North Korea's missile launches in early
July created a stir in the US media. Journalists
went to great lengths to warn the US public of the
North Korean threat, even to the point of
predicting, hyperbolically, the outbreak of World
War III. The administration of President George W
Bush, however, has been rather cautious in its
response. White House spokesman Tony Snow
immediately dismissed the way the media had blown
the missile launches out of proportion and assured
reporters that the government was working to calm
the situation.
The average reader cannot
be blamed for being confused at the discrepancy
between the news reports and the US government
response. The administration hyped Iraq's
imaginary weapons of mass destruction on the eve
of invasion in 2003 and has emphasized the threat
that Iran's rather minimal nuclear program
poses
to the world community.
But when it comes
to North Korea, Bush has been comparatively - and
uncharacteristically - silent. North Korea, after
all, claims to have nuclear weapons and the
capability to deliver them. It seems to have what
Iraq didn't have and what Iran has yet to acquire.
Here are five reasons the Bush
administration has behaved so differently toward
North Korea than toward the other two members of
the "axis of evil".
The Bush administration knows the real
military capabilities of North Korea and,
privately, realizes that the country does not pose
a threat to US interests.
This would not
be surprising. North Korea's military weakness is
an open secret. Its weapons are old. It doesn't
have enough energy to power a modern army. It has
many soldiers, but they are poorly fed and poorly
trained. It doesn't have long-range missile
capability. And it may not have nuclear weapons
either (it has nuclear material, but has shown no
indication that it has weaponized this material).
North Korea, of course, won't admit any of
this. It needs to prove that it can deter an
attack. The Bush administration, too, won't admit
that North Korea is militarily weak. After all,
the "threat" of North Korea is a key rationale for
missile defense, the placement of tens of
thousands of troops in the Asia-Pacific region and
the stronger US-Japan military alliance. If the
administration knows the full extent of North
Korean weakness, then it realizes that the recent
missile launches don't pose any real present
danger.
The Bush administration knows the real
missile-defense capabilities of the United States
and, privately, realizes that they can't knock
North Korean missiles out of the air.
US
Air Force Lieutenant-General Henry Obering,
director of the Missile Defense Agency, has
expressed confidence that the United States can
hit their bullet with our bullet. The Pentagon
claims a 50% success rate in its last 10 tests,
but the tests were carefully rigged to achieve
even this modest number. The Pentagon's own chief
weapons evaluator, Philip Coyle, estimates only a
20% likelihood of success under real-world
conditions. He calls the system "a scarecrow
defense".
Given this probable failure
rate, the administration does not want to provoke
North Korea into setting off more missiles and
proving in no uncertain terms that missile
defense, like Pyongyang's long-range missile
program, is mostly hot air. The Missile Defense
Agency has put in for a major increase in funding
for 2007 - up to roughly US$10 billion. North
Korea's missile launches will make it easier for
Congress to approve this funding. A failed
intercept, on the other hand, might have led
members of Congress to question whether all the
money spent so far - nearly $130 billion - has
been a wise investment.
War is not an option.
The
administration is reluctant to take any option
"off the table". But there is broad consensus
within the US government that an attack on North
Korea would have disastrous consequences. Yes,
North Korea lacks the capability to launch a
missile strike against the United States. Yes,
North Korean military might is more exaggerated
than that of the Iraqi forces before the 2003
invasion or Soviet forces during the Cold War. But
that doesn't mean the North Korean tiger is
toothless. It can defend against a ground attack
and survive aerial bombardment. And it can visit
great destruction on US forces in South Korea and
Japan, not to mention civilians and
infrastructure, with long-range artillery and
short-range missiles.
The US military is not an unlimited resource.
The US Army and Marine Corps are tied down
in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Lebanon crisis has
once again distracted attention from East Asia.
The US Strategic Command, at Bush's request, has
come up with a plan for a major bombing campaign
against Iran, according to Seymour Hersh in the
July 10 issue of The New Yorker. The
administration has made little headway in
resolving crises in Sudan and Somalia.
