In missile tests, as in most things, practice makes perfect. So while the lone long-range Taepo Dong--2 rocket fired by North Korea last week sputtered, then splashed down into the Sea of Japan less than two minutes after its much publicized, strategically timed July 4 launch, there's little reason to think Kim Jong Il will be dissuaded by failure. With enough plutonium to make six to eight nuclear warheads and a cache of medium-range missiles, Kim is currently a menace to his Asian neighbors. With nukes and a fully functioning intercontinental missile, he can threaten the U.S. too--and the prospect of bullying his greatest nemesis seems simply too delightful for Kim to resist.
For most of President Bush's time in office, North Korea has been merely a pest, one that the President insisted on dealing with exclusively in concert with China, South Korea, Japan and Russia in six-party talks. But since late last summer, when all the parties agreed in principle that North Korea would shut down its nuclear program in exchange for security guarantees, the North has refused to show up for meetings. Now that Kim has ignored warnings--from the U.S., Russia and China--not to test his missile capability and is threatening more tests in the immediate future, the question for the Administration is, What, besides the status quo, are the remaining options for dealing with the world's most unpredictable totalitarian nuclear regime?
A SWIFT AND PRECISE MILITARY STRIKE
LAST MONTH, AS INTELLIGENCE REPORTS SUGGESTED that the Taepo Dong test was imminent, two former Clinton Administration officials, Defense Secretary William Perry and Assistant Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, opined in the Washington Post that a nuclear North with an intercontinental ballistic missile presented too great a risk for the U.S. to bear. The moment had come, they argued, for a pre-emptive strike against the North Korean launch site. Even if Perry and Carter were speaking in part to a domestic political audience in an attempt to prove before the midterm elections that Democrats can sound tougher than the Bush Administration on national security, their argument is rooted in what's considered a strategic truth about Kim's regime. It is a government that, far from being crazy or irrational, is motivated entirely "by regime survival," says Yun Dukmin, a national-security specialist at Seoul's Institute for Foreign Affairs and National Security.
Viewed through that lens, would Kim really risk war--and the certain end of a dynastic regime begun by his father--in response to a limited air strike aimed at his missile capability? The answer may well be no, but it's also clear that the Bush Administration thinks a pre-emptive strike is still too risky. The North might not currently be able to retaliate against the U.S., but it has huge artillery batteries stationed just across the 38th parallel ready to take aim at Seoul, one of the world's most densely populated cities. Even if Seoul isn't attacked, a U.S. strike would almost certainly fracture the U.S.--South Korean alliance. The population of South Korea overwhelmingly opposes the use of force against the North. Despite the fact that the government of South Korea has little to show for it, polls there suggest people still support the "sunshine" policy, in place since 1998, which amounts to an all-carrots, no-sticks approach to relations with Pyongyang.