The Best Strategy Is Do Nothing

Even after several days of commentary in the media by government officials and “experts,” there remains a fog of misunderstanding about why North Korea on Monday tested a Taipodong I ballistic missile in the Sea of Japan.

This missile launch must be put into context. Although North Korea is an economic basket case where industry has fallen apart and hundreds of thousands have already died of starvation, the country still maintains the fourth-largest military in the world. North Korea has hundreds of surface-to-surface missiles armed with high-explosive, chemical and--perhaps--biological warheads for its own use. The CIA estimates that North Korea has enough weapons-grade plutonium to construct one to three fissile nuclear devices and that it manufactures missiles for sale abroad to Iran, Pakistan and Syria.

Yet there is no missile defense of South Korea’s capital, Seoul, where more than 11 million South Koreans live and where more than 25% of South Korea’s economy resides. There are more than 70,000 Americans in South Korea, including 37,000 troops plus business people and their families. Most of these Americans live in or around Seoul. Even though North Korea would absolutely lose a war against the U.S.-South Korean Combined Forces Command in about two months of mid-to-high-intensity combat, North Korean missiles could destroy Seoul and inflict severe damage on much of Japan in any given two-to-three-day period. Pyongyang knows all of this and knows that Washington, Seoul and Tokyo know it too.

That context is the basis for North Korea’s well-documented traditional pattern of “brinksmanship” diplomacy to wring concessions from the United States and its allies in South Korea and Japan. Brinkmanship has worked in the past and there is no reason for the leadership in Pyongyang to abandon it now. In fact, there is every reason to push harder, given the economic crises in South Korea and Japan and the leadership vacuum in America.

Kim Jong Il, the paranoid North Korean leader about to be anointed president of the last fully Stalinist dictatorship in the world, senses weakness and a lack of resolve in Washington, Tokyo and Seoul and has decided to flex his country’s muscles to achieve a host of domestic and foreign-policy objectives, including:

* Showing the people of his country that, despite their misery, their nation is strong and commands respect.

* Showing all major actors in Northeast Asia that North Korea is strong and must be reckoned with.

* Letting Washington, Tokyo and Seoul know that:

1) They had better deliver on the 1994 agreement to fund and build in North Korea two light-water reactors and provide 500,000 tons of heavy oil per year until the $4.6-billion reactors are completed, in spite of the recent economic crises of South Korea and Japan.

2) Humanitarian assistance to North Korea must continue unabated.

3) The United States immediately must end the decades-old embargo against North Korea.

4) North Korea’s sales of missiles abroad will continue unless the United States antes up about $500 million per year to offset North Korea’s loss of those sales.

Will “the Leader of the Free World” knuckle under and provide more concessions? The Clinton administration, beleaguered by crises with Iraq, Kosovo, terrorism, loss of leadership in the U.N. Security Council and the Monica syndrome will give away almost anything to keep a North-South Korea crisis off the foreign policy agenda.

The trouble is that, in the absence of strategy based on power politics by the U.S. and its allies, North Korea’s pattern of brinkmanship and periods of high tension will continue. Historically, wars often start by accident or miscalculation during periods of high tension.

What should be U.S. and allied strategy toward North Korea? A “do nothing” strategy, which is the hardest of all for zealous government bureaucrats to implement. Do nothing to either harm or help North Korea, while letting the Stalinist government in Pyongyang go down under the weight of its own economic mismanagement, horribly repressive political system and the forces of nature. Meanwhile, put a missile defense around Seoul and upgrade Japan’s missile defenses now to remove the primary factor allowing North Korean brinksmanship.