When Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton said North Korea should "draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq," the meaning was clear: The United States might send in the Marines.
The administration apparently believes that its hard-line stance led to the three-way talks among North Korea, China and the U.S. planned for later this week. And if the talks bog down or blow up, Bolton's statement implies that war again will be an option.
But we should know clearly what we may provoke, and it isn't a limited, quick, low-casualty Iraqi-style conflict. Where North Korea is concerned, even a limited military strike almost certainly means full-scale war on the Korean peninsula, with massive casualties and widespread devastation.
The North is thought to possess one or two nuclear weapons or at least has reprocessed enough plutonium to make them. More important, it has cheated on the 1994 Agreed Framework, which froze its nuclear program, and it also has taken a series of increasingly provocative steps.
North Korea probably chose the current path for a mixture of reasons. Its putative nuclear capability is the only reason other nations pay any attention to an otherwise bankrupt, irrelevant state. So far the nuclear option also has been useful in eliciting bribes, such as fuel oil shipments and financial aid. Moreover, developing a nuclear arsenal may be the surest route to ensuring that the U.S. does not attack.
A decade ago, many American policymakers and pundits blithely talked about military options for destroying the Yongbyon reactor and other North Korean nuclear facilities. Many people, apparently including President Bush, seem to be making the same calculations again.
It is not surprising that policymakers in Seoul, within easy reach of North Korean artillery and Scud missiles, have a different perspective. Officials in Beijing, Moscow and Tokyo also worry about radioactive fallout, missile attacks, refugee flows, economic turmoil and regional chaos. Even among the countries in the region most vulnerable to a North Korea with nuclear weapons, there is no constituency for war.
South Korea is particularly adamant. As President Roh Moo Hyun said, "For Washington, their prime interest lies in getting rid of weapons of mass destruction to restore the world order, but for us it's a matter of survival."
