Editorial: North Korea

The most chilling piece of news about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is not that it has been resumed. It is rather the admission by former US President Bill Clinton, that in 1994, his administration made a specific military threat against North Korea unless they signed up for the deal suspending their weapons program. Now the Bush White House is echoing that threat and even more chillingly, says that it is quite prepared to take simultaneous military action against both Iraq and North Korea.

Though both Iraq and North Korea are classed as parts of the Washington’s “axis of evil”, no two states can be more dissimilar. One of the biggest difference is that of political sanity. Saddam’s Iraq is a deeply unpleasant and brutal state which invaded and plundered a fellow Arab neighbor and when it was thrown out, sought to wreck Kuwait’s oil fields and the environment of the wider Gulf. But Iraqis are vital and well-educated people, who despite international sanctions, have done a remarkable job of rebuilding their war-ravaged society.

The contrast with North Korea could hardly be greater. This is an isolated, maverick regime which has already attacked its southern cousins in one major war, that at one point threatened to go global. Pyongyang may possess the power to confuse but there is little subtlety in its machinations.

There is another big difference between Baghdad and Pyongyang. Neither Russia nor China has much beyond commerce to connect them with the Iraqis, unlike North Korea where their links are deep and long-standing.

Both Moscow and Beijing competed to be the guide for the North Korean communists. First the Soviets poured money and materiel into its young ally after the Japanese surrender and the peninsula’s partition. Later, Moscow ceded its dominance to Beijing. Both the Russians and the Chinese, therefore, whatever their repugnance at North Korea’s regime, still remain important players in that country’s affairs. Bush may threaten as much as he likes, but before he starts breaking any North Korean heads, he is going to have to persuade both the Russians and the Chinese to step aside. That may be a lot more difficult than he imagines. Even a UN-sponsored US-led force could be an affront to both Moscow and Beijing which each have borders with North Korea. Pyongyang’s international defiance may even indeed be something which both states might seek to solve themselves together, especially after the warmth of President Putin’s recent Chinese visit.

North Korea’s challenge and the fact that it clearly represents a more immediate threat than Iraq also offer Moscow and Beijing the leverage to push Bush back from an early Iraq invasion. If Washington wants to address the real problem first, then it will have to quit its shadow wrestling with Saddam.

If Bush ignores such a trade with Russia and China and goes for Iraq and North Korea together, he will be fighting on multiple diplomatic fronts and in two very different military theaters. The greatest danger of such a diverse conflict is the dissolution of Bush’s unified front against global terrorism. Unity of purpose will only be sustained by consensus and compromise — two words little understood in the Bush White House.