Resolve the Korean Crisis on Our Terms : Nuclear weapons: U.S. must use a stick as well as a carrot.

If history teaches us anything about influencing dictators, it is that the efficacy of incentives depends on the simultaneous employment of disincentives. To get a mule to move, you must show it the carrot and hit it with a stick at the same time.

In its opposition to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, the Clinton Administration’s approach has been the mirror opposite of North Korea’s. Our diplomacy employs only carrots; theirs, only sticks.

Whenever the Clinton Administration’s carrots have failed to prevent North Korea’s violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it has limited its choice of sticks to the withdrawal of the carrot. For instance, the Administration responded to North Korea’s defueling of its nuclear reactor by canceling the offer of a third round of high-level talks. (The call for sanctions was limited to symbolic ones and dropped once Jimmy Carter succumbed to the charms of Kim Il Sung.)

Using sticks such as their threatened expulsion of IAEA inspectors, North Korea has consistently intimidated Administration diplomacy. To divert the United States from punishing his violations of the NPT, Kim Il Sung has raised, then withdrawn his stick, masking his forbearance in the disguise of a carrot.

Thanks to Carter’s performance as an innocent abroad in North Korea, the Administration is obliged to examine Kim’s latest offer. The practical effect of the former President’s public embrace of the “Great Leader” is that Administration efforts to secure even symbolic sanctions would fail at the present time.

I understand why President Clinton might have made a virtue of necessity by announcing that North Korea’s offer was tempting enough to explore in a third round of talks. But I had hoped that North Korea’s long record of broken promises would have restrained Administration exuberance in making the announcement. Forgotten was the reason we canceled our initial offer for talks and sought U.N. sanctions: North Korea’s past diversion and reprocessing of nuclear fuel into enough weapons-grade plutonium for two nuclear bombs. The President greeted North Korea’s promise to freeze its nuclear weapons program and refrain from expelling IAEA inspectors as if Pyongyang had offered a concession worth celebrating.

In fact, North Korea has offered no real concession. The fuel rods that it would use to make weapons-grade plutonium cannot be used until they are less radioactive. The reactor cannot be refueled until the rods have cooled. North Korea’s nuclear program is, of physical necessity, frozen.

As the talks proceed, force enhancements in South Korea that are necessary to diminish North Korea’s ability to destroy Seoul with artillery fire will be held in abeyance, leaving Seoul a hostage to Pyongyang’s future belligerence.

President Clinton now has a significant personal political stake in preventing the perception that the talks have failed. The Carter initiative is now the Clinton initiative. This political reality may cause him to suffer North Korean dilatory negotiating tactics even after it is apparent that Pyongyang is only stalling until it can develop four to six more nuclear weapons.

Although the Administration may attempt to obscure a failure, we will reach a moment when it is apparent to all. That will be when North Korea begins reprocessing the fuel now in cooling ponds into weapons-grade plutonium. Then our only means to deprive North Korea of additional nuclear weapons would be to destroy the reprocessing plant with air strikes.

But the President will not order the strikes because he has neglected to reinforce our defenses sufficiently to spare Seoul from destruction by North Korean artillery. We will have to learn to live with North Korea’s possession of as many as eight nuclear weapons.

There may yet be a way to prevent this nightmare scenario from becoming reality. It would require the President to employ simultaneously the carrot and the stick. We should open the Geneva discussions by informing the North Koreans that while we welcome their latest offer, we are not relying on just their good faith. Accordingly, we will take the precaution of deploying additional counterbattery artillery to our defenses north of Seoul.

Should the North Koreans then suddenly commence the reprocessing of the fuel now in cooling ponds, the President’s decision to exercise a military option will not be hindered by his concern over their current artillery advantage.

If we reject such an approach, the North Koreans may delay a resolution of this crisis until it is too late. North Korea will then have the means to achieve the only strategic objective we have ever been certain it wants: the reunification of Korea under Kim Il Sung.

To those who dismiss this grim prediction, I offer one historical anecdote. In the spring of 1950, Kim Il Sung proposed that he and the South Korean president hold summit talks that August, just as he has proposed to meet with the South Korean president later this month. In June, 1950, the North invaded South Korea, and the United States was dragged into a bloody war for which we were not prepared. If the President wants to avoid a recurrence of the tragedy, he must show much more resolve in his dealings with Kim Il Sung.