U.S. Blows Chance to Rein In N. Korea

“The difference between a statesman and a politician,” goes the old British proverb, “is that the former looks to the next generation and the latter to the next election.”

By this standard, the miserable little deal that the Clinton administration struck with North Korea’s extortionist regime in Berlin on Sunday was certainly not the work of a statesman.

The administration agreed to buy its way out of a short-term crisis with North Korea--one that North Korea created in hope of being paid off. At the same time, the administration put off its plans from last spring to try to settle the broader problems posed by North Korea’s missile program.

The result is that there almost certainly will be some new crisis over North Korea’s missiles in another year or two. And another crisis a year or two after that. It will be left to Clinton’s successor to try to come up with the longer-term solution that this administration said only recently it was pursuing.

The Berlin deal is a mini-trade. The administration obtained from North Korea a promise that it will not test its new, long-range Taepodong-2 missile. In exchange, Clinton will ease the economic sanctions that the United States has maintained against the Pyongyang regime for nearly half a century.

What’s the matter with such a deal? After all, it eases a crisis: North Korea’s plans to test its missile had upset its neighbors, notably Japan.

What’s wrong is that the Berlin agreement does not cover important aspects of the missile problem and leaves North Korea with several bargaining chips for the future. It does precisely what the Clinton administration said earlier it wanted not to do.

To understand fully what has happened, you need to know the recent background--a history on which the administration would rather not dwell.

A year ago, worried by congressional criticisms of its policy on North Korea, the administration appointed former Defense Secretary William J. Perry to conduct a broad review.

After months of work, Perry concluded last spring that the United States should ask North Korea to make a fundamental decision whether it wanted a new relationship with the United States and its allies.

Perry suggested a comprehensive approach: If North Korea would abandon its missile and nuclear programs, it would gain a whole package of benefits. If it continued to be threatening, it would face a series of penalties.

The whole idea was to force North Korea out of its recent pattern of making an attention-grabbing threat, then bargaining for benefits, then making a new threat. “We were facing a situation in which we were going from crisis to crisis, event to event, situation to situation,” one senior administration official told The Times.

In May, Perry carried a letter from Clinton to Pyongyang, laying out this approach. The North Korean regime did not respond directly. Instead, in June, only a few weeks after Perry’s trip, American intelligence agencies detected North Korean plans to test its new Taepodong-2 missile.

In Berlin, the administration finally won North Korea’s agreement not to carry out this test. Assuming it honors its promise, Pyongyang thus will be back at the status quo of last May. And the United States will have bargained away a lifting of the trade embargo, one of the benefits Perry was promising in his package.

The Berlin deal prevents North Korea only from testing the missile, not from exporting it or continuing to develop it or deploying it. And so, in a year or two, we can expect a new crisis over North Korean missile exports or production.

Such a narrow deal flies in the face of Perry’s comprehensive approach. “This is really what he [Perry] said he wouldn’t do, which is to do different pieces of this [comprehensive package] at different times,” observed Jonathan Pollack, a specialist on Northeast Asia at the Rand Corp. think tank.

Of course, the administration insists that it has not changed its policy. White House officials say that the United States is still seeking a comprehensive package. The Berlin agreement merely sets the stage for a broader deal later on, they say.

That’s sheer sophistry. The administration originally said that it wanted a comprehensive deal to avoid being forced into piecemeal deals. Now it is making a piecemeal deal, ripping out bits of the comprehensive package and leaving others to be negotiated separately.

If this were a baseball game, then the score after the Berlin negotiations would be: North Korea 1, the United States 0.

Not to worry, the Clinton administration says. The game isn’t over. It’s only the first inning. But here’s what the administration isn’t telling you: If the United States wants to play the second inning, we’re going to have to bribe the North Koreans again. And for the third, we’ll have to pay still more.

There are names for this game, and they aren’t baseball.

Jim Mann’s column appears in this space every Wednesday.