To no one’s surprise, North Korea is becoming a nuclear power. Indeed, it may already have The Bomb, or at least one Bomb. The world, always a dangerous place, becomes more so, especially in the vicinity of the Korean peninsula.
Unlike Iraq, the North Korean regime announced its nuclear ambitions, more or more, by huffily withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Pact. North Korea wasn’t observing the treaty any more than Iraq is. But it was caught with its nuclear dumps showing by American surveillance and chemical analysis. Instead of playing games with UN inspectors a la Saddam Hussein, North Korea’s regime simply withdrew from the non-proliferation treaty. It now becomes the first of the 153 governments who signed this agreement to abandon it. This is not a happy precedent.
At almost almost the same time, Pyongyang put its army on alert in response to joint American-South Korean maneuvers, and generally began to make threatening noises. The possibilities are worrisome, especially for South Korea, Japan, their American ally, and the peace of the world.
It already has occurred to the folks who keep up with these unpleasant things that North Korea’s Bomb would make a natural accessory for its new missiles, which could reach Osaka in western Japan. The Japanese, the English of the Orient, reacted with understatement. “It is a bit unnerving,” said a senior official in the Japanese defense ministry.
One suspects that Japanese-American relations are about to improve markedly. Nothing like a serious military threat to put a little trade war in perspective. That may be the only good thing about North Korea’s Bomb.
It’s all enough to bring on a bad case of deja vu, this time with nuclear jitters. One Korean War was more than enough. How long before the newspapers start carrying maps of Korea with those little arrows showing advances and retreats? Please, not again.
Meanwhile, the rest of the international news is not exactly full of glad tidings. Boris Yeltsin is beginning to look more like Alexander Kerensky as he goes down for the third or fourth time, and Russia sinks back into its old darknesses. The Balkans are already burning while the world puts on a properly concerned look and even makes an occasional gesture. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein is still Saddam Hussein. Iran and Syria remain bases for international terrorism. (One wonders how long it will be before nuclear devices replace mere car bombs as the weapon of choice against targets like the World Trade Center.)
To top it off, the United States has a president whose answer to any economic problem starts with slashing the defense budget. The latest news from Korea does seem to have impressed Bill Clinton with the importance of maintaining the American intelligence network. Let us be grateful for that.
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Unfortunately, this message from the real world does not yet seem to have filtered down to leading senators like Arkansas’ own Dale Bumpers, who think the United States already spends way too much gathering and checking and double-checking information. What, one wonders, would be axed first at the Central Intelligence Agency-aerial surveillance or chemical analysis? Those are the very tools that have just given the world early warning of North Korea’s ominous intentions.
Sometimes it seems like the ’20s and ’30s all over again, with the United States cutting back its strength while aggressors gather theirs.
This might strike one of the world’s various megalomaniacs-like North Korea’s Kim Il-Sung-as the perfect time to test the uncertain will of a brash new American president. Fortunately, an isolated dictator who formally announces that he’s withdrawing from the world’s civilized community probably isn’t planning a surprise attack tomorrow. Or at least until his Bombs go into mass production.
Then what-a bigger and worse June 25, 1950? That’s when a Communist juggernaut rolled across the 38th Parallel and down the Korean peninsula. One would like to think that the current American secretary of state, Warren Christopher, would not pull a Dean Acheson and declare South Korea outside the American defense perimeter and therefore the business of the United Nations. But as if this replay of the 1950s were not eerie enough, Christopher made it clear that the world would have to rely on the United Nations to control North Korea. Through economic sanctions, no doubt. That ought to impress Kim Il-Sung. About as much as economic sanctions impressed Saddam Hussein, who wasn’t about to cough up Kuwait until he was forced to.
America and its allies should be readying an Israel-style strike against North Korea’s nuclear facilities now. When the Israelis took out Saddam Hussein’s nuclear capacity, they were thoroughly rebuked by, among others, this country. Later, the world would have reason to be grateful. American willingness to do the same for and to Kim Il-Sung might make adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty a much more appealing course for North Korea’s dictator. He has been nettlesome enough without nukes. To sit around and talk economic sanctions while Kim Il-Sung acquires a nuclear arsenal would be asking for more trouble than any planet needs. Alas, Warren Christopher may yet make Dean Acheson look like some kind of activist.
As for trusting the UN to take care of this little matter, Gentle Reader can see what a great job the UN is doing in what used to be Yugoslavia and now has become a vivisected Hell. Despite his personal gallantry, the UN’s French commander on the scene simply doesn’t have the power to do the job required, which is to punish Serbia’s aggression. Note, too, that American troops are still waiting to be relieved in Somalia, months after the UN’s Boutros Boutros-Ghali should have put together an international force to cope with the turmoil there. In short, Gentle Reader, this is not a gentle world.
Once again America may be caught unprepared, but there is no excuse for being caught unawares. By withdrawing from this international treaty, Kim Il-Sung might as well have sent out an all-points bulletin on himself. In effect he has announced that once again North Korea is a clear and present danger to its neighbor on the peninsula, to the world, and to itself.
Maybe we ought not to dismantle all those intelligence agencies and weapons systems quite so soon.