WASHINGTON — North Korea's curious brand of nuclear brinkmanship and blackmail will become a recurring nightmare for the United States and its allies in the region unless a longer-term policy of preemptive containment is implemented to prevent Pyongyang from obtaining the materials to develop nuclear weapons.
The current spate of diplomacy may be useful -- perhaps even successful -- in managing the short-term fallout from Kim Jong Il's decision to restart his nuclear reactors and pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But such well-intentioned efforts can't quash the North Korean leader's long-term nuclear ambitions. They also put Washington in the awkward position of being compelled by its friends to engage with a regime whose repudiation of every international norm for state behavior offers no basis for engagement.
As the U.S. proceeds, it must avoid anything that appears like negotiating with a terrorist regime.
At the other end of the policy spectrum, preemptive military solutions like attacking North Korea's nuclear or missile installations could well cause Pyongyang to retaliate against Japan and South Korea with a blitzkrieg of troops and missiles. And threatening Kim's nonexistent economy with further sanctions is little more than bluster.
A new approach is needed to adequately address the North Korean threat. Japan, Australia and South Korea are currently engaged in diplomacy with Pyongyang. They should, in their talks, insist on the near-term removal of nuclear stockpiles as a prerequisite for food and fuel that would be provided for nonnuclear electricity production. Russian natural gas from deposits near the Korean peninsula could replace any need for nuclear power, while also giving Moscow an incentive to stand firm against North Korean nuclear actvities.
At the same time, a U.S.-led alliance needs to find ways of preventing materials necessary to weapons production from getting to North Korea. This would require firm commitments from China -- and, perhaps more important, Pakistan -- to stop providing Pyongyang with nuclear components, particularly the gas centrifuges that form the heart of uranium enrichment plants and the ring magnets that are vital to centrifuge function. Bomb designs, particularly the specialized bomb casings needed to house highly radioactive uranium cores and spherical implosion trigger devices needed for detonation, must also be stopped at the source.
