He Huffs and He Puffs
Blumenthal, Dan
He Huffs and He Puffs North Korea's Dear Leader threatens to explode a nuke. by Dan Blumenthal Here we are again. Kim Jong Il is doing what we have come to expect of him: threatening the world and...
...By September, washington was offering Pyongyang one-on-one talks and "flexibility" on sanctions currently in place to keep North Korea from trafficking in counterfeit money...
...Besides, what actions will we take to not "live with a nuclear North Korea...
...We can intensify our Proliferation Security Initiative activities, and place a quarantine and inspection regime on ships moving to and from North Korea...
...Maybe the paranoid leader is upset by signs that the U.S.-South Korea relationship may be fixable...
...In which case, our policy should be based on the premise that we will be living with a nuclear North Korea until the Kim regime is gone...
...Bad Dan Blumenthal is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute...
...But we have said that before, and we have been living with a nuclear North Korea for quite some time...
...and Japanese efforts to get the United Nations to express disapproval in advance of a test—a simple warning of Chapter 7 actions that could lead to tougher sanctions and the use of force—have already been rebuffed by North Korea's "protectors," as Ambassador John Bolton calls China and Russia...
...Reasonable people may ask, why is Kim escalating when he is so close to getting what he wants...
...And this time the Dear Leader is declaring his regime's intention to test an actual nuclear weapon...
...But a continued policy of conference diplomacy and empty threats will give us the worst of all worlds: more nuclear weapons in North Korea and more alliance problems with South Korea and Japan...
...Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe is set to visit South Korea in October on a fence-mending trip...
...The lesson we should be teaching Pyongyang is that breaking your commitment to non-nuclearization leads not to concession after concession, but to isolation, pressure, and the uncomfortable position of having a nuclear arsenal pointed at you...
...Kim and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seem to be studying each other's moves...
...These sanctions have clearly hurt the cash-strapped regime, which lives off a combination of criminal activity and extorted foreign aid...
...But why should Kim worry about consequences...
...And the growing pains of South Korea's immature democracy have complicated Washington's attempts to work with it on the North Korea issue...
...We can launch an international campaign to ameliorate human rights abuses and absorb refugees, and so on...
...Just like Kim...
...Kim has decided to up the ante and threaten to test a nuclear weapon...
...The Iranian president wants his own six party-like process, which would allow him also to build up his country's nuclear arsenal while extracting all the benefits of diplomacy with the big boys...
...A Japanese-South Korean rapprochement would be a major blow to Kim's strategy of weakening America's Asian alliances...
...The United States last week warned privately and publicly that "we are not going to live with a nuclear North Korea...
...Proponents of more diplomacy argue that, had the United States pursued a more rigorous diplomacy, we could have convinced China and South Korea, once diplomacy failed, to support a more coercive approach...
...Even worse, the "more-diplomacy" argument overlooks the basic truth about our North Korea problem, which is that we are willing to live with a nuclear North Korea, because the alternative is a major war...
...But Beijing's geopolitical calculation—a nuclear North Korea may not be so bad when compared with the alternative of a unified Korea allied with Washington—precludes getting tough with Kim...
...and America that Kim tested his missiles this summer...
...But he has also learned that brinkmanship and escalation work...
...And yet, washington's concessions, apparently, were not good enough for the Dear Leader...
...We can mitigate the artillery threat to Seoul through counter-battery weaponry...
...No one besides our closest ally in Asia, Japan, seemed to care much, and the international response was far softer than what Tokyo proposed...
...We also have other means of deterring the Dear Leader, mitigating his threats, and working toward his eventual demise...
...And it was soon after Iran was rewarded for its own provocations by an offer of goodies from the E.U...
...Why not continue and see what else he can get, especially from Seoul and Beijing...
...He was even on the cover of Time...
...There is also the Iran factor...
...Japan went forward with its own broader unilateral sanctions, and, clearly dissatisfied with the international and American responses, mused aloud about the need for a nuclear-strike capability...
...Of course, no one really knows what Kim is after, besides survival, which nuclear weapons will buy him for a while...
...Kim Jong Il is doing what we have come to expect of him: threatening the world and engaging in nuclear brinkmanship...
...There are plenty of possible motivations...
...We can adopt a more robust nuclear posture in Asia...
...Perhaps Kim also desires the respect Ahmadinejad has received...
...news," according to the E.U.'s Javier Solana...
...A very provocative act, said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice...
...Another round of threats has ensued...
...Perhaps Kim is peeved that Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the Philippines joined Japan, South Korea, and the United States (Russia and China sat out) at a recent meeting in New York on the North Korean nuclear crisis...
...We can also accelerate the deployment of missile defenses to our regional allies...
...Such a policy requires first getting ourselves out of the six party talks, so we can focus on defending ourselves and reassuring our nervous allies Japan and South Korea that our nuclear umbrella will protect them...
...The Iranian president got to speak in New York at the United Nations and the citadel of the foreign policy establishment, the Council on Foreign Relations...
...Kim was slapped with sanctions prohibiting the sale of nuclear and missile materials...
...Unrelenting pressure can be put on the trade in illicit goods that keeps Kim's regime alive...
...But all Kim Jong Il had to do was wait for the huffing and puffing to peter out...
...Last July, ignoring the warnings of the United States and other members of the six party talks, Kim Jong Il decided to test several short- and long-range missiles...
Vol. 12 • October 2006 • No. 5
