For Wary U.S. and Asia, North Korea Is ‘Land of Lousy Options’

When it comes to North Korea, the greatest common ground among a group of American and Asian foreign policy experts who gathered here last week was suspicion.

Suspicion, to begin, of North Korea. But suspicion also of each other.

The South Koreans, and to a lesser extent the Japanese, feared President Bush might be too aggressive in threatening North Korea over its nuclear weapons program and provoke a military confrontation that would sear them most. The South Koreans and Japanese seemed equally worried that China would be too timid in using its influence to pressure North Korea to resolve the standoff peacefully.

The Chinese, meanwhile, feared they are being set up to take the blame if the resumed six-party negotiations with North Korea fail. The Americans worried that the Asians (especially South Korea) will prefer to continue buying off North Korea with aid -- in effect paying protection -- rather than demand genuine steps to dismantle Kim Jong Il’s nuclear program, much less enlist for a sustained effort to undermine his regime through intensified economic and diplomatic pressure.

Everyone, except perhaps the Chinese, suspected that the negotiations now fitfully proceeding would not resolve the crisis. Everyone expected the decisions ahead to be even more difficult than the choices today. Everyone feared divisions will reemerge among the coalition of regional powers now confronting North Korea in the talks -- the U.S., China, Russia, South Korea and Japan.

Which everyone recognized is exactly what Pyongyang hopes.

It is either daunting or reassuring to report that foreign policy thinkers in Asia are as perplexed as those in the U.S. about what steps might lastingly defuse the danger. Humility, not often a big presence in foreign policy debates, is a featured performer during any conversation about North Korea.

Late last month, when a group of Democratic experts in Washington released a manifesto slamming Bush’s foreign policy, the tone of uncertainty on North Korea contrasted dramatically with the assured jabs at the president on almost everything else. “Korea is the land of lousy options,” acknowledged Kurt Campbell, a former Clinton administration official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

That was the other major point of consensus at the gathering last week in Tokyo sponsored by the Japan Society and other Japanese foundations. Even those with strong beliefs about what ought to be done next described their ideas as “the least-worst choice in a range of bad choices,” as one put it.

No one, not even the Chinese, expressed much confidence that they could predict how North Korea would react either to carrots (like a security guarantee) or sticks (like last week’s cancellation of a nuclear power project the U.S. had been funding).

In this fog, several options dominated discussion. The choices roughly tracked the debate within the Bush administration itself, though in more exaggerated form. One camp at the conference hoped to convince Kim that the price of possessing nuclear weapons was too high by pressuring his regime.

The softer version of this approach called for tougher steps to cut off the money North Korea earns from sales of missiles and drugs and other smuggling.

The undiluted version came from conservative writer Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations, who argued in a paper that “the only way to make sure that North Korea is denuclearized (and its people liberated) is to overthrow the Kim regime.”

Toward that end, he wanted South Korea and China to end all aid to North Korea and to open their borders to refugees. Most provocatively, he said that if China doesn’t make strong efforts to discourage the North Korean nuclear program, Japan should threaten to “go nuclear itself.”

That last idea seemed more a debating point than a practical notion. Yet Boot’s conclusion that only regime change could genuinely stabilize the region -- and end the suffering of the North Korean people -- received a surprisingly enthusiastic reception from the diplomats and academics around the table.

Still, almost all hesitated to endorse such a campaign now. Chinese officials pointedly questioned whether the American Embassy would make visas available to the refugees Boot was encouraging to flood across China’s border.

Many doubted any amount of peaceful pressure could dislodge Kim from power. And many feared that Kim would lash out militarily against even a nonviolent campaign to squeeze his regime. When cornered, former South Korean foreign minister Gong Ro-Myung said memorably, even a mouse will bite a cat.

Other options didn’t look much better. Few were confident that a preemptive military strike could eliminate all of North Korea’s nuclear program -- much less do so without inspiring Kim to lash back horribly at South Korea and Japan.

Few could muster much optimism that further negotiations would produce an agreement acceptable to all sides: Any deal that provided verification intrusive enough to satisfy Bush seemed likely to be unacceptable to Kim.

And yet, lacking better choices, most thought the best course was to continue the talks, primarily because the act of negotiating could impose at least a modest restraint on North Korea’s behavior.

Looming over all these considerations was a keen awareness that the most important decisions ahead will be made not in Seoul or Tokyo or even Beijing but Washington: It is Bush, above all, who will decide whether a deal is acceptable and what to do next if not.

Over lunch one day, a Japanese journalist suggested with a weary smile that people around the world should be given a vote in the American presidential election because the result affects them so much as well.

At moments like this, when decisions in the White House could tilt the balance between war and peace halfway around the globe, that doesn’t seem such an odd thought.

*

Ronald Brownstein’s column appears every Monday. See current and past columns on The Times’ Web site at www.latimes.com/brownstein.