Mixed Signals Over Threats

North Korea this week moved closer to building nuclear weapons, drawing a muted response from the United States that reflects its lack of leverage with the Stalinist regime. Washington’s hesitance about East Asia contrasts with months of hawkish pronouncements regarding Iraq. The Bush administration could gain more support with a better explanation of its different treatment of the two nations.

North Korea in October admitted pursuing development of nuclear weapons, violating a 1994 agreement. When the United States retaliated by halting shipments of fuel oil, North Korea reopened a plutonium reprocessing plant north of the capital and Wednesday was said to be moving fuel rods into the nearby reactor area, a necessary step for weapons production. Nuclear experts believe that the North could build several nuclear weapons by next fall. That poses a great danger from a country that has assassinated South Korean officials, starves and brutalizes its own people and sells weapons to other countries to stave off economic catastrophe.

When North Korea reached about the same point in nuclear weapons development in 1994, the Clinton administration beefed up U.S. troop strength in South Korea and prepared to attack the North. The Pentagon shipped Patriot missiles to Pusan and brought in more advanced Apache attack helicopters.

Washington mixed force and diplomacy then, dispatching former President Carter to meet with North Korea’s leader and getting help from China, a close ally of Pyongyang that continues to oppose atomic weapons on the Korean peninsula. This time around, the administration has not gone beyond a few words of bluster from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The strikingly different treatment of two adversaries who seem equally dangerous demands better explanation. One argument the Bush administration could make for military action against Iraq, but hasn’t, is that a nuclear-armed Baghdad would be more dangerous than North Korea. Iraq has used chemical weapons against Iran and Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s and invaded Kuwait in 1990. Saddam Hussein is a risk-taker unable to read the responses of other nations. He may believe he could forestall invasion by threatening to use nuclear weapons. Or, if challenged, he might use a weapon if he actually had one. North Korea would be a far more dangerous war adversary, but has in the past had a better sense of how far it could go without provoking an international response.

The Pentagon has announced that it plans to send 50,000 troops to the Middle East in the coming weeks, doubling the number now near Iraq. The buildup makes war more likely, despite this month’s Los Angeles Times poll, in which 72% of the respondents said the president has not provided enough evidence against Iraq to justify launching military action.

If United Nations inspectors do not provide more evidence that Iraq is developing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, the administration will have to fall back on Hussein’s past belligerency and violations of U.N. resolutions to argue that he is so dangerous as to warrant invasion. That is unlikely to persuade the ordinary Americans whose support the president will need if he sends U.S. troops into battle.