How to Curb North Korea

By Bill Powell

In missile tests, as in most things, practice makes perfect. So while the lone long-range Taepo Dong--2 rocket fired by North Korea last week sputtered, then splashed down into the Sea of Japan less than two minutes after its much publicized, strategically timed July 4 launch, there's little reason to think Kim Jong Il will be dissuaded by failure. With enough plutonium to make six to eight nuclear warheads and a cache of medium-range missiles, Kim is currently a menace to his Asian neighbors. With nukes and a fully functioning intercontinental missile, he can threaten the U.S. too--and the prospect of bullying his greatest nemesis seems simply too delightful for Kim to resist.

For most of President Bush's time in office, North Korea has been merely a pest, one that the President insisted on dealing with exclusively in concert with China, South Korea, Japan and Russia in six-party talks. But since late last summer, when all the parties agreed in principle that North Korea would shut down its nuclear program in exchange for security guarantees, the North has refused to show up for meetings. Now that Kim has ignored warnings--from the U.S., Russia and China--not to test his missile capability and is threatening more tests in the immediate future, the question for the Administration is, What, besides the status quo, are the remaining options for dealing with the world's most unpredictable totalitarian nuclear regime?

A SWIFT AND PRECISE MILITARY STRIKE

LAST MONTH, AS INTELLIGENCE REPORTS SUGGESTED that the Taepo Dong test was imminent, two former Clinton Administration officials, Defense Secretary William Perry and Assistant Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, opined in the Washington Post that a nuclear North with an intercontinental ballistic missile presented too great a risk for the U.S. to bear. The moment had come, they argued, for a pre-emptive strike against the North Korean launch site. Even if Perry and Carter were speaking in part to a domestic political audience in an attempt to prove before the midterm elections that Democrats can sound tougher than the Bush Administration on national security, their argument is rooted in what's considered a strategic truth about Kim's regime. It is a government that, far from being crazy or irrational, is motivated entirely "by regime survival," says Yun Dukmin, a national-security specialist at Seoul's Institute for Foreign Affairs and National Security.

Viewed through that lens, would Kim really risk war--and the certain end of a dynastic regime begun by his father--in response to a limited air strike aimed at his missile capability? The answer may well be no, but it's also clear that the Bush Administration thinks a pre-emptive strike is still too risky. The North might not currently be able to retaliate against the U.S., but it has huge artillery batteries stationed just across the 38th parallel ready to take aim at Seoul, one of the world's most densely populated cities. Even if Seoul isn't attacked, a U.S. strike would almost certainly fracture the U.S.--South Korean alliance. The population of South Korea overwhelmingly opposes the use of force against the North. Despite the fact that the government of South Korea has little to show for it, polls there suggest people still support the "sunshine" policy, in place since 1998, which amounts to an all-carrots, no-sticks approach to relations with Pyongyang.

Finally, a military strike against North Korea would infuriate China, an emerging superpower with which the Bush Administration has sought stable, cordial relations. Hitting North Korea at the risk of turning China into an outright hostile power isn't a trade anyone in the Administration wants to make.

CONTAIN THE REGIME. THEN SQUEEZE IT

FOR SOME IN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION, the ideal strategy for dealing with Kim has always been economic and diplomatic strangulation, with the hope that his government will eventually atrophy into collapse or succumb to a coup that might usher in a more amiable--or at least more predictable--leader. That approach is based on the idea that rather than try to negotiate with Kim or take military action against him, the U.S. and its allies are better off keeping him in a box and focusing on preventing him from peddling his arsenal to other rogue actors. Elements of that strategy have been in place for some time and have produced a few notable examples of success.

The post-9/11 Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), in which the U.S. and its allies concentrate on intercepting weapons of mass destruction, has made Pyongyang a key target because of the government's past sales of missiles to Pakistan and Iran. The big fear is that North Korea could be tempted to sell nuclear material to al-Qaeda, which would have no reluctance about using it. Former Assistant Secretary of State Robert Gallucci says Pyongyang "might figure that selling fissile material to a terrorist group would be relatively safe and profitable."

More than 60 countries now cooperate with Washington's interdiction efforts, and North Korea's record as a serial proliferator makes it a major target. The program was spurred by an incident in December 2002, when a Spanish warship intercepted--and then released--a Cambodian-registered freighter in the Arabian Sea that was manned by North Koreans and was carrying 15 North Korean--made Scud missiles bound for Yemen. At the time, there was no international legal authority for the weapons to be seized. The PSI changed that, and the U.S. insists the program has crimped North Korea's exports of weapons and materiel in the years since.

