SEOUL — As North Korea accelerates the pace of its nuclear weapons program, the United States and its allies have limited options to prevent one of the world's poorest and most erratic nations from becoming a nuclear power.
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I know I talk about this a lot, basically because the press has decided not to . . . until that little lunatic in North Korea does something to get their attention. I spent three years of my life in South Korea, not far from the DMZ. I love and respect the Korean people, and I look back on my time spent with them with fondess. It's an area rich in history and culture, and the last thing I want to see is this land become the blast point of the next regional conflict. They went through enough earlier this century.
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The Bush administration appears to have ruled out any kind of preemptive strike on North Korea, which with its conventional artillery alone could inflict massive casualties on neighboring South Korea and the more than 30,000 U.S. troops stationed there. And with diplomacy failing, nonproliferation experts have begun to speak despairingly of the inevitability of a nuclear North Korea.
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There is no denying Kim Jong Il is nuts. What would he do with nuclear weapon that could concievably reach the western U.S.? How many scores would he try to settle in the region? We know of his lust for the wealth of South Korea and his difficulties with the Japanese.
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During a previous nuclear showdown, when Bill Clinton was president, and another tense period in 2003, policymakers stared down the path of military action and blanched. Although there is no doubt that the United States and its allies would prevail in any contest, military analysts believe that North Korea could kill hundreds of thousands of people in South Korea and perhaps Japan before it goes down in defeat.
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The 1994 deal that Clinton struck was weighted in the North Koreans' favor, but lines of communication were open. We could talk to them and the U.N. was able to monitor their progress in the nuclear arena. That changed in 2000.
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What little contact there is between the United States and North Korea has deteriorated into an unseemly exchange of insults. Shortly after Bush characterized Kim Jong Il as a "tyrant" during a news conference last week, the North Koreans denounced Bush as a "philistine" and a "hooligan."
But many diplomats think there is still more the administration can do to bring North Korea back into negotiations. For example, the White House has been criticized for refusing to conduct one-on-one talks with the North Koreans, insisting that all contacts remain within the multilateral framework.
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With teenagers running the White House, this is what passes for diplomacy. Name calling. Yeesh. This isn't high school or college. You have a madman with a lust for power (of the most dangerous kind), you have to treat him gently until you can disarm him. This mess on the Korean Peninsula has been exacerbated by the doings of Bush's new U.N. Ambassador nominee, John Bolton (yes, him), who'd begun the name calling not long after arriving in the region.
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The South Koreans and Chinese have indicated that they would like to see the United States put a more specific proposal on the table, laying out in detailed steps what economic and security incentives would be provided if North Korea dismantled its nuclear program.
The Americans "need to come up with positive reinforcement mechanisms rather than these negative signals that make the situation worse and worse," said Moon Chung In, a South Korean academic and foreign policy advisor to his government.
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So, while Bush & Co. plays their silly little game in Iraq that's costing the lives of our children and squandering our wealth, Kim Jong Il plays another, more calculated one. He knows our forces are stretched so thin that any sort of response to him would be slow and anemic. By the time we get it together, it will be as it was in 1950, maybe worse. Instead of barely holding on to the southern tip of Korea, a swift attack from the North could net part or all of Japan. There are a lot of U.S. bases within reach of Kim's missiles already. The reality is that he could destroy a good part of our military assets in East Asia.
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Within the last month, North Korea shut down its 5-megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. Nuclear experts believe the decision was probably a prelude to removing fuel rods from the reactor to extract plutonium to make nuclear arms.
If that happened, according to a recent report by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif., North Korea could have 11 nuclear bombs by next year.
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What eleven targets would Jesus choose? What, you don't think he's on our side anymore, do ya?