The
US government simply doesn't have the intellectual
or material resources to deal with North Korea
right now. In a pinch, yes, the Pentagon can
redeploy forces. But in essence, the Bush
administration wishes that North Korea would just
keep quiet for a couple more years.
Bush needs the support of China and Russia.
In his news conferences on the topic, Bush
repeatedly referred to his phone calls to Russian
President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu
Jintao about the North Korea missile problem.
These are the key players.
Bush knows he
has Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's
support - in fact, Japan has taken a much harder
line on the North Korea issue. And Bush has
largely ignored South Korea's position, not even
bothering to coordinate a response with President
Roh Moo-hyun.
But to get the Chinese and
Russian support, Bush has to tread carefully. It
took considerable compromise to win their backing
for a United Nations resolution condemning North
Korea's missile launch (and, as Peter Hayes has
pointed out in a Nautilus Institute commentary,
considerable finessing of the legal rationale,
which was based solely on North Korea's failure to
provide sufficient advance notice).
The
administration has long hoped that China in
particular will rein in its errant ally. Beijing
has followed the US lead by freezing North Korean
bank accounts. It has expressed its displeasure at
Pyongyang's decision to launch the missiles.
Beyond this, China will not likely follow US
bidding.
Double bind and default
strategy The US administration faces a
classic double bind on North Korea. An agreement
with that country would open it up to conservative
charges of "appeasement". A military response
would generate horrific consequences.
Proposals to attack North Korea and take
out its missile sites - such as the tactics
Clinton-era defense officials William Perry and
Ashton Carter have urged in the Washington Post -
are not popular with the Bush administration. But
then, neither are proposals to negotiate directly
with Pyongyang, as Dick Lugar, the Republican who
chairs the Senate Foreign Relations committee, and
others have urged. The diplomats and the generals
are handcuffed.
An unpalatable third
option has thus become the administration's
default strategy. Instead of attacking North Korea
or negotiating with it seriously, the US
government will continue slowly to tighten the
military and financial noose around the country.
It will defer the question of strong multilateral
sanctions because of Chinese and Russian
objections. It will quietly try to persuade Seoul
to change its engagement policy and hope for an
opposition victory in the next South Korean
elections. It will wait for the North Korean
government to collapse and not think too hard
about the potentially dire military, economic and
political consequences.
What will it take
to prod the Bush administration from its default
strategy and into sitting down with the North
Koreans to hammer out a principled agreement on
denuclearization and diplomatic rapprochement? A
sudden dose of comparative politics.
The
conflict in Israel and Lebanon has certainly
diminished the amount of attention that North
Korea hoped to garner with its missile launches.
But Israel's war against the non-state actors
Hamas and Hezbollah should reinforce the single
most important reason the Bush administration can
and should broker a deal with North Korea.
In however low regard Washington holds
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, the fact remains
he presides over a state that no longer has the
desire or the capability to take over the world
(or even the rest of the Korean Peninsula). After
September 11, 2001, North Korea offered to work
with the United States against terrorism, an offer
that Washington declined. As a weak state, North
Korea wants to work with its neighbors and distant
superpowers, not blow them up in a suicidal jihad.
To demonstrate that it's not a total
foreign-policy washout, the Bush administration
needs a tangible victory. If the administration
surveys the horizon, North Korea emerges as the
lesser of several "evils".
A deal with Kim
might conjure up the ghost of the last agreement -
the 1994 Agreed Framework of the Clinton
administration - and thus outrage the right-wing
base. But sitting down with a leader whom such
disparate politicians as Madeleine Albright,
president Bill Clinton's secretary of state, and
Japanese hardliner Shinzo Abe have declared to be
rational would give the Bush administration at
least one lone feather in its foreign-policy cap.
John Feffer is co-director of
Foreign Policy In Focus for the International
Relations Center. He is the author of North
Korea, South Korea: US Policy at a Time of Crisis
(Seven Stories Press, 2003).
