North Korea shows how to make the U.S. temper its actions
Jonathan Manthorpe
Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
Vincent Yu, Associated Press / With tensions running high because of North Korea's increasing belligerence, South Korean soldiers train on Tuesday with the U.S. Army near the demilitarized zone between the Koreas.
If one of the messages of the impending war against Iraq is to deter other countries that lust for weapons of mass destruction, it doesn't seem to be getting through.
Even before Saddam Hussein has been subjected to the full rigour of regime change, Washington's lesson to the world has been diluted by its very different response to provocations from North Korea.
In North Korea, the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il probably has at least two nuclear weapons and two weeks ago stoked up his reprocessing plant at Yongbyon to produce plutonium for more. Kim also has the missiles to deliver these weapons at least to Japan. A new longer range model capable of hitting the United States is nearly ready for testing.
Because Kim is a real military threat and has neighbours -- China, Japan and South Korea -- of importance to the U.S., Washington has chosen to negotiate rather than attack.
Saddam, on the other hand, has no nuclear weapons and might or might not be able to account for biological and chemical weapons stocks he might or might not have had.
As one veteran observer put it: "The Americans want to go to war on the basis of Iraqi bad bookkeeping."
Any country suspicious of Washington's unipolar power -- for example, Iran, the third leg of president George W. Bush's "axis of evil" -- can draw an easy conclusion from this situation.
Once you have nuclear weapons Washington will treat you with caution. So better get the bomb quick.
Reports in the last few days say Iran is racing ahead with the development of a new nuclear power plant capable of producing weapons-grade material.
So the way the U.S. administration has handled the Iraq-North Korea dichotomy can be seen as promoting weapons proliferation rather than containing it.
There are, of course, a few countries that fear they might be on Bush's list for police action once Saddam has been regime-changed and which have the capacity to acquire nuclear weapons. And France already has the bomb.
Iran would be high on the list, but other regimes in the Middle East such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia must be looking at the potential regional dislocation of a prolonged U.S. occupation and democratic reconstruction of Iraq and wondering how to secure their own futures.
It's not necessary to be on Washington's hit list to feel that in an increasingly uncertain world having a nice fat bomb stored in the basement might be a good idea.
North Korea's neighbours, Japan, South Korea and even Taiwan, undoubtedly have the technical capacity to make nuclear bombs, but have chosen not to. Those decisions could be reversed, however, if the always unpredictable Kim is seen to have crossed the line from his usual garrulous brinkmanship into a much more dangerous area.
A week ago, the director of Japan's Defence Agency, Shigeru Ishiba, made an astounding statement for a high official in a country with an avowedly pacifist constitution.
If Japan received information, he said, indicating that North Korea was preparing to attack, the Tokyo government would have the legal right, despite the constitutional prohibitions, to launch a preemptive strike against Pyongyang's facilities.
An arms race in Asia is, of course, most likely to happen if Washington's allies feel the U.S. cannot be depended upon to support its friends as it has for the last half century. That development seems unlikely now, but who can tell what mood America will be in after its Iraqi adventure?
Even without a spate of proliferation in Asia, the situation between the U.S. and North Korea is dangerous enough.
In the last three weeks, North Korea has twice tested anti-ship missiles in a provocative manner. Last week, its fighter aircraft buzzed an American spy plane, apparently with the intention of forcing it to land the way China did, with impunity, two years ago.
The U.S. has responded by moving more heavy bombers to the Pacific Ocean island of Guam within striking distance of North Korea.
What Washington does not seem to have grasped with sufficient clarity is that Kim's North Korean regime is not house-trained. More than half a century of self-imposed isolation has bred institutional suspicion, paranoia and sheer ignorance about how the world works. Kim's paranoia roared forth when Bush declared a strategy of "pre-emptive attack" on any country deemed a future risk to America.
Washington discovered Kim's secret nuclear research last year, confirming its view that he could not be trusted. When confronted with the evidence, Kim's regime expelled United Nations inspectors, said it would reactivate its nuclear power plants and even threatened to abandon the truce with South Korea that halted the 1950-53 civil war.
This might, of course, be just more brattish brinkmanship, but with Kim you never know.
jmanthorpe@png.canwest.com
