanied by several other steps. The President must go on television and explain to the American public--and to Kim Il Sung--the gravity of the situation, the stakes involved and the real danger of war or terrorism. At the same time, he must make it clear to North Korea that if it does invade the South, the U.S. and South Korean war aims would be nothing less than reunification by force.

If these two steps do not produce a serious, credible response from North Korea within a defined time frame, the United States and its coalition partners should begin to put in place full-scale sanctions--banning all financial transactions, freezing overseas assets and an oil embargo. North Korea will certainly respond--perhaps, initially sponsoring terrorist acts against U.S. and Japanese targets. But the point would be to demonstrate we are serious about nuclear proliferation and acknowledge that if North Korea refuses a reasonable deal, it mortgages its future and has chosen the path of confrontation.

Finally, to be prudent, the United States should enhance its deterrent forces--move more defensive systems in place and increase air power and readiness in the region, as the Administration is already considering. If Clinton takes such steps, he will have done all that is possible to address a complex situation for which there may be no good answer. But anything less would be an abdication of U.S. leadership and result in a greater threat to international security. At the same time, a credible political solution of the Korea issue would go a long way toward redeeming a foreign policy that has begun to corrode the Clinton presidency.*