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Finally, a military strike against North Korea would infuriate China, an emerging superpower with which the Bush Administration has sought stable, cordial relations. Hitting North Korea at the risk of turning China into an outright hostile power isn't a trade anyone in the Administration wants to make.
CONTAIN THE REGIME. THEN SQUEEZE IT
FOR SOME IN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION, the ideal strategy for dealing with Kim has always been economic and diplomatic strangulation, with the hope that his government will eventually atrophy into collapse or succumb to a coup that might usher in a more amiable--or at least more predictable--leader. That approach is based on the idea that rather than try to negotiate with Kim or take military action against him, the U.S. and its allies are better off keeping him in a box and focusing on preventing him from peddling his arsenal to other rogue actors. Elements of that strategy have been in place for some time and have produced a few notable examples of success.
The post-9/11 Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), in which the U.S. and its allies concentrate on intercepting weapons of mass destruction, has made Pyongyang a key target because of the government's past sales of missiles to Pakistan and Iran. The big fear is that North Korea could be tempted to sell nuclear material to al-Qaeda, which would have no reluctance about using it. Former Assistant Secretary of State Robert Gallucci says Pyongyang "might figure that selling fissile material to a terrorist group would be relatively safe and profitable."
More than 60 countries now cooperate with Washington's interdiction efforts, and North Korea's record as a serial proliferator makes it a major target. The program was spurred by an incident in December 2002, when a Spanish warship intercepted--and then released--a Cambodian-registered freighter in the Arabian Sea that was manned by North Koreans and was carrying 15 North Korean--made Scud missiles bound for Yemen. At the time, there was no international legal authority for the weapons to be seized. The PSI changed that, and the U.S. insists the program has crimped North Korea's exports of weapons and matériel in the years since.
The Administration has also had some success in cutting off North Korea's access to the international banking system. For the past year, the Treasury Department has put intense pressure on international banks doing business with North Korea. Last year it helped shut down dozens of accounts at the Macao-based Banco Delta Asia, which was suspected of counterfeiting and laundering money for Pyongyang. Some diplomats in Beijing, in fact, suspect that the financial pressure the U.S. has been applying was the main reason for Pyongyang's defiant missile launch.