The Administration has also had some success in cutting off North Korea's access to the international banking system. For the past year, the Treasury Department has put intense pressure on international banks doing business with North Korea. Last year it helped shut down dozens of accounts at the Macao-based Banco Delta Asia, which was suspected of counterfeiting and laundering money for Pyongyang. Some diplomats in Beijing, in fact, suspect that the financial pressure the U.S. has been applying was the main reason for Pyongyang's defiant missile launch.

But punishment meted out by the U.S.--or by the U.S. and Japan, the partner in the region most willing to isolate the North economically--has a limited impact. China is North Korea's true economic lifeline, and South Korea its second largest trading partner. And last week, despite the missile test, both made it clear that they have little interest in any stringent economic sanctions against the North for the same reason: sanctions might lead to the eventual collapse of Kim's regime. In the view of both countries, collapse equals chaos, with refugees streaming across their borders. Neither wants any part of it. That's why, when asked last Thursday whether China would agree to economic pressure, Jiang Yu, spokeswoman for Beijing's Foreign Ministry, replied only by reiterating support for the six-party talks and restating China's aversion to interfering in the internal affairs of other countries.

Beijing's top North Korean negotiator, Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, heads to Pyongyang this week for talks. He may scold the North Koreans for defying Beijing by launching the missiles and possibly persuade them to try another round of six-party talks. But serious sanctions are unlikely to be on the table. Stability in North Korea is what matters to Chinese President Hu Jintao--even if it's the kind of stability only a jailer could love.

GO BACK TO THE BARGAINING TABLE--FOR REAL

A SENIOR DIPLOMAT IN EAST ASIA PUTS IT bluntly: "If there's no military option and there isn't--and you can't get meaningful sanctions--and you can't--and the six-party talks are exhausted--as they appear to be--what's left?"

One possibility is to return to the six-party talks, but with renewed energy and flexibility. Former diplomat Wendy Sherman, who negotiated at length with North Korea during the Clinton years, gives Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice credit for allowing her deputy, former Ambassador to South Korea Christopher Hill, to talk directly to the North Koreans within the six-party construct. It's just that, in Sherman's judgment, Hill hasn't had enough to talk about. "What it appeared Rice couldn't win was enough for Chris Hill to have in his pocket to make a difference," she says. "If you have nothing to negotiate with, you have nothing."

The President could endow his negotiators with a few concessions, such as agreeing to more one-on-one chats between Washington and the North in the context of the six-party talks, to lure Kim back to the table. But given that Kim has turned his back on multilateral discussions for almost a year, the Bush Administration may have to face the fact that if it wants closure on North Korea, it will have to engage in what Kim has wanted all along: direct talks. The goal of North Korea would presumably be diplomatic recognition and security guarantees from Washington, as well as all sorts of economic goodies like those the U.S. and its European allies are offering Iran as incentives to cease its suspected nuclear-weapons program. In return, Kim would have to agree to stand down on his nuclear program.

The President has always equated Kim's nuclear saber rattling with blackmail, and a face-to-face engagement would seem tantamount to caving in. But when Bush entered the Oval Office, North Korea had two nuclear warheads; now the CIA estimates that Pyongyang has enough plutonium to make as many as eight and is hard at work on the technology that would deliver them to American shores. North Korea is slowly but surely building its nuclear capability, making the world steadily less safe, and it's not clear what anyone can do about it without trying something entirely different. If Kim Jong Il intended to put the pressure back on Washington with his Fourth of July fireworks display, he surely succeeded. [The following descriptive text appears within A diagram] A Growing Threat The bulk of North Korea s arsenal consists of hundreds of short-range missiles that threaten South Korea and Japan. Kim Jong Il is believed to have enough plutonium for six to eight nuclear weapons, but the recent failures show he still lacks a rocket capable of reaching the U.S. for now Worst case Experts fear that North Korea is trying to modify a Taepo Dong-2 missile to carry a lighter warhead as far as the mainland U.S., but that capability is thought to be years away The missile that crashed in two minutes is believed to be a three-stage rocket, though its exact configuration remains unclear. North Korea has several variations with longer potential ranges [This article contains a table. Please see hardcopy of magazine.] Scud B Scud C Nodong Taepo Dong-1 Taepo Dong-2 STATUS Developed Developed Developed Tested In development RANGE 200 miles 350 miles 800 miles 900 to 1,200 miles 3,000 to 3,700 miles PAYLOAD 2,200 lbs. 2,200 lbs. 1,650 lbs. 1,700 lbs. 2,200 lbs. POSSIBLE TARGETS Parts of South Korea South Korea, parts of Japan South Korea, most of Japan Japan Alaska, parts of Hawaii

Sources: John Pike, C.P. Vick, GlobalSecurity.org Arms Control Association; Federation of American Scientists

With reporting by Susan Jakes/Beijing, Elaine Shannon/Washington, Michiko Toyama/Tokyo, Jennifer Veale/Seoul