At first blush, the news of North Korea’s nuclear test and missile launches seemed like yet another re-run of a bad movie. The international condemnations were swift and harsh. China and Russia expressed grave concern. The United States, Japan, and other democracies pushed for a quick U.N. Security Council resolution and the adoption of stronger sanctions. Pyongyang was pugnacious. We’ve seen it all before.
But in several important ways, the current episode is different from previous flare-ups on the Korean peninsula. North Korea’s October 2006 nuclear test came after a period in which the U.S. and Japan implemented tough sanctions against Pyongyang and eschewed concessions. The latest detonation came after the U.S. sought to placate the North with massive aid and removed it from the State Department’s list of terror-sponsoring nations. Clearly the softer approach — initiated during President Bush’s second term and (thus far) continued by President Obama — hasn’t worked.
In October 2006, South Korea had a left-wing government that won election by stoking anti-American populism and was almost blindly committed to the “sunshine” (read: appeasement) policy promoted by former president Kim Dae Jung. Now it has a more conservative and pro-American government, led by Pres. Lee Myung Bak, who has called for a harder line on Pyongyang. Earlier this week, South Korea joined the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative.
What about China, North Korea’s biggest trading partner? As the Washington Post reports, the nuclear test has prompted “unusually critical statements and harsh coverage in China’s state media.” While Beijing may exert heightened pressure on the North Koreans to curb their mischief, we remain highly skeptical that the Chinese will take the more dramatic step of halting food and fuel shipments, a step that would severely pinch Pyongyang and perhaps compel a real change in its behavior.
North Korea’s provocations are generally designed to wring concessions from the outside world. The Kim Jong Il regime is a gangster outfit that relies on extortion to survive. Its repeated — and repeatedly broken — promises to cease its nuclear activities have been meaningless. Absent its development and proliferation of weapons technology, and its history of menacing the civilized world through terrorism, kidnapping, and other noxious deeds, North Korea would be known chiefly as a repressive economic basket-case whose citizens go hungry and whose cities lack sufficient electricity. There may be no more oppressive government on earth than the one in Pyongyang.
The only way to “solve” our North Korean dilemma is to change that government. This will not be accomplished by force: A military strike is neither practical nor desirable, given the projected casualties and the North’s ability to flatten Seoul with conventional artillery. No U.S. administration would support it. And we have no illusions that the Hermit Kingdom is ripe for a peaceful democratic transition. But even an authoritarian, Beijing-style regime that sought greater global integration and a genuine rapprochement with South Korea would be a blessing for the North’s people, for U.S. security, and for regional stability.
Is it likely that such a regime will soon emerge in Pyongyang? North Korea is surely the world’s most secretive society, and intelligence on its internal power dynamics remains minimal. But there is evidence that Kim Jong Il’s health is failing and that a transition (of sorts) is under way. As German Marshall Fund scholar Dan Twining notes, this ongoing transition “raises the possibility of a new cycle in Washington’s relations with North Korea, one that could include exploiting newly apparent fissures in its regime and creating a different incentive structure for the emerging leadership’s decision-making on ongoing nuclear and missile programs.”
In the short term, the U.S. should do three things. First, reaffirm the strength of its alliances with Japan, South Korea, and other regional democracies. Second, work with these allies to squeeze North Korea’s finances through new sanctions and targeted asset freezes. (Locking down North Korean accounts at Banco Delta Asia in late 2005 had a real impact on Pyongyang.) Third, boost funding for missile-defense programs and expand missile-defense collaboration in East Asia.
The Obama administration already is reassuring our allies and surely will pursue a fresh batch of sanctions. But it has sought to slash funding for the Missile Defense Agency and to scale back missile-defense implementation overseas. As former Clinton administration defense secretary William Cohen, hardly a right-winger or a fierce partisan, wrote yesterday in the Washington Times, “Cutting missile-defense funding at this critical juncture sends the wrong signal to both our adversaries and our allies. It would embolden North Korea, Iran, and other rogue states to pursue missiles of increasing range. It would also confuse our allies and undermine their trust in America’s security guarantees.”
This administration already has learned to reverse itself when national security requires it. Changing course on missile defense is necessary, and it is urgent.
